Tremors - 1990

[Scott Copeland]

Merry Christmas all,

 

Caught "Tremors" on TV the other night. There is a visual effect??? that I am curious about and will try to explain in words here. In most all shots of landscape and even a few MS with rocks, the highlights seem to flicker, or strobe. It's as if all the little shards of bright rock in the landscape are strobing on and off and it's undeniable when watching. My mom even commented, which led me to you guys. I vaguely remember seeing this years ago on a typical TV monitor before LCD and HD. Looking at the attached pic, if you can imagine a blanket of strobing/flickering lights in the background. This is a tough one to explain.

 

I don't know if you all are caught up on your Christmas "Tremors" viewing, but can anybody explain this? Is it intentional, or a by-product of film emulsion and landscape, something chemical?

 

Thanks to anyone who takes a stab at this one.

 

-S

Edited December 25, 2010 by Scott Copeland

[David Mullen ASC]

They did a lot of in-camera effects -- I believe that one you posted was a foreground miniature, so I'm not sure why there would be sparkling in the background unless there was something shiny there. If there was an optical printer dupe involved, I guess it could be dust printed onto the film. Or maybe it was some artistic decision to make the desert sparkle, which it can in real life when in frontal sunlight.

[JD Hartman]

The behind the scenes/making of on the original Tremors DVD has quite a bit of information of the special effects. Worth watching.

[Aaron Moorhead]

Also, not a bad possibility is that you were watching a poorly transferred version. Netflix is especially guilty about the quality of their transfers (but I wouldn't put it past a TV station either). A lot of stuff that was shot at 24 fps, then telecined to 29.97, then back with a bad pulldown or with a weak framerate reconform, have ghosting and flickering errors in scenes with a lot of movement or detail.