Brief Obit: Special Effects Wizard Arthur Widmer
by Andre Soares
Brief Obit: Special effects creator Arthur Widmer, 92, died of cancer on May 28. During his lifetime, Widmer developed some of the most widely used special effects - including the Ultra Violet Traveling Matte and its more advanced “offspring,” the “blue screen.” At the 2005 Scientific and Engineering Academy Awards ceremony, Widmer was honored with a Special Plaque “for his lifetime of achievement in the science and technology of image compositing for motion pictures.”
While at Warner Bros. in the 1950s, Widmer had developed the Ultra Violet process, which allowed for the combination of two different images filmed at different times and places. “If you want to have a couple sitting at a cafe in Paris, you could send the couple to Paris and hire a crew and get all the lights and stop the traffic and shoot it, but that would be very expensive,” Widmer told the Los Angeles Business Journal last year. “Instead, you get a little mock-up on the stage of the table and chairs and set the couple there and shoot them against the blue screen in the background.”
Arthur Widmer was 92.
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