What was the set used in the movie Apollo-13

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by David Roper

Jeff . . . Jeff . . .

Charles is referring to, for instance, Steve Douglas' set on My Three Sons, which was a ca. 1954 black & white console, magically displaying a color picture when its screen was shown. Similarly, Sam Drucker on Green Acres would occasionally pull a late 50s RCA portable out from behind the counter and it too would be shown displaying color pictures. Adobe got nuttin' to do with it.

You're correct about the ABC color logo, but in reverse order--think about it. There was only an instrumental backing at first. The announcement about a color program to follow was added later.

Correct; I meant about seeing a TV show or a movie with a B&W TV set as a prop, but with a color picture. I guess the prop houses had a lot of those sets sitting around, and they're light & portable. When I was a kid, living in the Rancho Park area of Los Angeles, they would rent houses frequently to do filming. So I would get to go snoop around and see what they were doing. I've seen two methods of putting pictures on TV sets for filming: One is that they do it by computer (TV is off while filming, picture is done later), the other way is to put a green sheet on the face of the CRT and use greenscreen technology to make the picture. The green paper method is very obvious in a commercial that ran all through the 90s in SoCal... It was for Adee Plumbing & Heating. They show a Sony KV-1720, which is ofcourse a color set, but they put the green sheet over the whole CRT bezel! You see the Sony in one part of the commercial not turned on and with the whole TV face showing, then you see it again with a picture on it but the picture covers the whole doggone plastic bezel! A 17" TV with a 21" picture ... As far as I know, they seldom if ever actually have a TV working while filming. I have rented plenty of vintage TVs to the film industry for props, and they nearly always want me to take the chassis & tube out and just give them the cabinet with knobs stuck on by silicone adhesive.

Charles

[Jeffhs]

Thanks for the corrections to my post. I did not realize that the b&w TV sets being referred to actually displayed color pictures in the shows mentioned, rather than having a Photoshopped color image put on a b&w screen (as I had thought when I wrote the post).

Thank you as well for the correction on the ABC color logo info. You are correct. It was the other way around; I realized that several minutes after I had posted the message.

Kind regards,

[Sandy G]

I remember seeing LOTS of obviously B&W TVs on TV displaying gorgeous color scenes;Thinking to myself, "Uhh, Yeah, right..." And you rarely ever saw a TV actually operating until the Trinitron-they must have had a more stable picture or were bright enuff to be photographed.

Know what else bugs me a little but maybe because Im so paticular of details is the use of green LED displays for the command modules "computer" and the use of compact flourescent lights for the CM and lunar excurision module. Heck CF light wasn't even a thought or idea in 1970 let alone 1980...
Seems to me that nixie tubes were the display device of the day.
Oh well maybe I do need a life!

109

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I remember seeing LOTS of obviously B&W TVs on TV displaying gorgeous color scenes;Thinking to myself, "Uhh, Yeah, right..." And you rarely ever saw a TV actually operating until the Trinitron-they must have had a more stable picture or were bright enuff to be photographed.

I might get a nastygram from the moderators for pulling this thread so far off course, but I want to add to this sub-subtopic, the epitome of TV show prop wrongdoing was in an episode of The Big Valley (Western which took place in the 1800s)... In a scene where the guys were out on horseback trying to get a message to the telegraph office, you can see a DC-10 roaring across the horizon ... And then I also noticed a really shiny new Winegard CH-8200 color TV antenna ontop of a building in a Civil War docu-drama once...

Charles

[andy]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

Know what else bugs me a little but maybe because Im so paticular of details is the use of green LED displays for the command modules "computer" and the use of compact flourescent lights for the CM and lunar excurision module. Heck CF light wasn't even a thought or idea in 1970 let alone 1980...
Seems to me that nixie tubes were the display device of the day.
Oh well maybe I do need a life!

109

I've seen an apollo computer in person at the computer history museum and it definitely doesn't use nixie tubes. According to wikipedia, it used a green 7 segment electroluminescent display.

While screw in compact fluorescent lamps didn't exist, I can believe they would have used small fluorescent tubes to light the command module. It wouldn't make any sense to use something less efficient. I have a small desk lamp from the 50's that uses little 5" long tubes.

[old_tv_nut]

Back to the topic of using an operating set vs. picture added in post-production: the set has to be modified to run at 24 Hz vertical (or maybe 48 Hz) locked to the camera shutter if you want to avoid terrible flicker. So, flicker-free (but often unreal-looking for other reasons) is achieved with green screen or post-insertion. Modern plasma sets can also have flicker problems when filmed, but LCD sets generally do not (that may change as LCD sets go to the technique of flashing the backlight to reduce motion smear).

Unless the film was run to an even 30 frames/sec to avoid this issue. I know of a few smaller production films that were actually done at 30f/s to improve the blur effect, 1984 Streets of Fire was one of those films I believe.

Now I have Apollo-13 on Laserdisc and saw clearly the floodlights that were used in both the CM and LEM were the more modern CF types. Just look at the bases through the diffuser in the movie and you can see the base and that thin interconnect between the thicker active lamp tubes.

One thing about Streets of Fire was the scene where Cody finished blowing up the battery and him and his gang were on the streets. The scene fades over to a video of Ellen Aim playing inside a bar that is displayed on a rather new for the time Trinitron cube monitor. Shortly after that they meet a groupie who tells them the cops are looking for them and McCoy stops the Sorrells who are in a mid 60's retired school bus.
Of all the "B" movies I have seen Streets of Fire has to be one of the best, makes me wonder if more of the budget was spent on making sure the sounds were right instead of pasting in the effects later to cover up the attitude that followed everyone through the movie.
Ok Im rambling again I cant help it! Still have that movie on CED of all formats!

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