Bringing Up Baby special effects - Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant

This is patterned after a talk I saw by Linwood Dunn, who worked with Vernon Walker on the many special effects needed to keep the leopard separate from the actors.

If anyone has thoughts on the shot at 3:18 please chime in!
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Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• RKO
• Howard
• Hawks
• special
• effects
• yt:quality=high

[Phersephoie]

Hey great work! But honestly I still can't quite get the split-screen technique, would it be too much to explain it a little?

[boinx1234]

@Phersephoie

There are two kinds of split screen techniques.

In a static split, the scene is shot twice with a locked-down camera - once with the actor and once with the leopard. As long as no one crosses the line of the split, the two can be easily combined.

Traveling splits are harder. Since the characters are moving, the split must move with them. As you can see in the clips, sometimes this was done perfectly, but at other times the moving split line can be seen.

[pxb353]

nice work. i just started to watch the movie and noticed that one shot in the opening sequence at the museum displays an optical effect : the dinosaur's skeleton seems to actually be a model in the foreground (or superimposed), with the scaffolding and actors + front legs terminal bones in the background.

[boinx1234]

@pxb353

But why would they do that when they built the brontosaurus full size? We know that because it collapses in the last scene of the film.

[RhythmUniverse]

Puppet on 3:27? Naw. Puppets don't breathe...and it looks like Baby is panting. :)

This is great. I've seen it dozens of times too and never questioned that the cat was there in the room.

Nice work!

Do you have one about "Citizen Kane" too then?

[boinx1234]

I agree about the puppet. But is the leopard back on set? If so, why do the shot right before as a split?

Would love to do CK, but the clip would have to be about 90 minutes long!

[ILOVZak]

The puppet is so funny looking

[Phersephoie]

@boinx1234 interesting...thanks!

[Phersephoie]

btw, though not a special effect, the scene in Susans room was shot in a cage, as most of the shots where the leaopard was on set :) go to imdb for more trivia, it's full!

[pxb353]

@boinx1234 i just finished the movie. i could be wrong. there just seem to be some weird foreground shaking in the wide shot at 2:00 min.

[gizmokeeper]

You will notice that most of the special effects were done with Cary Grant. It is because he was terrified of the leopard. Katherine Hepburn has told a few stories about pranks that were pulled on this set. She even threw a stuffed leopard in Grant's dressing room once. He was so scared he ran out screaming. She wasn't afraid at all, but someone did almost get hurt on set. So then after that they protected all of the actors.