dykstraflex (12. 727)

Courtesy of Things Magazine, we are referred to a rather fascinating look at how a battery of psychological experiments conducted at the University of California’s Berkley campus Environmental Simulation Laboratory in the early 1970s to gauge public engagement and investment and equip urban planners and civil engineers with better tools of communication and presentation for projects for all stakeholders, which ultimately informed the special effects workshop of Industrial Light and Magic to produce the awe and immersion for audiences of the Star Wars franchise—particularly for those experiencing the spectacle in theatres for the first time.  Proceeding in a scientific and methodical way, graduate student John Dykstra who worked on the project deduced that buy-in required believability and designed the above eponymous computer-controlled camera system to imbue a new level of reality to scale-models. The technique was first used on a miniature mock-up of an area of Marin County as a showcase for trialling various public works projects and construction proposals. Of course such monumental and detailed representations cannot be created for every item under review but insights gleaned from this study give architects and the city council better ways of presenting scope and impact. The computer controlled cameras that pivoted perspective along dogfights of between TIE fighters and X-Wings, just as they swept over the model landscape (see also) ensured continuity of motion control for all elements, dynamic and static, and the seamless merging of frames into on screen action.