Buzz
While bold and adventurous films captivate moviegoers, we also celebrate filmmakers who experiment with the art form. Despite the passionate study many of us dedicate to cinema, the individuals most responsible for today’s cinematic marvels are often overlooked, overshadowed by a few prominent names. It’s time to honor these trailblazers.
10. Jack Foley
Though Jack Foley didn’t create sound effects, he certainly played a pivotal role in shaping the craft. After the success of The Jazz Singer in 1927, the former director and stuntman discovered a new passion. The race to add sound to silent films was underway, and Foley contributed a notably intricate soundtrack to the 1929 movie Show Boat.
Foley was meticulous and detail-oriented in his work. When describing how he matched footsteps to famous stars, he noted, “Rock Hudson has a solid stride; Tony Curtis steps briskly; Audie Murphy moves with a bounce; James Cagney’s steps are sharp and precise.”
His crowning achievement is thought to have occurred during the production of his final film, the 1960 epic Spartacus. Stanley Kubrick, dissatisfied with the live sound recording, ordered two extra days of shooting with numerous extras, despite the already sky-high cost of the project. Foley resolved the dilemma by jingling his car keys into a microphone, creating the iconic metallic sound effect that became part of the film.
9. Kenneth Anger
A pioneering figure in American avant-garde cinema, Kenneth Anger influenced filmmakers like Martin Scorsese (who wrote the foreword for a DVD collection of his works), David Lynch, and John Waters (who remarked, “Everyone copied him, including me”). His audacious style kept him largely outside the mainstream for much of his career.
One of his most controversial works, the 1947 film Fireworks, about a group of sailors committing gang rape, remained under legal scrutiny for obscenity for 12 years. Fireworks also introduced one of Anger’s most influential techniques: the ironic use of popular music in film. Anyone familiar with films like Pink Flamingos or Goodfellas can appreciate the far-reaching impact of this technique.
8. Garrett Brown
From Rocky to True Detective, Garrett Brown revolutionized cinematography with his innovative handheld camera mount, enabling smooth and dynamic camerawork. Traditional handheld shots often gave the impression that the camera was seen through the eyes of a character, even when that wasn’t the intent, due to the clear visibility of a person holding the camera. On occasion, these shots were deliberately meant to mirror a character's perspective, as seen in slasher films. Brown also found this approach problematic, feeling the bouncing and movement didn’t accurately reflect the way human heads naturally move.
The Steadicam that Brown developed was a cumbersome, manually operated device that he sometimes had to wield under extremely taxing conditions. For instance, while filming The Shining, director Stanley Kubrick had him carry the 40-kilogram (90 lb) apparatus through grueling takes under temperatures reaching 40°C (110°F). In one scene, he was tasked with carrying the device up three flights of stairs, repeating the shot an astonishing 36 times. After enduring the first dozen takes, it’s easy to imagine him questioning his own inventive genius.
7. Lotte Reiniger
Leni Riefenstahl is widely regarded as the most famous female German director, though she is infamous for her association with Nazi propaganda. Unfortunately, her legacy has often eclipsed that of another, far more creative and benign filmmaker, whose career was notably more artistic and positive in nature.
Lotte Reiniger was an innovative force in the world of animation. While many credit Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the first feature-length multiplane animated film, Reiniger actually preceded him by 12 years with her 1926 creation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Remarkably, she designed the multiplane technique herself.
Despite her brilliance and mastery in animation, Reiniger’s films may not resonate with contemporary audiences in the same way Disney’s classics do. Instead of using traditional animation cells, she utilized silhouettes of paper cutouts, a unique technique that, though innovative, never achieved widespread popularity.
6. Percy Smith
Time-lapse photography, now a captivating tool used in everything from BBC’s Planet Earth to Breaking Bad, actually has a surprisingly deep history that traces back to a relatively unknown British naval photographer.
In 1910, Percy Smith, using rudimentary yet inventive gear—including an automated alarm system to alert him to any technical malfunctions—filmed the world’s first time-lapse movie. Birth of a Flower captured flowers blooming in stunning detail, quickly becoming a global cinematic sensation.
In 1911, Percy Smith created a series of puppet films using insect bodies and extremely detailed close-up shots. Interestingly, these films raised public concern over whether Smith was causing harm to the insects. This may have marked the first widely reported instance of animal cruelty being associated with a film production.
5. Robert W. Paul
Some film techniques seem so fundamental today that it’s hard to believe they had to be invented. Yet, Robert W. Paul was the first known filmmaker to create a movie that cut between multiple locations.
His 1898 film Come Along, Do begins with a shot of a couple enjoying lunch outside a building. They then enter, revealing that the building is an art gallery. The husband becomes captivated by a nude statue, prompting his wife to pull him away.
The idea of multiple locations in a film baffled audiences at the time. In subsequent screenings, film presenters often had to preemptively inform viewers that the film would include shots from different locations.
The first film to use cuts between locations may not have been the most impressive way to introduce the technique. In fact, it wasn’t even the most remarkable achievement of Robert W. Paul’s career—his work on the first piece of news footage and building a camera for Georges Méliès were likely more significant. Yet, the introduction of cuts between locations remains one of his most influential innovations.
4. David Allen
David Allen’s career wasn’t marked by the most prestigious projects. He worked on special effects for some big, though not critically lauded, films such as Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters 2, and Batteries Not Included. However, much of his career was spent on B movies like Puppet Master, The Gumby Show, and Dolls. Despite this, his work on the 1989 film Willow involved some groundbreaking effects that are often overlooked.
In collaboration with Dennis Muren—another well-known figure in science fiction for his work on Star Wars—Allen sought a new way to depict a character transforming from one form to another. Together with programmer Doug Smythe, they developed the revolutionary special effect known as morphing.
3. Alan Blumlein
Blumlein’s focus wasn’t solely on film. Rather, he was a multi-disciplinary inventor who held 128 patents across a variety of fields, including electric circuit design and radar advancements. Sadly, he passed away in 1942 at the young age of 38 due to a plane crash during a radar experiment.
In 1931, Blumlein made a groundbreaking contribution by patenting a stereo sound system. This system utilized multiple speakers, making movie soundtracks feel as though they were coming from all directions, greatly enhancing the three-dimensional experience.
Blumlein’s innovations were ahead of their time by at least 28 years. His employer, the British company EMI, didn’t see stereo sound as commercially viable, so the concept wasn’t used in film and television until 1958. Even theater sound systems in the 1980s continued to rely on Blumlein’s original speaker designs.
2. August Musger
Slow motion has been a beloved cinematic effect for many years. As early as 1916, European researchers were experimenting with it to study the movement of the human body. Initially, directors created slow motion by overcranking the film, a technique patented by August Musger in 1904.
Musger was an Austrian priest, physicist, mathematician, and art instructor. His inspiration for the technique came from observing flickering in hand-cranked film projections.
After 10 years, Musger’s failure to renew his patent meant that he didn’t benefit from the numerous films that utilized his technique. Sadly, no films created by Musger are known to have survived, and there is no definitive record confirming that he made any films at all.
1. Giovanni Pastrone
The title of the first epic narrative film is often given to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 work Birth of a Nation, which was costly, lengthy, and a box office success. However, the Italian film Cabiria beat it to the theaters by a year. It was epic in the same ways as Birth of a Nation, but it also introduced a significant new tool to the world of filmmaking.
While many filmmakers of his era were content to simply point a camera at the set and shout 'action,' Giovanni Pastrone took a more innovative approach. Working with grand sets and large crowds, he came up with a simple yet brilliant idea to enhance the visual quality of his films. He mounted his camera on a platform on tracks, allowing it to glide smoothly across the set.
Although Pastrone developed a patent for his device, the track-mounted platforms eventually became known as 'dollys' rather than 'Pastrones.' The technique gained such popularity in his time that what we now refer to as dolly shots were originally known as 'Cabiria shots.'
