Douglas Trumbull: 1941&2022
When I was about 10 years old I was gifted the book Special Effects in the Movies by John Cuhane. Long before the days of DVD extras, this book showed how the most seemingly complicated visual effects were accomplished—ranging from Kermit the Frog riding a bike in “The Muppet Movie” to the axe in the face in “Friday the 13th.” The book was divided up into various sections and when it came to the part dedicated to futuristic films, one of the most notable names was that of Douglas Trumbull, who only had a few credits to his name at that point but was already a legend for his contributions to some of the most famous sci-fi films ever made. Like many movie-mad kids around my age, I remembered that name and when it would turn up in the credits, one could be confident that, regardless of the quality of the film as a whole, they were about to see sights they had never before imagined, except possibly in their own dreams. Now Trumbull has passed away at the age of 79, reportedly in the wake of a bout with cancer, a brain tumor and a stroke. But while he may be gone, his accomplishments as one of the absolute legends in the field of visual effects will live on for as long as people are still around to talk about movies. He was born in Los Angeles on April 8, 1941, the son of Donald Trumbull, an artist and mechanical engineer who helped create the special effects for “The Wizard of Oz.” Young Douglas originally thought about becoming an architect but eventually used his gift for creating photorealistic art to secure a job at Graphic Films, a graphic artist studio which at that time was producing short films for NASA, the Air Force and the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It was the latter project, a short film about space flight entitled “To the Moon and Beyond,” that caught the eye of Stanley Kubrick, who was just beginning to work on a top-secret project revolving involving space exploration and hired the firm to help provide visual effects. When Kubrick decided to shift the production base for the project, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to London, he halted the contract with Graphic Films. Trumbull, however, had become so fascinated with the possibilities of the project that he convinced Kubrick to rehire him and went to London to continue working on it. Originally set to design the various animations seen on the computer screens throughout the film, Trumbull’s responsibilities grew right along with the movie’s scope and he would eventually be named one of its four visual effects supervisors. His greatest contribution to the film was the “Stargate” portion, the mind-blowing sequence in which astronaut Dave Bowman (Kier Dullea) is transported through the cosmos in an orgy of wild colors and strange landscapes. Trumbull accomplished this task by taking the basic techniques of slit-scan photography—a process originally utilized to create blurriness in photographic images—and adapting them with the help of custom-built machinery. The film would, of course, go on to become hailed as a masterpiece and this sequence to this day is cited as one of the reasons why—even those who were utterly baffled by the movie as a whole were stunned by the visual beauty and spiritual grace that Trumbull managed to conjure up to visualize mankind’s journey into the unknown. Personally, I know that when I shuffle off of this mortal coil, I want a portion of my ashes to be sprinkled into the projector beam at a movie theater showing the film during this part—in 70MM, of course—because while I have no firm belief in the existence of an afterlife, I’d like to believe that what Trumbull conceived is a good representation of what is to come. Although “2001” would win the Oscar for Visual Effects, the actual prize went to Kubrick himself and Trumbull returned to America to set up his own effects shop. After working on the opening and closing sequences for the bizarre sex satire “Candy” (1968) and doing effects for the screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s sci-fi thriller “The Andromeda Strain” (1971), Trumbull was given the chance to make his own low-budget sci-fi project, “Silent Running” (1972). In the future world posited in the film, an astronaut (Bruce Dern) is residing in space tending to Earth’s last trees, kept inside giant geodesic domes, when he is given the order to destroy the trees and abandon the mission. Instead, he takes control of the ship and tries to escape pursuit while keeping his beloved trees alive with the aid of a trio of robot drones. The resulting movie was visually stunning, especially considering that it was made for relatively little money. But was a bit dramatically inert and it did not do well at the box office, though the sincere environmental message made it a cult favorite in the years to come. In the years following the release of “Silent Running,” he attempted to set up a number of film projects that he hoped would allow him to explore the kind of large-scale immersive effects he created for “2001” via a process
News Moderator - Tomas Kauer 
When I was about 10 years old I was gifted the book Special Effects in the Movies by John Cuhane. Long before the days of DVD extras, this book showed how the most seemingly complicated visual effects were accomplished—ranging from Kermit the Frog riding a bike in “The Muppet Movie” to the axe in the face in “Friday the 13th.” The book was divided up into various sections and when it came to the part dedicated to futuristic films, one of the most notable names was that of Douglas Trumbull, who only had a few credits to his name at that point but was already a legend for his contributions to some of the most famous sci-fi films ever made. Like many movie-mad kids around my age, I remembered that name and when it would turn up in the credits, one could be confident that, regardless of the quality of the film as a whole, they were about to see sights they had never before imagined, except possibly in their own dreams. Now Trumbull has passed away at the age of 79, reportedly in the wake of a bout with cancer, a brain tumor and a stroke. But while he may be gone, his accomplishments as one of the absolute legends in the field of visual effects will live on for as long as people are still around to talk about movies. He was born in Los Angeles on April 8, 1941, the son of Donald Trumbull, an artist and mechanical engineer who helped create the special effects for “The Wizard of Oz.” Young Douglas originally thought about becoming an architect but eventually used his gift for creating photorealistic art to secure a job at Graphic Films, a graphic artist studio which at that time was producing short films for NASA, the Air Force and the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It was the latter project, a short film about space flight entitled “To the Moon and Beyond,” that caught the eye of Stanley Kubrick, who was just beginning to work on a top-secret project revolving involving space exploration and hired the firm to help provide visual effects. When Kubrick decided to shift the production base for the project, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to London, he halted the contract with Graphic Films. Trumbull, however, had become so fascinated with the possibilities of the project that he convinced Kubrick to rehire him and went to London to continue working on it. Originally set to design the various animations seen on the computer screens throughout the film, Trumbull’s responsibilities grew right along with the movie’s scope and he would eventually be named one of its four visual effects supervisors. His greatest contribution to the film was the “Stargate” portion, the mind-blowing sequence in which astronaut Dave Bowman (Kier Dullea) is transported through the cosmos in an orgy of wild colors and strange landscapes. Trumbull accomplished this task by taking the basic techniques of slit-scan photography—a process originally utilized to create blurriness in photographic images—and adapting them with the help of custom-built machinery. The film would, of course, go on to become hailed as a masterpiece and this sequence to this day is cited as one of the reasons why—even those who were utterly baffled by the movie as a whole were stunned by the visual beauty and spiritual grace that Trumbull managed to conjure up to visualize mankind’s journey into the unknown. Personally, I know that when I shuffle off of this mortal coil, I want a portion of my ashes to be sprinkled into the projector beam at a movie theater showing the film during this part—in 70MM, of course—because while I have no firm belief in the existence of an afterlife, I’d like to believe that what Trumbull conceived is a good representation of what is to come. Although “2001” would win the Oscar for Visual Effects, the actual prize went to Kubrick himself and Trumbull returned to America to set up his own effects shop. After working on the opening and closing sequences for the bizarre sex satire “Candy” (1968) and doing effects for the screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s sci-fi thriller “The Andromeda Strain” (1971), Trumbull was given the chance to make his own low-budget sci-fi project, “Silent Running” (1972). In the future world posited in the film, an astronaut (Bruce Dern) is residing in space tending to Earth’s last trees, kept inside giant geodesic domes, when he is given the order to destroy the trees and abandon the mission. Instead, he takes control of the ship and tries to escape pursuit while keeping his beloved trees alive with the aid of a trio of robot drones. The resulting movie was visually stunning, especially considering that it was made for relatively little money. But was a bit dramatically inert and it did not do well at the box office, though the sincere environmental message made it a cult favorite in the years to come. In the years following the release of “Silent Running,” he attempted to set up a number of film projects that he hoped would allow him to explore the kind of large-scale immersive effects he created for “2001” via a process
