What did the studio at Wonderland Avenue do?

[Paul Rigby]

The US Army Air Corps constructs a top-secret movie production studio in 1947…

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...698&page=3

David Guyatt:

On the movie studio:

http://www.laurelcanyon.org/20cHist.html

In 1947, the Army Air Corps built its top-secret movie production studio on Wonderland Park Avenue. Military training films and Department of Defense documentaries were churned out, including a particularly famous series on the aboveground nuclear tests in Nevada. The studio was deactivated in 1969, and thanks to the efforts of the Laurel Canyon Association, it was prevented from being zoned for further commercial activity.

The top secret 1352d Motion Picture Squadron (Lookout Mountain Laboratory) hidden in the valley of Wonderland Park Avenue. The studio created documentaries on Nevada nuclear tests among other projects and is now a unique residence complex.

Yet it falls to this firm to produce “films for all branches of the military” and, later, “the Air Force Space Division” and NASA:

http://www.graphicfilms.com/History1.htm

Graphic Films was established in 1941, by former Disney animator, Lester Novros. Having worked as an animator on such Disney Classics as ASnow White@, ABambi@ and AFantasia@, Novros left the Hollywood animation community to create instructional and informational films that were highly stylized and uniquely designed. His first commission would be the creation of an instructional film for the Army Air Corps, teaching pilots how to bail out of a P-38.

Incorporated in 1946, Graphic Films became a strong entity in the production of films for all branches of the military as well the public and private sectors. The company soon gained a reputation for it's production of consistently creative and innovative documentary and informational films.

As aerospace technology evolved in the early 1950's, production responsibility progressed into the creation of motion pictures for the Air Force Space Division. This was at a time when the word "satellite" was still considered a classified term. Graphic Films production proficiency quickly expanded to include numerous productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Agency - NASA.

So what was the point of the Lookout Mountain Laboratory if it wasn't to make precisely the kind of films which Graphic did?

Incidentally, at Graphic we find wunderkinds like Douglas Trumbull…

http://kipplezone.tripod.com/id59.html

Professionally, Douglas Trumbull started out as a technical illustrator at Graphic Films, working on documentary films about NASA and the Air Force.

“I did some obscure films for the Air Force about the space program and then there was this one film about the Apollo program that was kind of interesting.

I was painting lunar modules and lunar surfaces and the vertical assembly building on Saturn 5 rockets and animated this space stuff. And then Graphic Films got a couple of contracts to do films for the New York World's Fair in '64. It was a two year fair in 1964 and 65, and one of them was this dome thing called To The Moon And Beyond, which was kind of a Powers of Ten movie. It went from the "Big Bang" to inside an atom in ten minutes.” 2

And Con Pedersen, friend and colleague of, among others, Werner von Braun:

http://www.vfxhq.com/spotlight98/9804c.html

We had used the technique a lot building spacecraft models for the Air Force and NASA, and I had worked in the Army for Wernher von Braun, so I was used to a lot of blueprints. In fact I had worked with designs of what eventually became the Apollo project. I was very familiar with rocketry and rocket design from the inside out. I had been always very interested in model rocketry since I was a kid.

It is the Graphic wunderkinds who form the core special effects time behind Kubrick’s A Space Oddysey:

http://kipplezone.tripod.com/id59.html

It was at the World’s Fair where the Graphic Films feature, Journey Beyond The Stars, was seen by director Stanley Kubrick, that got Mr. Trumbull hired as a special effects supervisor on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001, released in 1968, is based on Arthur C. Clarke’s book, and written by Kubrick and Clarke. 2001 deals with themes of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and extraterrestrial life. The film is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and reliance upon ambiguous yet provocative imagery, and sound in place of traditional techniques of narrative cinema. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning one (for visual effects), and won the Kansas City Film Critics Circle awards for Best Director and Best Film of 1968.

PS: Trumbull on the death of Natalie Wood while filming Brainstorm:

http://www.greencine.com/article?action=...pageID=490

Your second film as a director, Brainstorm, faced some serious disasters and was almost shelved before completion. Can you talk about it?

You probably know that Natalie Wood died during the making of Brainstorm. There's a very long story about that that I don't talk about publicly because it would open up a can of worms. It is so deep and so horrendous that I don't go into it. But she was killed in an accident, let's leave it at that.