Norman O. Dawn

Norman O. Dawn (1884-1975) is pretty much in every single book that says anything about Matte Painting, he's like the rockstar of the field. Quite literally in The Invisible Art... it discusses the start of his career in Paris. (I like also how it uses this sentence: Dawn was the lone wolf who did it all: camera work, writing, producing, directing, trick work. Like the best, he devoted his life to the "one eyed monster," as the almighty movie camera was known in early lingo.")

"I have some amazing memories to tell you - about a time and place now lost in the dark shadows of the past." Norman Dawn. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 29 )

Some sources say Norman Dawn was born in Argentine but both Richard Rickett and and The Invisible art say he was born on a rail road camp in Bolivia near the Argentinian border, Norman's father had been involved building Bolivia's early railroad system. When Norman was 3 months old they had relocated to California, where the main industry was fishing. But Norman's aunt took him to Paris to take art classes to be a painter. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 30 )

CONTEXT 1890's PARIS
Aubrey Beardsley and Art Noveaux
The Dreyfus Affair - political anti semitism that seperated france into two camps those pro german empire and those against, Dreyfus was charged for ten years but later pardoned after all crimes had been set up, showing the start of the war was coming.
Nicknamed the naughty nineties (Gay nineties in the sense of merriment and frivolity).
Theater was booming, and Thomas edison made the first camera, it was also the first decade where any coronation had been filmed of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Mauve Dye was invented so a lot of clothes were mauve.

Louis and Auguste Lumière, the French "fathers", ushered in the movies as theatrical spectacle. They unveiled the cinematographie system on a bitterly cold day, December 28th, 1895. The setting was the oriental atmosphere of the Indian Salon, a basement theater of the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines, and it marked the first time ever that projected moving pictures played before a paying public. Admission was one franc, but it was reported that out of a seating capacity of 100 only 33 tickets were sold for that historic screening. In the audience was George Méliès. ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 30 )

How freaking amazing is that!! That means in december is 120 years since the very first audience paid to see a projected movie, I hope Hyde Park Picture house capitalises on this. Maybe I'll send them an email see if they will play a french film for it.  And there was only thirty three tickets sold that means it must of been like a Mini Cine screening like at Armley Mills Industrial museum, so amazing. What an era to be alive in. Anyways I digress, it's important that Méliès is mentioned, because he later became a pioneer of trick films and Dawn him. But more on that in a bit. There's another amazing paragraph on Dawn's first trip to Paris and he actually went to go see one of the shows with his aunt.

One night Dawn and Laura crowded with other patrons into a dark room lined with velvet curtains. On the other side of railing a young woman standing in an upright cabinet smiled as a man in black undertakers garb gestured with a cane - and the woman was transformed into a skeleton. A tap of the cane and the shocked audience saw the skeleton change back to youthful flesh and blood. Dawn, marveling, asked laura how this was possible. It's mirrors, child," she replied.
( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) - but the book references an unpublished essay that the AFI holds: Dawn, N, The Seeds of Manipulation, unpublished essay, American Film Institute Collection, p. 1.

I tried to get hold of this essay through the AFI's website but to no avail I'll write down to ask the librarian if it's possible to access any other way.  So in this time Norman Dawn went back to America and Méliès went on to use and develop trick techniques with the rise of stop motion and multiple exposures in Cinderella (1899) and The one man band (1900) demonstrating that moving image could do more than record realism.
Parkinson, D (2012). 100 Ideas that changed Film. London: Laurence King Publishing. p44.

Dawn had always been fascinated with creating illusions. The year before his first trip to paris, on his twelfth birthday, his aunt had given him a camera obscura. [img above]. "To me it was really the beginning of what I did in Cinematography," Dawn recalled, "that is combining two or more real scenes into a composite." ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) -Judi Hoffman, The Norman O. Dawn Collection of Cinematic Effects. The library chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin vol 20. no. 3 1990 pg 100

It is noted that dawn went back to Paris and met Méliès on one of his trips before going to back to LA to work for an engraving company working as a still photographer.

Where among other things, he took photographs of properties for sale. In 1905, Dawn's boss showed the young photographer how to improve the desirability of a site by obscuring or amending unsightly aspects with a few well place dabs of oil paint on a sheet of glass positioned in front of the camera. 

Although stills photographers had used this method to improve there shots for many years, Dawn was probably the first to apply the technique to moving pictures when he made California Missions (1907). The film documented old religious buildings, many of which were in disrepair. By placing a sheet of glass in front of the camera on which columns, roofs and bell towers were painted to align with the real buildings that were visible through the glass, dawn was able to restore the crumbling cloisters to their former glory. 

Rickett, R (2007). Special Effects: The History and Technique. 2nd ed. New York: Billboard Books. Pg 189

This just blows my mind, it's so clever! in an Invisible Art... they give more detail on the situation..

On February 11, 1905, he was assigned to photograph a building whose view was marred by an unattractive light pole. A photoengraver name Max Handschiegl suggested to Dawn that instead of going through a laborious retouching of a photo, he mount a sheet of glass between the camera and building, paint a tree over the offending pole, and photograph glass image and building together. It was an old still-photography trick that predated cinema, but a revelation to Dawn. The boy who had experimented with the camera obscura later explained that what he loved about creating that first glass painted illusion was that 'it was was more like a magician doing something.'

( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 31 ) - this reference here is taken from an Interview with Dawn by Graham Shirley, Los Angeles, CA, January 1972, unpublished used with permission.

If that doesn't amaze you then I'm not impressed. I hope I can create some work that makes me feel like a magician for this project.

 So going back to the magician Méliès, Dawn went to visit his studio, and the theater where Méliès was now putting on sold out theatrical animated shows, with projections, mirrors and illusions. Here Dawn was shown the tricks of the trade, and became buzzing with ideas to convert these tricks to cinema. So on that trip to Paris he bought a camera and a tripod for $650 which his Dad fronted him he also met a New Yorker named Jim Whitney who introduced Dawn to his Uncle, Arthur Lee, the New York Office manager of the Gaumont Film Company. Lee offered to Distribute Dawn's Films back in the states.

However at this time Thomas Edison had patented his camera, through the Edison Manufacturing Company Licences,  monopolising and controlling movie production. This forced independent filmmakers to smuggle over camera's from Europe.

This here is the best part of this whole tale, it doesn't even seem like real life, forget blood diamonds and drugs these guys were rock stars smuggling camera's.

Dawn's new friend Arthur Lee was among them. Lee warned Dawn that if he was caught taking his new Debrie Camera back to the States, the powerful, warring interests could have him thrown in jail. Undaunted, Dawn safely smuggled his goods home, steering clear of lurking spies thanks to André Debrie (the camera maker), who booked passage for him on an English freighter to New Orleans. "There was always spies in Paris," Dawn Recalled, " Whether you bought diamonds, Kodaks (camera, or film), or anything. These fellows made a living just informing the customs people in New York... I wouldn't have had the sense [to smuggle] alone, But André Debrie was anxious to get his cameras out and all over the United States where the money and the independent [film] people were...." ( Cotta Vaz, M and Barron, C. (2004) pg 33 )

There's quite a lot more on Dawn, but I just wanted to get you to this paragraph because I loved it, I read it and loved it so much I had to instagram a picture of it.  So I shall just summarise the rest of Dawn's life, although there are several more super fascinating stories, I 100% recommend this book on the Invisible art on Matte Painting, even though it's written with a dramatic flare it's definitely a page turner.

So Dawn went back to America and went on to make his first film in 1907 called California Missions, the locations he used in this film were derelict religious sites, and there was something like 33 Matte shots in it with glass in front of the camera (my next blog post is going to be on the technicalities of traditional matte painting). Arthur Lee paid him $150 for this film and introduced him to whole host of contacts. He met one guy who hired him to travel and film, and then several years later he was hired full time at Universal as a cameraman. Most cameramen were paid $25 a week, due to Dawn's skillset he was paid $100 a week. He worked there for five years, then bought his own camera and went solo, there's so many more details I want to tell you, but I don't want it to be waffle, there's a great tale in his life about how he worked with one director who didn't want any fake shots, and Dawn was like okay but it won't look fake, and insisted on building a ridiculous amount of sets at great cost and then when the movie bombed that's when the era of Matte Painting really kicked in and at this point there was loads of people in on the game.

He ended up falling out with a lot of the big wigs in hollywood because of a grand court case because he patented Matte Painting and then tried suing someone when they did it, and then his boss offered him very little money for the patent, and then he continued with the negative matte painting technique  (see technicalities of matte painting blog up next) he'd been using for twenty years and some young fellow put a patent on that even though he'd been using it for twenty years, so he got out of hollywood and went to work in Australia. Even though he was always in the right the press and people like american cinematographer portrayed him in a bad light. But he used the money from the guy who bought the patent to buy sound equipment and made Australia's first ever talkie, 'Show Girl's Luck.'

I think it's also important to note that in all sources it's noted how Dawn and other film makers were really infuriated by the limitations of the technology of the time they always wanted to do more effects and show more and tell bigger and grander stories, so all them were constantly pioneering new ways for artistic reasons this drive pushed them and is probably why the special effects industry developed so fast.

I'm going to leave the exotic tale of Norman Dawn there, it's safe to say I have a massive envy of his talent and what he's done for this industry and I wish I could listen to the interviews and stuff but he's very enigmatic to research into. There's so much information in just these two sources though, but I don't want my dissertation to be a spooning of information that somebody's already written, so I'll have to choose carefully what to put into the history of Matte Painting chapter.