Geography in effects

What is any good film without effects. We all love big bangs and explosions.We all love when tension is built by things like music and lighting. And what would any B grade movie be without CGI. All of these bring films together from simple shots to the masterpieces we can see on the big screen today. Examples of films with lots of effects include "The day after tomorrow" and the "Terminator" series. What a lot of people don't think about when they see green screen explosions and CGI is that the explosion must have occured at some point in real life for either the programmer to have seen (in real life or on the TV) or to have been recorded for later use. Now the ingredients for an explosion have a direct relation to geography. Chemicals that make the explosion go "boom" so to speak and look amazing almost all come directly from the ground. Oil makes smoke and gasoline or petrol make the fireball. Granted sometimes the chemicals needed for certain explosions need to be extracted in a lab. But everything comes back to geography. A less direct connection is the computers were made from plastic which was made from crude oil etc.

Geography in costumes

A essential part in any film is the costumes. They come in all shapes and sizes ranging from simple tunics to futuristic outfits. But every strand of fibre from every costume ever made came from the vast world of geography. Cotton sourced from cotton farms in America are made into fabric. Then this fabric has to be dyed. Back in ancient Rome purple was the colour of wealth and power. Purple dye was derived from sea slugs that were almost hunted into extinction for their dye making properties. Luckily today most dyes are synthetic but those chemicals have to come from somewhere. My point in this post is yet again that everything in film is inextricably linked to geography and I hope I have been helping you to realise this over the past while. I have put in a short video showing some iconic costumes throughout the ages.

Geography in film settings

Another film area linked to geography is the setting. Geography shows and gives us not only physical uses but visual as well. Geography has shaped our planet since it was nothing more than a volcanic rock into the unique areas and landscapes we can see today. Without this shaping element we would have had nothing to base our film sets on. There would be no unique landscapes and hence no green screen or other CGI concerning background. Could you imagine every film set being exactly the same apart from buildings. No mountains, no trees, no lakes, no tundras etc. The list goes on. However, some may say we could have built scenery from our imagination but some things just can't be replicated. And we would never to be able to relate to the scenes we were seeing because it would be alien to us. Without landscapes the world of film would be a much duller place.

Geography in props

So today I'm going to talk about how geography is present in the props used in film. As you probably know props are neccessary in all films. They come in all shapes and sizes. Guns, furniture, jewellery etc. These props are usually made of cheaper materials than they actually would have been made of if the film were real. For instance if you had a film that featured a large diamond the film company would buy a glass diamond instead of buying a real diamond which would cost a lot more. Other popular substitutes include wood, plastic, styro-foam and other plastics. However, what people don't realise is that without geography these materials wouldn't exist. Plastic is made from refined crude oil which was created under the floor of the ocean in sedimentary rock through thousands of years of intense heat and pressure. This is just one example. A more direct example is wood. Wood comes from either coniferous or deciduous trees which have been holding soil together, producing oxygen and keeping our planet going for countless years. Wood is easy to find and is great for making objects which is why it is a popular prop material. If you think about it each and every prop has ancestry in geography. A few examples of famous props are dorothy's red shoes from "The wizard of Oz"and the Darth Vader helmet from the "Star Wars" saga. Below is the famous Wilson ball from the movie "cast away" starring tom hanks.

Introduction

Hi my name is Dirk and for the next while I'm going to be posting information about the geography of movies. Most people don't realise how massively the film industry relies on geography. Without geography there would be no background in any films, or landscapes that are iconic to the film type (eg. western films need a desert like area). In fact without geography films would likely not exist as the films would have nothing to work with. No trees, no houses, no weather etc. Over my next few posts I will focus on different aspects of geography in films.