Williams process

The Williams process or Williams double matting process is a matte creation technique patented by the American cinematographer Frank D. Williams in 1918. Unlike prior matte techniques, it allowed for the integration of the actors' movements with previously shot backgrounds. Due to this invention, Williams was able to found his own film lab, the Frank Williams Studio or Frank Williams Laboratories, devoted to the creation of all sorts of special effects (not just the Williams process) and where key figures of the special effects industry such as John P. Fulton worked.

The Williams process or Williams double matting process is a matte creation technique patented by the American cinematographer Frank D. Williams in 1918. Unlike prior matte techniques, it allowed for the integration of the actors' movements with previously shot backgrounds. Due to this invention, Williams was able to found his own film lab, the Frank Williams Studio or Frank Williams Laboratories, devoted to the creation of all sorts of special effects (not just the Williams process) and where key figures of the special effects industry such as John P. Fulton worked.

Origin

Source: In 1912 Frank Williams began working on his future invention under precarious conditions: he alternated periods of time working as a cameraman and saving money with others dedicated to working on his project, usually in the bathroom of wherever he was living in at the moment. His first attempt to use the William process was that same year, while he worked as a cameraman for the director Mack Sennett, but he did not succeed. The problem lay in the cameras and printers of the time as well as the film available, which made it impossible for it to work. However, Williams kept at it, and in 1917 he got help from the producer Adolph Zukor, who allowed Williams to work in his lab. Despite everything, the problems he had encountered in 1912 had not been solved and he failed again. It was not until 1922, during the production of Wild Honey, that he succeeded thanks to the improvement of film quality and the use of tripods and a special printing machine. This printer, that Williams built himself, was accurate to a ten thousandth of an inch and, according to the plans, cost 18,000 dollars.

The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man, directed in 1933 by James Whale and based on a novel of the same name by H.G. Wells, raised an important challenge for special effects specialists: making someone invisible. A great team was assembled to carry out this task, headed by John P. Fulton, chief of Paramount's special effects department and formerly mentored by Frank Williams, who also worked in this film. In order to make Claude Rains, the main actor, invisible, the Williams process was used along with stop-motion and wires. Additionally, over 64,000 frames were manually edited in post-production to get rid of any telling signs. A year after the premiere, John P. Fulton wrote this about the production of the film for American Cinematographer: We used a completely black set—walled and floored with black velvet, to be as nearly non-reflective as possible. Our actor was garbed from head to foot in black velvet tights, with black gloves, and a black headpiece rather like a diver's helmet. Over this, he wore whatever clothes might be required. This gave us a picture of the unsupported clothes, moving around on a dead black field. From this negative, we made a print, and a duplicate negative, which we intensified to serve as mattes for printing. Then, with an ordinary printer, we proceeded to make our composite: first we printed from the positive of the background and normal action, using the intensified, negative matte to mask off the area where our invisible man's clothing was to move. Then we printed again, using the positive matte to shield the already printed area, and printing in the moving clothes from our "trick" negative. In other words, the leading actor and the background were covered in a black anti-reflective material—velvet—and over it Rains wore the character's clothing; this recording was to be combined with the background, filmed individually. However, a holdout matte (a high contrast copy with the background and actor's body all in black and the clothes in white) had to be made first and inverted in order to get the cover matte. Then the holdout matte was combined with the regular film—which showed the background, objects or other actors—so it was printed on the white parts, the background and the velvet-covered Claude Rains. Lastly, to get the final version of the scene, the cover matte was used to protect the already printed parts of the celluloid so that only the character's clothes could be printed.

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