He just needed one stick to hold the sheet of cut out aluminum, and he was ready to paint. Then, something to cover the support stick with a rock, a bush, a pole, or just another aluminum portion and make it invisible painting the background landscape.
Emilio Ruiz
was very often asked to add some elements in a real location. It could be a
castle, a church, a house o
whatever. In his early years, he used
the traditional glass shot technique. This is very suitable for filming inside a studio, but going to a location with a
huge sheet of glass is not an easy task,
not cheat either for the low budget films he used to work at. He started to
used a very simple method to avoid this problem; painting on a sheet of cut out metal, thin aluminum.
Depending on the painted element size he used one or two fastening points. Usually one vertical and
another horizontal (figure1) But sometimes the painted element was so small he
could be attached with one single support that could be vertical or horizontal (figure 2, 3). He hid these
supports using foreground elements like, a pole, truck, rock, bush, etc...
During the sixties and seventies he
became an expert on this kind of small trick, and he got so much confidence
that sometimes he does not even bother to hide the support with any foreground
element, he just enlarged the aluminum covering the support stick and painted it with
the background colors, making it invisible (figure 4). With so many years of
experience, Emilio Ruiz knew how far could he get with those tricks.
So, if you are watching a European co-production on the sixties or seventies, and suspect something on the background could be a painting if there is a pole, a rock or anything similar on the foreground, it is very probable you are watching an Emilio Ruiz "in-camera" miniature painting.
Talking about daring tricks, this is one of the boldest " in camera" paintings of Emilio Ruiz. For the film Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966, Alberto De Martino) He painted a building over a hill with invisible vertical support in the middle of the frame.
Why I ´m so sure? , well I have seen the film, and during a second the trick is exposed when a yellow car moves on the road that crosses the frame horizontally and goes behind the painting just for a second.
The film is on Youtube, so you can see the trick at the beginning of the film during the title credits at 0: 36
.
Scherezade (1963, Pierre Gaspard-Huit)
A bullet for Rommel ( 1969, Leon Klimovsky)
They got only four real tanks and the director wanted a column of them. At the central part of the frame, there is a miniature cut out painting that hides a small structure with a miniature landscape with a road and small models of tanks moving down the path.
Kill them and come back alone (1969, Enzo Castellari)
Both views of that ruined church are foreground painted miniatures.
Eagles over London (1969, Enzo Castellari)
A reason to live a reason to die (1972, Tonino Valerii)
Zorro ( 1975, Duccio Tessari)
The Inglorious Bastards (1978, Enzo Castellari)
There are many more, that ´s just a glimpse of Emilio Ruiz´s art.
In the late seventies Emilio Ruiz started to
make also foreground miniatures. Sometimes
he mixed both techniques, tridimensional
miniatures, and cut out painting elements
in the same shot., depending on the film budget. Building foreground miniatures required the assistance
of model makers, which make it more expensive than just a painting, but with
the advantage that they could be shot at any time of the day. While working for
Dino de Laurentiis for several years ( Conan the barbarian, Dune,
Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja, Taipan) he was able to do wonderful foreground
miniatures.
Foreground miniature for Conan the destroyer (1984) The two vertical sticks are temporary supports that were removed before filming.
