Sh! The Octopus

1937. No visual effects technology. So how did they pull off this shot?

This classic visual effects shot from Sh! The Octopus shows the character Nanny (Elspeth Dudgeon) transforming right in front of the audience’s eyes. However, the baffling thing is that there are no clear cuts, no masks used (due to the technology) and it couldn’t be pulled off practically, right?

Well, not exactly. This shot only would work in black and white as to make it work, they used red/blue makeup on Elspeth Dudgeon and light filters over the lens of the camera.

This meant that if they put red makeup on her, a red filter over the lens of a black and white camera, it wouldn’t be able to pick up the makeup. However, if a blue lens was used, it would show big, dark, blotchy spots like in the gif above.

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I tried experimenting with this idea, only using After Effects. To try to recreate the effect, I used paint to make three different blotches on my hand. One red, one blue and one green. In After Effects, I dropped the saturation to make the image black and white. Then I adjusted the colour levels for each until I got the effect that I wanted, this experiment is shown above.

Even though this effects can now be accomplished through software such as After Effects, it should not go without saying, the ingenuity that early filmmakers had to get these kinds of effects was insane and is always worth looking back at as inspiration for visual effects artists now.