Wire removal is a visual effects technique used to remove wires in films, usually as a safety precaution or to simulate flying in actors or miniatures.
Wire removal can be partly automated through various forms of keying, or each frame can be edited manually. First, the live action plates of actors or models suspended on wires are filmed in front of a green screen. Editors can then erase the wires frame by frame, without worrying about erasing the backdrop, which will be added later. This can be accomplished automatically with a computer. If the sequence is not filmed in front of a green-screen a digital editor must hand-paint the lines out. This can be an arduous task.
The modern technique of wire removal was pioneered by Industrial Light and Magic, when they used it in films such as Howard the Duck (1986), Back to the Future Part II (1989), and Hook (1991).
Famous quotes containing the words wire and/or removal:
“God, I am caught in a snare!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat;
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)