Norman Dawn

Norman O. Dawn (25 May 1884 in Argentina – 2 February 1975 in Santa Monica, California) was an early film director. He made several improvements on the matte shot to apply it to motion picture, and was the first director to use rear projection in cinema.

Dawn's innovations in glass and matte shots

Dawn's first film Missions of California made extensive use of the glass shot, in which certain things are painted on a piece of glass and placed in between the camera and the live action. Many of the buildings which Dawn was filming were at least partially destroyed; by painting sections of roof or walls, the impression was made that the buildings were in fact, whole. The main difference between the glass shot and the matte shot is that with a glass shot, all filming is done with a single exposure of film.^[1]

Dawn combined his experience with the glass shot with the techniques of the matte shot. Up until this time, the matte shot was essentially a double-exposure: a section of the camera's field would be blocked with a piece of cardboard to block the exposure, the film would be rewound, and the blocked part would also be shot in live action. Dawn instead used pieces of glass with sections painted black (which was more effective at absorbing light than cardboard), and transferred the film to a second, stationary camera rather than merely rewinding the film. The matte painting was then drawn to exactly match the proportion and perspective to the live action shot. The low cost and high quality of Dawn's matte shot made it the mainstay in special effects cinema throughout the century. ^[2]

Australia

Dawn worked in Australia for a number of years, directing a big-budget adaptation of the classic novel For the Term of His Natural Life (1927), and a musical, Showgirl's Luck (1931).

Filmography

A partial list of Dawn's films may be found at the Internet Movie Database. Here are some additional films not mentioned at IMDB:

• Missions of California: 1907
• Gypsy Love: 1910
• Women of Toba: 1910
• Story of the Andes: 1911
• Ghost of Thunder Mountain: 1912
• Man of the West: 1912
• The Drifter: 1913
• Two Men of Tinted Butte: 1914
• Oriental Love: 1916
• The Girl in the Dark: 1917
• Sinbad the Sailor: 1917
• The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin: 1917
• Danger, Go Slow: 1918
• For the Term of His Natural Life): 1927
• Showgirl's Luck (1931)
• Orphans of the North (1940)

There is a Norman O. Dawn collection in the Ransom Collection of the University of Texas, Austin.

'*'According with the book Special Effects: The History and Technique (RICKITT, Richard Ed. Watson-Guptill Publications, [s.l], 2000), page 190, Norman O. Dawn was born in a Bolivian Railroad Camp. Bolivia not Argentina.

External links

• Norman Dawn at the Internet Movie Database

References

1. ^ Fry & Fourzon The Saga of Special Effects, pp. 22
2. ^ Fry & Fourzon The Saga of Special Effects, pp. 22-23

Persondata
Name	Dawn, Norman O.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	25 May 1884
Place of birth
Date of death	2 February 1975
Place of death