Hey Guys,

My friend, Randy Lusk, who lives in Oklahoma City ( I'm in Salt Lake City ) has recently posted some Super 8 Film footage to his website that we shot some 31 years ago. I thought you fellas might get a kick out of seeing it. It isn't the complete footage, just the segment where I, as Count Dracula, transform myself into a bat!

Some folks have had trouble with the link, so here's a few things to keep in mind: It's in avi format so it'll take a little while to load if you're on dial-up.

You can also right-click on the picture of Dracula and select "Save Target as" and save it to your system -- you can then open it up using your preferred media viewer or just click on the saved file and your default media player should open up and play it automatically.

Here's the link:
Dracula Bat Sequence (http://www.aopro.com/funstuff/index.htm)

Your comments are appreciated.
Thanx!

- GJS

That's way cool! How did you do that effect on Super-8 film back in 1975? Hand-drawn animation? Rotoscoping? Supernatural powers?

Effects? What effects. He really turned into a bat of course. He IS the Batman. :thumbsup:

Oh, BTW, very cool. Like the musical selection too.

Thanx for the compliments guys!

It was Hand Drawn Animation, Scotpens. We acheived that effect by Randy taking a series of still photographs of me gradually raising my cape and printed up as 8X10's. I and the protagonist, Byrne Perkins, with his make-shift cross held the same position in each photo, except that my arms were raised a bit for each shot. The final shot was of Byrne standing there alone without me in the picture.
Then, over that last photo, I painted a series of clear animation cells of my body gradually morphing into a bat. When that was completed, we, Randy and I, re-shot each of those photos on the movie camera one frame at a time.

We were pretty happy with the results but were still brain-storming about ways we thought we could improve it. Still, whenever we showed the footage to our friends we never warned them about what was coming and it really took them by surprise! They were pretty astounded! That let us know that we were on the right track, at least.

Unfortunately, we never got around to making the actual movie we had in mind. The closest we came was a spoof which we titled: OMAR THE VAMPAR. We paid homage to a lot of the scenes in Universal's DRACULA in that film but, it was shot in color not in B&W.

Thanx again for the comments!

- GJS

Very cool! You've outdone many of the early Hollywood FX artists with that one!

Pretty neat , pretty neat !!! :thumbsup:

Very creative. The scene reminds me of Dracula turning into a bat in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. They used hand-drawn animation, too.

- JJ

Very cool!!

Awesome, for a fan film. Makes me want to see more.

Awesome, for a fan film. Makes me want to see more.

Yeah.....me too!!! Finish it so us fans can see the fantastic conclusion!!!

Excellent Dracula outfit.

Great job!!!