Today, we look at the first movie to use Computer-generated imagery.
In “When We First Met”, we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of pop culture lore, like the first time that JJ said “Dy-no-MITE” or the first time that Fonzie made the jukebox at Arnold’s turn on and off by hitting it.
Nowadays, computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a huge part of movies. James Cameron famously created a whole other planet in Avatar with CGI!
However, what was the FIRST use of CGI in a major motion picture (so not a short film or an experimental film or a cartoon or whatever)?
As it turns out, it was the original film version of Westworld. Yul Brynner plays an android in the 1973 film and at one point, we see people from his robotic perspective and it is done through CGI…
https://youtu.be/zRYZA1fo5ik?t=145
Michael Crichton wrote and directed the film. New Yorker did a spotlight on the historic event in 2013:
Crichton got a quote for generating the computer imagery from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He was told that the two minutes of footage would cost two hundred thousand dollars and require nine months—both prohibitive. He turned to a maker of abstract films, John Whitney, Sr., famed in art and film circles for his work creating animation with military-surplus analog electronics and motor assemblies. Whitney referred Crichton to his son, John Whitney, Jr., who was eager to follow in his father’s footsteps as an experimental filmmaker, but using computers. He agreed to do the effects in four months for twenty thousand dollars.
Whitney explained how the effect was done:
Whitney proposed the simpler effect that ultimately appeared in the film, dividing each image into small squares and calculating the average color in each area. In essence, the effect turned a high-resolution film image into a blocky low-resolution one. Still, he wasn’t certain how to get it done. “I was playing a confidence game,” said Whitney, now sixty-seven.
Machines that could scan film into a computer or record computer images onto film were rare. Whitney knew of a Los Angeles-based company, Information International, Inc., that made such equipment. He struck a deal in which the company supplied a programmer and access to a scanner and recorder. From there, it was trial and error; he spent two months creating test footage and projecting it onto theatre screens to determine the best contrast and resolution for the pixelated effect, and to figure out what kind of raw footage would be easiest to understand once it was pixelated. In the process, he also learned that the digitally created colored areas needed to start as rectangles so they would appear square when projected in Panavision.
Based on Whitney’s test results, the shots of the gunslinger’s point of view—the footage destined for computer processing—were filmed in an idiosyncratic manner. To insure that audiences could make out the hunted character at low resolution, the actor on the run wore solid white to stand out in a dark interior: white costume, white shoes, white gloves, white makeup, white hair. For shots on horseback, his stunt double was red from head to toe, to stand out against the sky.
Because Whitney didn’t have a color scanner, the workload was tripled: M.G.M.’s optical department made color separations of the film—one set of black-and-white footage for each of the three primary colors—that he needed to process separately, image by image. The computer processing itself took about eight hours per ten-second sequence. “What made it hard was that it took a lot of computing power just to do a single frame,” said Brent Sellstrom, who supervised Whitney’s work and the film’s other effects.
All for less than two minutes of film!
Thanks to David A. Price for the excellent New Yorker article.
If anyone else has a suggestion for a future When We First Met, drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
This was such a fascinating read! I love these deep dives into pop culture firsts, and the reveal about *Westworld* using CGI back in 1973 is genuinely surprising. It’s wild to think about how groundbreaking that must have been, especially considering the cost and time involved that you mentioned from the New Yorker article. We take so much of modern movie magic for granted now, don’t we? It makes you appreciate how far technology has come and how integral things like advanced calculations are to visual effects today, just like how important a good ba 2 plus calculator is for finance students. Thanks for sharing this awesome piece of film history!
This is such a fantastic dive into pop culture history! I genuinely had no idea that *Westworld* was the first movie to use CGI. It’s wild to think how far the technology has come since 1973, especially when you compare it to something like *Avatar*. Brian’s “When We First Met” series is always so enlightening, and this particular piece really highlights how innovations start small before becoming massive parts of our cinematic experience. I love these kinds of tidbits, they make for great conversation starters. Keep up the great work, Block Poster!
This was such a fascinating read! I absolutely love these deep dives into pop culture “firsts.” It’s incredible to think that *Westworld* was the pioneer for CGI, especially considering how basic that technology must have been back in 1973. Brian’s article really highlights how far we’ve come since then, from those early robotic perspectives to the incredibly immersive worlds of today, which, just like calculating space with a square feet calculator, shows how foundational concepts can evolve into complex applications. It’s mind-boggling to imagine the cost and time involved for just two minutes of footage back then! Thanks for sharing this awesome piece of film history.
This was such a fascinating read! I always love learning about the origins of modern filmmaking techniques, and I honestly had no idea *Westworld* was the pioneer for CGI. It’s incredible to think how far the technology has come since 1973, especially considering the cost and time involved back then. From two minutes costing $200,000 to entire worlds being created in *Avatar*, the progression is mind-blowing. It really makes you appreciate the groundwork laid by those early innovators. For anyone interested in the technical side of visuals, I found a cool tool, an AI Image to Line Converter, that shows how digital images can be broken down. It’s amazing to see the connection between these early CGI experiments and today’s digital art.
This was such a fascinating read! I love these deep dives into pop culture firsts, and the reveal about *Westworld* using the first CGI in a major motion picture genuinely surprised me. It’s incredible to think about how groundbreaking that must have been in 1973, especially considering the cost and time involved that Crichton faced. Now, CGI is so ubiquitous that we often take it for granted. It makes me wonder about the next big leap in visual effects, perhaps something that could even create an entire animated feature just from text prompts, almost like an Al Cartoon Video Generator for movies. Thanks for sharing this awesome piece of film history!
This was such an interesting read! I’ve always been fascinated by the evolution of special effects, and it’s amazing to think about how groundbreaking *Westworld* must have been with its CGI in 1973. It’s easy to take today’s incredible visual effects for granted, especially with films like *Avatar*, but this post really puts things into perspective. That clip from *Westworld* is fantastic – seeing that robotic perspective was truly ahead of its time. It just shows how early innovations, even subtle ones, paved the way for everything we see now. It makes you wonder how pioneers like John Whitney Sr. would approach something like splitting an image for a large display today, almost like using an Image Splitter for a huge cinematic project. Thanks for sharing this piece of pop culture history!
This was such a fascinating read! I love these “firsts” spotlights, and the revelation about *Westworld* using CGI in 1973 is absolutely mind-blowing. It really puts into perspective how far technology has come, especially when you think about the immense scale of CGI in modern films like *Avatar*. It’s incredible to imagine how groundbreaking that robotic perspective shot must have felt at the time, even with the high cost and long production time. This article definitely made me appreciate the early pioneers of film technology even more, and it makes me wonder what other hidden gems of innovation are out there. Thinking about how images are created and altered makes me curious about tools like Merge Image and how they compare to those early, painstaking processes. Thanks for sharing this piece of cinematic history!