In the 1970s, many filmmakers loosely associated with West Coast experimental film and the Expanded Cinema movement put their talents to work in various aspects of the special effects industry.  These include such well known artists as Pat O’Neill, John and James Whitney and Jordon Belson; and less known but important figures such as Adam Beckett, Rob Blalack, Betzy Bromberg, Chris Casady, Larry Cuba, and Peter Kuran.  Many of them founded or freelanced for independent optical, title and effects houses as well as on feature film projects and ads.  In fact, much of the optical line on Star Wars (1977) taught or were recent graduates of Cal Arts, trained primarily in cutting edge optical printing techniques by artists such as O’Neill and Beckett.  Further, as interviews with artists testify, experimental artists’ relationship with the industry cannot be characterized simply as one of exploitation and appropriation.  Rather, over and over many artists claim their day job provided inspiration for their own work.

Moreover, experimental filmmaking has an influence on popular filmmaking that goes well beyond an account of labor in the film industry.  I argue that in the 1970s, West Coast experimental filmmakers, both directly as labor and indirectly as inspiration, taught popular filmmakers like George Lucas strategies to rethink the representation of impossible worlds, the illusion of movement, and plays with immersion.  These techniques were adapted for a photorealist mise en scene and fantasy diegesis.  The 1970s Star Wars aesthetic of diegetic world building, in part pioneered by abstract experimental West Coast filmmaking, has persisted to become dominant in contemporary, digital CGI filmmaking, not to mention other areas of visual culture like video gaming and installation and video art. 

Julie Turnock is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, in the College of Media.  She is the author of Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Art and Technology in 1970s US Filmmaking, under contract with the University of California Press, which argues that the intensification of special effects practice in the late 1970s initiated a technological, aesthetic, and narrative upheaval in filmmaking as significant as the introduction of sound in the late 1920s.  She has published on special effects in Popping Culture (2010), and New Review of Film and Television Studies.  Additionally, Julie has research, writing, and teaching interests in silent film, spectacle, experimental film, melodrama, and animation, among others.