Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Petro Vlahos Dies

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Posted by Tim Asten (Member # 4051) on 02-14-2013, 05:49 PM:

The Blue & Green Screen effects pioneer has died aged 96...A true innovator. Hollywood Reporter article

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 02-14-2013, 06:33 PM:

Wasn't he the guy behind the Motion picture research council? (70mm and 35mm test charts.) Louis

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 02-14-2013, 08:52 PM:

I believe Mr Vlahos was also the inventor of the "ultamatte"
blue-screen TV system in the late 70's or early 80's. I recall
the production studio I was working for at the time installing
one. It was the first TV-blue-screen system that could handle
fine detail like hair, and semi-transparent items like a water
pitcher. It could also generate a slight 'shadow' so that
whatever was "keyed" over a background looked much more
realistic and didn't have that "pasted into the picture" look.
It was a quantum leap above all other elctronic compositing
systems avalable at that time. I think he got an award for it.

I also recall seeing a patent for multi channel optical sound
system he worked on some time in the 70's which used color
separation of the R-G-B layers of color film to provide the
different channels. (Just looked it up- - It's patent number
US3969593- "Sound Recording On Color Film By Hue Modulation")

In fact, if you do a patent search under Mr Vlahos's name,
you'll see that he had dozens of patents in a wide area of
film & television production technogies.

A truly talented man!