Why The Snow In Its A Wonderful Life Looks So Fake

Why The Snow In It’s A Wonderful Life Looks So Fake

It’s a Wonderful Life is a holiday classic, but its fake snow fails to hold up. A production innovation created the movie’s problematic snow.

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Why The Snow In Its A Wonderful Life Looks So Fake

It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas classic, but not every part of the production quality holds up from 1947, such as its obvious fake snow. After almost 75 years, George Bailey’s wake-up call about the importance of his own life still resonates with viewers. Director Frank Capra put his usual stellar effort into the box office failure turned holiday hallmark, including pioneering a new form of fake snow for the movie. Unfortunately, the untested creation caused a few problems while solving others, giving It’s a Wonderful Life a few shots of terrible fake snow. Story-wise the movie has withstood the test of time, but visually the classic film does fluctuate between holding up and looking very dated.

Frank Capra’s enduring films did not usually rely on special effects, but the fake snow became necessary when he filmed a Christmas movie in the middle of the summer. However, the old form of artificial snow created a number of complications in production, so RKO’s head of special effects created a new innovation to make Capra’s filming experience easier. This allowed him to turn the studio lot in summer into Bedford Falls on Christmas Eve. The result was spectacular through most of the movie, helping establish It’s a Wonderful Life as the ultimate classic Christmas movie, but it also failed them in certain scenes.

Prior to this movie and RKO’s new special effects invention, fake snow was made of cornflakes painted white. It didn’t look much like snow under close inspection, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that, as one would expect with cornflakes, they made a loud crunching sound when anyone stepped on them. Tromping through Bedford Falls’ snow-covered streets would have been a cacophony of cornflakes, and movies that used this method often had to re-dub the dialogue after filming because the snow sound took over the scene. To avoid having to record all the audio again, Capra needed a quieter fake snow. Despite that, It’s a Wonderful Life is an old enough Christmas movie that cornflakes were still a mainstay of film production.

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The new snow looked and sounded much better than the alternative. It was made of foamite, sugar, water, and soap flakes and could be sprayed over the set pieces. The material was a great facsimile when on the ground and falling from the sky, but when it was exposed to water, the illusion fell apart. When George and Clarence jump off the bridge into the river, the snow falling on them clumped and stuck to them instead of melting, revealing it as obviously not snow. It may still have looked better than cornflakes, but it was not an innovation that worked for every scene. The making of It’s a Wonderful Life was full of ups and downs, and the artificial snow was both.

It’s a Wonderful Life was ahead of its time in production quality, remaining a beautiful example of filmmaking even when the effects fail. Although Capra got an unfortunate surprise about his new snow’s exposure to water, the rest of the film is so captivating that the lapse hardly mattered for the aesthetic of the film. Frank Capra made sure moviegoers’ focus would be on the momentous decisions George and Clarence make at the bridge, not the shoddy winter facsimile. No matter how special effects failed it, It’s a Wonderful Life is a classic for a reason.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/wonder-life-fake-snow-explained-river/

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