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Dec 17, 2008
Doc Terminus
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The Ellenshaw Museum: The Third Man on the Mountain (1959)

I hate to be a follower, but in this case I can’t help it.  So many of us have returned from a week in Walt Disney World attending Mousefest, and now everyone sits down to write the same sort of article.  So, I too will now present the obligatory post-Mousefest Peter Ellenshaw post…

Walt Disney was always intrigued by the Matterhorn.  And not always the one with tobaggon sleds designed to challenge even the sturdiest of spines…  So, it was only natural that the mountain would play a major role in a film about climbing.  Of course, scaling a mountain is dangerous work,and to alleviate the risk – and keep the costs manageable, many of the mountain climbing scenes were created using optical effects.

Again, Walt turned to Peter Ellenshaw who, using his matte painting technique, filled in the film frame composition with material lacking in the original.  He created mountain ranges and snow where there was none and even dangerous chasms where was only a 2 foot drop.

If you’d like to see more exhibits from the Ellenshaw museum, search for “Ellenshaw” in the right menu search engine.

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