While Peter Ellenshaw is undoubtedly one of the greatest film craftsmen of his type in the world, a link to the Old Hollywood's involvement with moguls, image and product, he's also living proof of an older industry adage – if you're good at what you do and stick with it, people will eventually recognize you for it. Ellenshaw is fortunate enough to have that axiom working for him, and to have hit the top of a small filmic plateau – the emergence of the film technician as superstar. It used to be that an effects man's recognition either came after retirement or, to take Willis O'Brien as a prime example, death. But not any more, for young men like Doug Trumbull and John Dykstra have cracked the dam wide open Big-budget eflectsfilms like STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and STAR TREK have taken the technicians and engineers out of the back rooms and into the limelight. Now with THE BLACK HOLE, the wheel has spun again, and the croupier, pit boss and manager of the club is Peter Ellenshaw.
Waiting in the Coral Room (the private dining area on the Disney lot), sitting by its northeast comer – at Walt's old table – and preparing for Ellenshaw's appearance, a quick mental revision of his career reminds me how inextricably his work has been tied up with the Disney Legend Films like TREASURE ISLAND; 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; DAVY CROCKETT, KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER; THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE; WESTWARD H0 THE WACONS; OLD YELLER; DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE; THE SIGN OF ZORRO; THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR and MARY POPPINS – any one of these were a touchstone to the fantasy life of a whole post-War generation, and Ellenshaw contributed to all of them. Beginning his career as a matte painter (that incredible view down the throat of the extinct volcano at the end of 20,000 LEAGUES is all a matte), Ellenshaw branched out into special affects work on DARBY O'GILL and THE ABSENTMINDED PROFESSOR. The culmination of his career and experience comes with his latest credits as Production Designer and Creator and Supervisor of Minature Effects for THE BLACK HOLE. Latest, and last. For if he's to be believed, THE BLACK HOLE will be Ellenshaw's final film.
In addition to his film career, Ellenshaw is also internationally known as a landscape painter, producing works whose details are almost photographically accurate. He recently held his seventh exhibition at the prestigious Hammersmith Galleries in New York, where his paintings continue to sell for as much as $25,000 apiece (Gary Nelson, THE BLACK HOLE's director, bought an Ellenshaw landscape of St. Finian's Bay in Ireland as a present for his wife). Ellenshaw was also recently honored by an American Film Institute restrospective and an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art which featured his paintings, films and a scale model of the Cygnus.
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