For 22 years the studio produced millions of feet of classified film and thousands of stills for the military.
Beginning with the first nuclear test in 1945, there was a need to capture the testing with still and moving pictures to help enhance the understanding knowledge of the behaviour of nuclear weapons.
Some of the best talent in the film industry were recruited to work at the studio to film the nuclear blasts.
According to Sotheby’s, the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station on Wonderland Avenue, LA, was built in 1941 as the main WW11 air defence and radar communications headquarters on the west coast.
The base, just five minutes drive from the Sunset Strip, was used as an Air Force film studio between 1947 and 1969 and made 20,000 movies - more than the whole of Hollywood.
Films of the nuclear tests at Nevada were processed here under the tightest security controls and high-ranking military officials would come to view the footage. It was not until the 1990s that the existence of the military base was revealed to the public.
The building was converted to a spacious residential property and is now back on the market. At the height of its use by the Air Force, the compound had soundstages, screening rooms and film processing labs just like any other Hollywood film studio.
Over 250 people, including civilians seconded from Warner Brothers, worked as cameramen, producers and directors at the military facility.
Each one cleared to access top secret and restricted data and sworn to secrecy regarding the activities at the studio.
For 22 years the studio produced millions of feet of classified film and thousands of stills for the military.
Beginning with the first nuclear test in 1945, there was a need to capture the testing with still and moving pictures to help enhance the understanding knowledge of the behaviour of nuclear weapons.
Some of the best talent in the film industry were recruited to work at the studio to film the nuclear blasts.
Staff used specially constructed bunkers in the test area to house remotely-controlled cameras, and took to the skies in planes directly behind the bombers.
Only a few dozen of the films made at Lookout Mountain have been declassified.
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1PBwC0r7F _____________________________________ The write-up seems a bit garbled to me - bunkers to house cameras? Anyway, interesting its final date is given as 1969. Maybe activities shifted after the moon landing frauds?
Inserted 11 Sept 2015 - Rerev.
BELOW is a youtube from Periscope Films; claiming activity from 1947-1969. I've copied their blurb to this film, below, without comment; obviously much of the material had fakery. That video was put onto Youtube while the nukelies site was live.
LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AIR FORCE STATION - Atomic Bomb Movie Studio for the US Air Force in Hollywood 3358
Published on 17 Nov 2012
Created by the Air Force to promote the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station, this rare film shows some of the "nuclear filmmakers" of the USAF. The Lookout Mountain Air Force Station (LMAFS) was located on Wonderland Avenue, Los Angeles, California. It provided in-service production of classified motion picture and still photographs to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission from 1947-1969. The 100,000-square-foot (10,000 m2) facility was built on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land and was originally built in 1941 as a World War II air defense center to coordinate radar installations. The studio was established in 1947 and its purpose kept secret. The studio consisted of a complete stage, 2 screening rooms, a helicopter landing pad, a bomb shelter and 17 climate controlled film vaults as well as two underground parking garages. With the latest equipment the studio could process both 35 mm and 16 mm motion pictures as well as optical prints and still photographs. The nuclear tests at Nevada Test Site were filmed in various formats including CinemaScope, stereophonic sound, VistaVision and 3-D photography. Today Lookout Mountain is a private home.
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD.
Looking at the building from this angle, it looks like an industrial building, like an airplane hanger or factory building. It looks like a truss roof, with probably no support columns or partitions. Some trusses are visible in the interior views. The pictures of the interior, with the bath and art gallery, are after partitions were added, I would say.
I looked at these pictures with the hope of spotting something familiar from some of the films, like from Trinity and Beyond where they wheeled out the bombs from a building. The buildings at Tinian were quonset huts; the buildings in the films are square, like this building. But I can't spot anything exactly.
Once surrounded by an electrified security fence, the 100,000-square-foot facility on two and a half acres was originally built in 1941 as a World War II air defense center that coordinated radar installations on nearby mountaintops.
Why such a big building just for that? I have a feeling they were making films there from 1941, not just from 1947.
Lookout Mountain AFS was the only self-contained film studio in Hollywood. Staffed by both military and civilian personnel recruited from nearby motion picture studios such as Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Brothers Studio, and RKO Pictures,
Many of these films are classified, but atmospheric test films that are declassified may be viewed at https://www.nv.doe.gov
Low resolution, but it looks to me like the men are standing in front of a screen, upon which is projected a mushroom cloud. I can't just exactly explain why I think this, but I do. Maybe this picture is around someplace else in better resolution?
Some interesting pictures here, which appear to be inside of Lookout Mount. Studio, during the time it was in use.
In this picture, there is a automobile and a step van. Plenty of open room to do the image of the photographers with the jeep, above, inside this studio.
INCONSISTENCIES WITH BACK PROJECTION Note that feature films of the inside of moving cars have long been a fertile field for discussion of back projection. These days, green screens are used - the digital processing simply substitutes alternative pixels for a specified range of green, cyan, blue or whatever.
I'll try to list the problems. I'll find examples too and add them when I relocate them. [1] Focus. It's natural for camera operators to get the sharpest focus possible, and of course to be aware of depth of field - generally, the closer to the lens the smaller the depth of field; and also the dimmer the object, the more the aperture has to be enlarged, so that also reduces depth of field. With small models these effects are large, which is why realistic models were difficult before digital processing: model e.g. houses tend to look clumsy, as though built with giant equipment. For consistency, the back projected focus and depth-of-field must match that of the foreground objects. Back projection by film was likely to be less sharp because of the double photography involved. This is OK with shots inside cars; it's not so good with remote objects, which look suspiciously blurred. [2] Lighting. Obviously the direction of light, or, indoors, lights, must match in both the projected film and the close-up. So must the intensity of light - clear sun produces sharp shadows, cloudy dull sky produces no shadows - instead buildings, trees etc give shadows. Also the hazing effect due to distance must match. With colour film there are colour temperature matching hassles lying in wait. [3] Directional sense of the shots. This can be harder to pin down. But for example there's a film of a supposed 'atomic cannon' online, with the artillery piece at the right of the frame, facing left about 45 degrees. As with any perspective effect, looking along the barrel gives the vanishing-point of a shell fired by such a gun. In the example I have in mind, the explosion is impossibly within the frame, and evidently must have been faked. (The elevation of the barrel and its angle need to be separated out). Another type of example: shots where the horizon intrudes, which of course is very often. A large number of supposed nuke shots try to show a 'mushroom cloud' in clear view, but generally this is only possible if it's high up - almost all ground anywhere has contours which make views of ground-level events invisible. [4] Scale of the composite parts. Must match. There's a spectacular example online (if it hasn't been withdrawn) - a NASA shot supposedly from the moon, showing venus as a clearly-visible crescent. Since the moon-to-Venus distance is near-identical to the Earth-to-Venus distance, the shot would have needed a powerful telescope, which clearly wasn't possible. So it's a fake composite shot. In fact I even doubt the crescent was genuine, as it lacked the fuzziness of Venus's cloud clover. [5] Action and postures and positioning must match. If people are supposed to be witnessing something terrifying and awe-inspiring, they ought to look terrified, awe-inspired, or unprepared. They ought to look in the right direction - there's a video (see my 'goggles' Youtube) where men look out of windows on the opposite sides of a plane, to supposedly look at one blast! They mustn't look directed - there's a fake 'Holocaust' film online which includes a bit-part by the director, stepping out of the frame after coaching the actor! They must be consistent - one of my Youtubes shows a man supposedly wearing atom-bomb flashproof goggles, looking through a viewfinder!
There are of course plenty of other problems, for example speed-of-sound problems, superimposing clouds to give an outdoor effect - an 'H bomb' film has these clouds remaining intact even though a blast was supposed to take place - and trying to get water-splash events looking right - The Dam Busters has a highly unreal-looking scene where the dams are meant to be breached. And of course there's a lot of scope for disagreement, as the raging arguments over NASA's fake moon landing pictures shows.
Here's a higher resolution picture of the photographers:
There's something unnatural about the lighting on the jeep.
Also, I have seen Warner Brothers cartoons where they put silhouettes of real looking people over top of cartoons. (There's been whole movies of real actors with cartoon animation, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)
Open the picture of the photographers in an image editor. Blow it up. Notice the graininess of the sky, cloud. Compare it with the graininess of the jeep. There is very little graininess on the jeep, but a good bit on the sky. The graininess is limited to the background, and isn't on the photographers, their equipment or the jeep.
Look at the weed that appears to be almost underneath the tripod to the right. It's grainy and a little fuzzy, but the tripod is sharp. Also, notice the tripod is dark, but the weed isn't.
Their shoes disappear into the darkness.
The highlight on the jeep's hood looks like it is made by three light sources. There's also a bright spot, which might be a reflection from the side view mirror. The highlight on the jeep's door jam looks completely out of place.
Probably it was a simple double exposure, with the 'mushroom cloud' picture projected onto photographic paper first, then the very dark figures projected second. Probably with 'dodging' - i.e. card or something with a hole in, moved around during the exposure, to dim and blur the edges. If you examine the few lighter parts of the figures, you'll probably detect the landscape and horizon just visible through them. The very dark figures would blot out most of the landscape, but they couldn't make the whole thing a complete silhouette.
OK... 6. Images must be internally consistent, and also series/movie consistent. To cover assorted anomalies: as you acutely noticed, graininess has to be consistent. (Fast silver halide films had bigger grains, so the developer would cause each light-induced speck of silver to develop a larger grain - hence photos in dim light were grainy. Slower films had better resolution). One photo would be taken with one type of emulsion. Early colour films had three separate colour filters, so the resolution was less good than black/white. They also tended to fade. With digital photographs now, there is a potential problem (as in Obama's 'birth certificate') where edges, which ought, when enlarged, to show graded pixels from an edge to where it vanishes, were crudely done - all the identical colour. It's easy to change contrast by computer, and it may be possible (as with quite a few NASA 'moon' fakes) to show where black areas were inserted, to hide lights etc. Some NASA photos (there's a good example - double-page spread of supposed moon site) have cut-and-paste areas easily identifiable just by eye. Computer bulk colour changes - e.g. NASA sky-blue logo to brown - can leave mistakes behind. There may be edge effects where pixels which ought to have been changed slipped through the net.
Also there are potential clues in photo series: the same people may recur, carelessly reused by the faker. Some 'Holocaust' fake photos are like this, with the same cut-and-paste bodies reused. Or there may be different versions of the same photo released carelessly: e.g. there's an Auschwitz photo, but also the identical photo with faked smoke in the sky. I found a NASA picture in a 1969 National Geographic, and checked the identical picture on their online site - it has a tell-tale cross-hair moved!
[7] Watch for the 'ghost photographer' effect for want of a better word. There are NASA films supposedly showing a space thing going round the moon - and yet who could have taken such a photo? Most people don't think of this issue, since they're accustomed to seeing photos and films of assorted fantastic events. Another example is described by David Percy, in Dark Moon (which I don't really recommend - the Mars stuff is too unlikely). His example involved the Titanic - people in evening clothes were filmed splashing about in the Serpentine, a river in a London Park, and the film made into a newsreel. Most people probably accepted it as genuine.
Wow! This is about the biggest find yet! Imagine if we could find and interview somebody who worked there... We could start by finding out who worked close to Kubrick. There might be links with people who worked on the moon hoax. Must be info on some of those somewhere.
Watching credits roll, I noticed that Star Wars Episode 6 - the Return of the Jedi (1983) credits Lookout Mountain, though without saying what was used. Maybe some aficionado of 'Star Wars' could supply some information?
This was just before the lists of about 50 'Ewoks', then 'Stunt Artists' and 'Mime Performers', and after a long list of camera, effects, and model etc people.
Lookout Mountain is listed with Pacific Title, Monaco Film Labs, California Film, Visual Concepts Engineering, Movie Magic, and Ven der Veer Photo Effects.
by FirstClassSkeptic » 13 Jun 2011 21:07 
