What You Didn't Know About The Tornado In The Wizard Of Oz
Who isn't familiar with the erstwhile classic, The Wizard of Oz? The much-loved film with its legendary characters, classic storyline, and unmatched legacy has remained a solid favorite for many over the years. The movie was admired for many reasons including introducing its audiences to the wonders of technicolor in all its glory on the big screen.
Whatever you could imagine or think of probably happened in the film –- from murder to monkeys flying around on the screen and more. One of the most iconic scenes in the movie involves a crazy tornado but many don't know the details behind the making of this legendary moment. Let's just say it involved a bunch of things including being innovative and learning the basics about tornadoes while the team tried to recreate the effects of one on set. To say the least, it wasn't an easy task and needed a lot of ingenuity and patience.
The story of the Wizard of Oz's tornado is more complicated than you think
As per a piece by The Wichita Eagle, because the team had nothing to rely on except their creativity as they scrambled to make things work without modern special effects, they spent some time trying to figure out how to make it look like the tornado was unleashing its wrath over the Kansas prairie. The challenge was to make things real for the audiences. Buddy Gillespie was asked to be the head technician for The Wizard of Oz, who had to somehow come up with a realistic tornado.
To make things trickier, he didn't know anything about tornadoes and had to experiment. His first shot at the experiment was expensive and cost a huge amount of money: $8,000, to be precise. Unfortunately, that attempt didn't make it to the final film when the team realized that it wasn't remotely close to what they were looking for. After that, Gillespie came up with a different plan and somehow got things right with a silk stocking that he held before a fan to create the special effect. And the rest, as they say, is history.