Petro Vlahos ( gr, Πέτρος Βλάχος; August 20, 1916 – February 10, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, considered to be one of the pioneering scientific and technical innovators of the motion picture and television industries. He is remembered in particular for creating the Ultimatte process, which refined the colour process known as

chroma keying Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...

(i.e. "bluescreening"). In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded multiple

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, as well as an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

Early life

Vlahos was born in

Raton, New Mexico Raton ( ) is a city and the county seat of Colfax County, New Mexico, Colfax County in northeastern New Mexico. The city is located just south of Raton Pass. The city is also located about 6.5 miles south of the New Mexico–Colorado border and 85 ...

, the son of Greek immigrants. He showed an early aptitude for electronics and ham radio, and in 1941, he gained his Engineering degree from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. He worked as a designer for

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World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and later as a radar engineer at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. After the war, he moved to Hollywood and worked for

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...

Hollywood career

The technology used today as a way of combining actors with background footage still derives from the techniques he developed. Vlahos was not the first to use the blue-screen technology — it was invented by Larry Butler for the 1940 filming of ''The Thief of Bagdad'' — but he made the process much more realistic and scientific. He created a system called the

sodium vapor process The sodium vapor process (occasionally referred to as yellowscreen) is a photochemical film technique for combining actors and background footage. It originated in the British film industry in the late 1950s and was used extensively by Walt Disne ...

first for ''The Parent Trap'' and ''

The Absent-Minded Professor ''The Absent-Minded Professor'' is a 1961 American science fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the short story "A Situation of Gravity" by Samuel W. Taylor, originally published in the May 22, 1943 issue of ''Li ...

'' and later the

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musical ''Mary Poppins'' (1964) which would win him an academy award. For the film Ben Hur he refined the color-difference bluescreen process that made memorable visual effects possible in films and developed a way to minimize the unfortunate side effects of earlier methods. Vlahos' breakthrough was to create a complicated laboratory process which involved separating the blue, green and red parts of each frame before combining them back together in a certain order. He moved the process along and introduced the use of

motion control Motion control is a sub-field of automation, encompassing the systems or sub-systems involved in moving parts of machines in a controlled manner. Motion control systems are extensively used in a variety of fields for automation purposes, includi ...

cameras during bluescreen work. He called his cutting-edge invention the ''colour-difference

travelling matte Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (e.g. actors on a set) with a background image (e.g. a scenic ...

scheme''.

Along with his son, Paul Vlahos, he founded the Ultimatte Corporation in Chatsworth,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, in 1976. His company's first Ultimatte units were analog "black boxes" which later evolved into advanced, real-time

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and

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products. When sci-fi and fantasy films became dominant at the box office, Vlahos’ techniques became dominant in filmmaking, essential to movies such as the ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

'' trilogy. Refinements of his pioneering technique were used to make many of the blockbuster films of the 1990s, notably ''Titanic'' (1997), in which dangerous, expensive or difficult to film scenes were finally possible. In all, Petro Vlahos held more than 35 patents for film-related gadgetry.

Accolades

A member of the Academy’s original Motion Picture Research Council, he was honored by the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...

many times, starting with a Scientific and Technical Award in 1960 for a camera flicker indicating device. He won his first

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology) ...

in 1964 for the "conception and perfection of techniques for color traveling matte composite cinematography." In 1978, Petro won an

for Ultimatte Compositing Technology. The

gave him a Medal of Commendation in 1992. In 1993 he was the recipient of the

Gordon E. Sawyer Award The Gordon E. Sawyer Award is an Honorary Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to "an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry." The award is named in ...

, his second Oscar. In 1995, he shared a third Oscar (

Academy Scientific and Technical Award The Scientific and Technical Awards are three different Honorary Awards that are given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) during the annual Academy Awards season. The Awards have been presented since the 4th Academy Awards ...

) with his son, Paul, for the blue-screen advances made by Ultimatte Corporation.

References

External links

Video interview with Petro Vlahos in 2009
from Createasphere Pro Coalitions {{DEFAULTSORT:Vlahos, Petro 1916 births 2013 deaths Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners American people of Greek descent Cinema pioneers Primetime Emmy Engineering Award winners Film and video technology Recipients of the Gordon E. Sawyer Award Recipients of the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni People from Raton, New Mexico Recipients of the Scientific and Technical Academy Award of Merit