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![]() Born New York City, moved to Hollywood 1947, started at Columbia Pictures 1949, worked at Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox, RKO, Disney, Universal. Nominated for Academy Awards on Star Trek the Motion Picture and Terms of Endearment.Widely regarded as "The industry's greatest illustrator," Harold Michelson was born in 1920 in New York City. He served as a bombardier-navigator in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, flying more than 40 missions over Germany. After the war, Harold worked as a magazine illustrator while attending the Art Students League of New York before moving on to Los Angeles, where he illustrated movie posters. He ultimately became an illustrator for Columbia Pictures before being traded to Paramount Pictures, where he worked as illustrator and storyboard artist on The Ten Commandments (1956), among other films. He then worked as a storyboard artist on Ben-Hur (1959) for MGM and Spartacus (1960) for Universal Pictures.Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Harold worked as either illustrator or storyboard artist on such classic films as West Side Story (1961), Cleopatra (1963), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Harold would go on to serve as art director on several films, and also began working as production designer with the 1971 Cannes Film Festival Jury Grand Prize-winning film Johnny Got His Gun, all the while continuing his career as an illustrator and storyboard artist.Later in his career, Harold served as the Art Director/Production Designer for several feature films, including Catch-22 (1970), Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), and Dick Tracy (1990). He was nominated for Academy Awards? for his design of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), contributing to the interior and exterior design on the newly refit USS Enterprise. and Terms of Endearment (1983).In 1999 Michelson was honored with the Art Director Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2002, he received the Outstanding Achievement in Production Design award from the Hollywood Film Festival. Harold passed away March 1, 2007 at the age of 87.
Bio:
Born New York City, moved to Hollywood 1947, started at Columbia Pictures 1949, worked at Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox, RKO, Disney, Universal. Nominated for Academy Awards on Star Trek the Motion Picture and Terms of Endearment.
Widely regarded as "The industry's greatest illustrator," Harold Michelson was born in 1920 in New York City. He served as a bombardier-navigator in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, flying more than 40 missions over Germany. After the war, Harold worked as a magazine illustrator while attending the Art Students League of New York before moving on to Los Angeles, where he illustrated movie posters. He ultimately became an illustrator for Columbia Pictures before being traded to Paramount Pictures, where he worked as illustrator and storyboard artist on The Ten Commandments (1956), among other films. He then worked as a storyboard artist on Ben-Hur (1959) for MGM and Spartacus (1960) for Universal Pictures.Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Harold worked as either illustrator or storyboard artist on such classic films as West Side Story (1961), Cleopatra (1963), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Harold would go on to serve as art director on several films, and also began working as production designer with the 1971 Cannes Film Festival Jury Grand Prize-winning film Johnny Got His Gun, all the while continuing his career as an illustrator and storyboard artist.Later in his career, Harold served as the Art Director/Production Designer for several feature films, including Catch-22 (1970), Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), and Dick Tracy (1990). He was nominated for Academy Awards? for his design of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), contributing to the interior and exterior design on the newly refit USS Enterprise. and Terms of Endearment (1983).In 1999 Michelson was honored with the Art Director Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2002, he received the Outstanding Achievement in Production Design award from the Hollywood Film Festival. Harold passed away March 1, 2007 at the age of 87.
Tivia:
Some of his strikingly illustrative storyboards showing Moses parting the Red Sea for the half-century-old production of The Ten Commandments (1956) were featured in a two-page spread in the Summer 2013 issue of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Quarterly.Harold Michelson, during WWII, flew as a member of a B-17 bomber flight crew over Germany on nightly bombing missions. Nazi Germany armament installations were their priority during the nightly bombing raids. More U.S. service men died in the Army Air Corps than the Marine corps while completing the required 30 missions, as airmen's chance of being killed was 71%.From Variety Magazine Film Review: 'Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story': "...the history of storyboard artists' contribution to the movies can be measured, in a sense, by how quasi-underground and off the books they remain. (There is still no Academy Award for storyboarding.) "Harold and Lillian" offers other enticing examples of what Michelson brought to the movies he worked on. He devised much of the visionary doomsday look and aura of Hitchcock's "The Birds," and, startlingly, he designed all the most famous images from "The Graduate": the composition that framed Ben with Mrs. Robinson's stockinged leg, Ben in his scuba mask being pushed back into the swimming pool, and, at the end, the panoramic shot of him holding his arms up like Christ as he bangs against the church window. Those shots went a long way toward defining the movie's artistry, and its extraordinary influence. Yet for Harold Michelson, sitting at his drafting table looking like Norman Rockwell with his pipe, it was all in a day's work. http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/harold-and-lillian-review-1202424762/.Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Art Directors Branch).Michelson was one of the professional Hollywood film cadre teaching at the Chouinard Art School's film program during the early 1960s. Jack Senter taught film and stage set design/drafting. Mentor Huebner taught life drawing. Tad Haworth taught story board/continuity sketching. Harold's class specialized in continuity script story board presentation, and a serious perspective projection layout system for set illustration. This projection system was plotted from a 1/4" set designer's schematic floor plan, pin pointing the camera's floor spotting position, projecting the perspective positions of the floor plan on a horizon line, factoring in the set's elevation wall corners, camera's lens height, to the illustration's horizon line, and then accurately depicting ceiling heights and the scale depth of field within the lens ratio. Conferencing with a director and the director of photography, the plan and plotting for camera determined how much of the set was required to be built, based upon the director's plan for the actor's scene motivation. Harold Michelson's Chouinard Art School's film illustration class was extremely popular, often attended by NYC illustrators making a move to the West Coast, intending on cashing in on studio illustration jobs. Prior to the 1990's computer programs, this perspective projection illustration system was the most accurate drawing tool of the production designer and art director. Presentation set design sketches were the producer's portfolio in raising financing for their film's expenses.Father of Dennis Michelson.Harold Michelson was instrumental in the lay-out of the fore shortened "Irma, la Douce" Parisienne $350,000 "Rue Casanova" street stage set, as designed by the French production designer Alexandre Trauner. Michelson, consulting with Trauner, with Trauner's set designers, scaled the street set's architectural details, as illustrations, for the set designers floor plan, elevation drawings and architectural details. Calculating the plan of the three converging street building facades' false perspective was a major contribution in the sets layout; this was in addition to Michelson's set illustrations and script storyboard analysis illustrations. In Michelson's approach to the 'forced' false perspective analysis, the elevation and plan layouts were back (rear) projected to scales related to actual full scale facades. Harold Michelson's expertise on perspective principles, Michelson's Paris street stage set 'forced' false perspective was built on two stages at the Samuel Goldwyn Film Studio, located in Hollywood. The camera's lens calculated horizon line, positioned as an average height of 5'-6". The set plan was based upon a 'T' floor plan, with the street's forced 'false' perspective at the bottom of the 'T', and at the end tips of the top 'T'. The main center of "Rue Casanova" street set, constructed and designed at standard architectural scale, was positioned at the front center of the Goldwyn studio stage, with the right 'T' tip extending through an inside stage door connecting with the adjacent stage. This side was built with less forced perspective. The bottom part of the 'T' Paris street stage set had the most forced perspective built on the stage. With the floor ramped, raising off the wooden stage floor approximately 2'-6", at the back end of the 'T'. The set's street cobblestone treatment, had the cobblestones size and scale reduced appropriately to the false perspective. Michelson also dictated the heights of street miniature lamp fixtures; atmosphere extras, positioned in the middle of the 'T' rear reduced perspective street set, utilized dwarfs and midgets as background performers. |
| Name: |
Harold Michelson |
Type: |
Art Director,Art Department,Production Designer (IMDB) |
| Area: |
All World |
Platform: |
IMDB |
| Category: |
|
Business scope: |
Art Director,Art Department,Production Designer |
| Products for sale: |
Art Director,Art Department,Production Designer |
| Last update: |
2024-07-03 01:57:02 |
| Height: |
6' (1.83 m) |
| Biography: |
Born New York City, moved to Hollywood 1947, started at Columbia Pictures 1949, worked at Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox, RKO, Disney, Universal. Nominated for Academy Awards on Star Trek the Motion Picture and Terms of Endearment.Wid |
| Trivia: |
Some of his strikingly illustrative storyboards showing Moses parting the Red Sea for the half-century-old production of The Ten Commandments (1956) were featured in a two-page spread in the Summer 2013 issue of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Quarterly.Harold Michelson, during WWII, flew as a member of a B-17 bomber flight crew over Germany on nightly bombing missions. Nazi Germany armament installations were their priority during the nightly bombing raids. More U.S. service men died in the Army Air Corps than the Marine corps while completing the required 30 missions, as airmen's chance of being killed was 71%.From Variety Magazine Film Review: 'Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story': "...the history of storyboard artists' contribution to the movies can be measured, in a sense, by how quasi-underground and off the books they remain. (There is still no Academy Award for storyboarding.) "Harold and Lillian" offers other enticing examples of what Michelson brought to the movies he worked on. He devised much of the visionary doomsday look and aura of Hitchcock's "The Birds," and, startlingly, he designed all the most famous images from "The Graduate": the composition that framed Ben with Mrs. Robinson's stockinged leg, Ben in his scuba mask being pushed back into the swimming pool, and, at the end, the panoramic shot of him holding his arms up like Christ as he bangs against the church window. Those shots went a long way toward defining the movie's artistry, and its extraordinary influence. Yet for Harold Michelson, sitting at his drafting table looking like Norman Rockwell with his pipe, it was all in a day's work. http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/harold-and-lillian-review-1202424762/.Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Art Directors Branch).Michelson was one of the professional Hollywood film cadre teaching at the Chouinard Art School's film program during the early 1960s. Jack Senter taught film and stage set design/drafting. Mentor Huebner taught life drawing. Tad Haworth taught story board/continuity sketching. Harold's class specialized in continuity script story board presentation, and a serious perspective projection layout system for set illustration. This projection system was plotted from a 1/4" set designer's schematic floor plan, pin pointing the camera's floor spotting position, projecting the perspective positions of the floor plan on a horizon line, factoring in the set's elevation wall corners, camera's lens height, to the illustration's horizon line, and then accurately depicting ceiling heights and the scale depth of field within the lens ratio. Conferencing with a director and the director of photography, the plan and plotting for camera determined how much of the set was required to be built, based upon the director's plan for the actor's scene motivation. Harold Michelson's Chouinard Art School's film illustration class was extremely popular, often attended by NYC illustrators making a move to the West Coast, intending on cashing in on studio illustration jobs. Prior to the 1990's computer programs, this perspective projection illustration system was the most accurate drawing tool of the production designer and art director. Presentation set design sketches were the producer's portfolio in raising financing for their film's expenses.Father of Dennis Michelson.Harold Michelson was instrumental in the lay-out of the fore shortened "Irma, la Douce" Parisienne $350,000 "Rue Casanova" street stage set, as designed by the French production designer Alexandre Trauner. Michelson, consulting with Trauner, with Trauner's set designers, scaled the street set's architectural details, as illustrations, for the set designers floor plan, elevation drawings and architectural details. Calculating the plan of the three converging street building facades' false perspective was a major contribution in the sets layout; this was in addition to Michelson's set illustrations and script storyboard analysis illustrations. In Michelson's approach to the 'forced' false perspective analysis, the elevation and plan layouts were back (rear) projected to scales related to actual full scale facades. Harold Michelson's expertise on perspective principles, Michelson's Paris street stage set 'forced' false perspective was built on two stages at the Samuel Goldwyn Film Studio, located in Hollywood. The camera's lens calculated horizon line, positioned as an average height of 5'-6". The set plan was based upon a 'T' floor plan, with the street's forced 'false' perspective at the bottom of the 'T', and at the end tips of the top 'T'. The main center of "Rue Casanova" street set, constructed and designed at standard architectural scale, was positioned at the front center of the Goldwyn studio stage, with the right 'T' tip extending through an inside stage door connecting with the adjacent stage. This side was built with less forced perspective. The bottom part of the 'T' Paris street stage set had the most forced perspective built on the stage. With the floor ramped, raising off the wooden stage floor approximately 2'-6", at the back end of the 'T'. The set's street cobblestone treatment, had the cobblestones size and scale reduced appropriately to the false perspective. Michelson also dictated the heights of street miniature lamp fixtures; atmosphere extras, positioned in the middle of the 'T' rear reduced perspective street set, utilized dwarfs and midgets as background performers. |
| Quotes: |
Harold describes how he conceptualized the storyboards for the hotel room scene in THE GRADUATE: "I'm trying to get as many different compositions as I can without making it a dull two-headed monster or a two-headed screen of just two people talking and cutting back and forth, which makes it absolutely deadly. I don't care how good the dialog is." "There was this scene and I decided to have in the foreground the angle of her leg, which created a triangle, and put Dustin Hoffman in between. We saw him immediately, and you also got the feeling of a sexual escapade." "It's your ideas that they want. They don't want your style." "In reality - and I won't say this - it's like directing. You have to have all this knowledge of directing just for this piece of paper. After that, they can do whatever they want with the piece of paper, but all these truths are part of the art of cinema." "These compositions, which, when you're doing a storyboard, are really up to you. There are many ways of bringing the central character to the eye of the audience by putting them at the end of a vanishing point... which is two lines going off in a distance like a railroad track. Your eye is led by the railroad tracks. These are the devices we use to capture the audience's view."
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Harold describes how he conceptualized the storyboards for the hotel room scene in THE GRADUATE: "When they were in the hotel room and they were finished with their lovemaking, I took a shot from the TV set to Dustin. And I had her walking back and forth. He is watching TV. You just see him. You see her, you don't see her head. It's from her neck down to knees. And she walks past in front of the screen, getting dressed. She goes from left to right and she puts on her underwear. And as she goes by, she has more clothes on. Then from right to left she puts on something else. And finally the door slams. I just did it. I thought it was hell of a shot, and I'm proud of it." |
| Job title: |
Art Director,Art Department,Production Designer |
| Spouse: |
Lillian Michelson (December 10, 1947 - March 1, 2007) (his death, 3 children) |
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