Silent Running HD Movie Download

Trivia

The three drone robots in the film, named Huey, Dewey, and Louie (after Donald Duck's nephews), were operated by four multiple-amputee actors: Mark Persons, Steve Brown, Cheryl Sparks, and Larry Whisenhunt. To keep costs down, director Douglas Trumbull hired college students for model-making and other special effects work. One of these students, John Dykstra, went on to have a distinguished career in special effects. Douglas Trumbull, the director, mentioned that he learned how to be a director while working on this film, as he had no prior training or experience in the job. The decommissioned Essex-class aircraft carrier "Valley Forge," which had served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, was used as the interior of the space freighter "Valley Forge" in the film. The carrier's flight control area and hangar deck were modified and painted to resemble the space freighter. The carrier was scrapped after filming was complete. After the success of "Easy Rider" (1969), Universal Studios initiated a program to allow young filmmakers to make "semi-independent" films with low budgets, hoping to replicate the profitability of "Easy Rider." This program led to the creation of several low-budget films, including "Silent Running." Several shots of the "Valley Forge" and its sister ships were reused in the television series "Battlestar Galactica," where they appeared as agricultural ships in the refugee fleet. The "Saturn sequence," a visually stunning part of the film, was originally intended to be included in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). However, the technology required for the visual effects team to create such a sequence was not yet available. The model of the "Valley Forge" space freighter used in the film was an impressive 26 feet in length. It was constructed using materials like steel, wood, plastic, and over 650 army tank model kits. After filming was completed, the model was placed into storage but was eventually disassembled and destroyed in the mid-1970s. Some pieces of the model, including at least two of the domes, survived, with one dome now residing in the collection of the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Washington. Bruce Dern's emotional performance, including the tears he shed while talking to his crewmates about a little girl who would never know the "simple wonder of a leaf in her hand," was drawn from real experiences. As a "method actor," Dern used personal experiences, including the accidental death of his two-year-old daughter a few years prior, to motivate his performance. Director Douglas Trumbull gave his approval when George Lucas mentioned his desire to create a robot similar to the drones in "Silent Running" for his film, which eventually became R2-D2 in "Star Wars." Interestingly, when 20th Century-Fox sued Universal in 1978, claiming "Battlestar Galactica" was a ripoff of "Star Wars," Universal countered by suing Fox, claiming that "Star Wars" was a ripoff of "Silent Running." Although only three "space freighters" are visible in the film ("Valley Forge," "Berkshire," and "Sequoia"), several other freighters are mentioned in radio communications, including "Yellowstone," "Acadia," "Blue Ridge," "Glacier," and "Mojave." Each freighter's name refers to an American National Park or Preserve. Bruce Dern was cast in the film after 17 other actors had turned down the role. The "Odyssey" carts driven by the crew members in the film were custom-built on a chassis designed by the director's father. The sequences involving the jettisoning of the domes were based on Douglas Trumbull's observations of actual footage of Apollo Saturn V rocket stage separations. The miniatures of the dome couplings were 10 inches in diameter and were filled with mica and compressed air to achieve the separation effect Trumbull wanted. "Silent Running" was released as a double feature with "The Andromeda Strain" (1971). The film's basic outline follows a similar environmental theme as another movie, "Ark" (1970), where the earth's environment has been devastated, and one lone scientist tries to preserve samples of plant and wildlife under a dome, which comes under attack and is destroyed.