Russell Shearman

Russell Shearman
Died (1956-05-05)May 5, 1956
Occupation special effects artist.
Years active 1946-1956

Russell Shearman (died May 5, 1956) was an American special effects artist. He won a Technical Achievement Award at the 19th Academy Awards in 1946 along with the RKO Radio Studio Special Effects Dept. for the development of a new method of simulating falling snow on motion picture sets for It's a Wonderful Life. It's a Wonderful Life won just the one Academy Award, in the Technical Achievement category for developing a new method of creating artificial snow. Before It's a Wonderful Life, fake movie snow was mostly made from cornflakes painted white and it was so loud when stepped on that any snow-filled scenes with dialogue had to be re-dubbed afterwards. RKO studio's head of special effects, Russell Sherman, developed a new compound, utilizing water, soap flakes, foamite and sugar. He won an Academy Award during the 21st Academy Awards for Best Special Effects. He won for the film Portrait of Jennie. He shared his win with Paul Eagler, Charles L. Freeman, Joseph McMillan Johnson, Clarence Slifer and James G. Stewart.[1]

Filmography

Death

Russell Shearman died from a shark attack while filming underwater scenes for The Sharkfighters in the Caribbean Sea off Cuba.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "The 21st Academy Awards (1949) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ http://sharkattackfile.net/spreadsheets/pdf_directory/1956.05.07-Shearman.pdf


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.