Norman Dawn on AllMovie

Though little is known about the life of producer/director/writer/photographer Norman Dawn, his legacy lives on in the technological end of show business. While a still photographer in 1905, Dawn developed a "glass shot" process which matched up his models with exotic backgrounds: put simply, his subject stood in front of or behind backgrounds painted on glass and positioned in front of the camera. Dawn transferred this special-effects process to film in 1907, and within four years had created a matte box that could be mounted on the camera for steadier glass-shot photography. Though since replaced with more sophisticated rear-projection and computer technology, "The Dawn Process" is still occasionally used to add depth and grandeur to films like Dances with Wolves (1990). Turning to directing, Dawn spent the years 1919 through 1936 shuttling between the American and British film industries. Norman Dawn's directorial chef d'ouevre was 1936's Tundra, a location-filmed docudrama concerning Alaska's "flying doctors." A series of financial setbacks kept Tundra from public view until 1949, when it was finally released in a truncated and heavily revised version, titled Arctic Fury.