Norman O. Dawn was an early film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

. He made several improvements on the matte shot

Matte (filmmaking)

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 with a background image . In this case, the matte is the background painting...

 to apply it to motion picture, and was the first director to use rear projection in cinema.

Dawn's innovations in glass and matte shots

Dawn's first film Missions of California made extensive use of the glass shot, in which certain things are painted on a piece of glass and placed in between the camera and the live action. Many of the buildings which Dawn was filming were at least partially destroyed; by painting sections of roof or walls, the impression was made that the buildings were in fact, whole. The main difference between the glass shot and the matte shot is that with a glass shot, all filming is done with a single exposure of film.

Dawn combined his experience with the glass shot with the techniques of the matte shot. Up until this time, the matte shot was essentially a double-exposure: a section of the camera's field would be blocked with a piece of cardboard to block the exposure, the film would be rewound, and the blocked part would also be shot in live action. Dawn instead used pieces of glass with sections painted black (which was more effective at absorbing light than cardboard), and transferred the film to a second, stationary camera rather than merely rewinding the film. The matte painting was then drawn to exactly match the proportion and perspective to the live action shot. The low cost and high quality of Dawn's matte shot made it the mainstay in special effects cinema throughout the century.

Australia

Dawn worked in Australia for a number of years, directing a big-budget adaptation of the classic novel For the Term of His Natural Life

For the Term of His Natural Life (1927 film)

- Plot summary :After a row, Ellinor Devine reveals to her husband Sir Richard that he is not actually the father of their son, also named Richard, but that he was fathered by her cousin, Lord Bellasis. Sir Richard throws his son out and storms off in a rage. Shortly afterwards, Richard Junior...

(1927), and a musical, Showgirl's Luck

Showgirl's Luck

Showgirl's Luck is a 1931 Australian musical directed by Norman Dawn. It was the first Australian full talking film.-External links:* in the Internet Movie Database* at National Film and Sound Archive...

(1931).

Filmography

A partial list of Dawn's films may be found at the Internet Movie Database

Internet Movie Database

Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

. Here are some additional films not mentioned at IMDB:

• Missions of California: 1907
• Gypsy Love: 1910
• Women of Toba: 1910
• Story of the Andes: 1911
• Ghost of Thunder Mountain: 1912
• Man of the West: 1912
• The Drifter: 1913
• Two Men of Tinted Butte: 1914
• Oriental Love: 1916
• The Girl in the Dark: 1917
• Sinbad the Sailor: 1917
• The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin
  The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin
  The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin is a silent movie that stars Lon Chaney, Sr. The film contains a propagandist view of the First World War, showing the political greed of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, the resistance of some of his own soldiers, and fanciful prediction of the nature of the war's end...
  
  : 1917
• Danger, Go Slow: 1918
• For the Term of His Natural Life)
  For the Term of His Natural Life (1927 film)
  - Plot summary :After a row, Ellinor Devine reveals to her husband Sir Richard that he is not actually the father of their son, also named Richard, but that he was fathered by her cousin, Lord Bellasis. Sir Richard throws his son out and storms off in a rage. Shortly afterwards, Richard Junior...
  
  : 1927
• Showgirl's Luck
  Showgirl's Luck
  Showgirl's Luck is a 1931 Australian musical directed by Norman Dawn. It was the first Australian full talking film.-External links:* in the Internet Movie Database* at National Film and Sound Archive...
  
  (1931)
• Orphans of the North (1940)

There is a Norman O. Dawn collection in the Ransom Collection of the University of Texas, Austin.

'*'According with the book Special Effects: The History and Technique (RICKITT, Richard Ed. Watson-Guptill Publications, [s.l], 2000), page 190, Norman O. Dawn was born in a Bolivian Railroad Camp. Bolivia not Argentina.