Speaker 1: Weirding Way Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and forty seven
Speaker 2: of The Filmingmnitary's podcast. This is your host, Jamie Benning,
Speaker 2: and this is the show where I dig into the
Speaker 2: behind the scenes stories with the people who were actually
Speaker 2: there at the time making the films that we all
Speaker 2: grew up watching and loving. In this episode, I'm joined
Speaker 2: by model maker John Duncan. Now, if you've ever been
Speaker 2: fascinated by the physical side of visual effect, you know,
Speaker 2: the miniatures, the ships, the props, the actual stuff that
Speaker 2: exists in front of the camera, then this is the
Speaker 2: one for you. John's career spans an incredible range of
Speaker 2: work from Star Trek and Star Wars to Pirates of
Speaker 2: the Caribbean and Galaxy Quest. Another favorite of mine the
Speaker 2: Matrix as well. And what's great about this conversation is
Speaker 2: that he's done it all really concept models, hero miniatures, props,
Speaker 2: even making prop replicas himself. He loves doing that. It's
Speaker 2: his hobby as well as his job. It's his passion.
Speaker 2: We talk about how he went from building things out
Speaker 2: of paper and cardboard as a kid, and how he
Speaker 2: got into ILM in nineteen ninety three and suddenly he
Speaker 2: was working alongside the people he'd only ever seen on
Speaker 2: bubblegum cards.
Speaker 3: There's loads in here about.
Speaker 2: The craft itself too, the reality of building for camera,
Speaker 2: learning not to be too precious when your work gets
Speaker 2: chopped up or repainted or exploded. We also talk about
Speaker 2: his time on The Stars prequels, working with Doug Chang
Speaker 2: as a concept model maker, essentially created what he calls
Speaker 2: three D blueprints for the rest of the production to follow.
Speaker 2: There's also some great stuff about Galaxy Quest pirates, like
Speaker 2: I said, and the shift from physical models to digital
Speaker 2: and where miniatures still absolutely hold their ground. And like
Speaker 2: a lot of these conversations, it's also about the moment
Speaker 2: where you realize this thing you've been doing for fun
Speaker 2: is actually a job, or in John's case, a career
Speaker 2: that kept him at ILM for for many, many years.
Speaker 2: Before we get into it, just a quick mention of Patreon.
Speaker 2: I'm currently aiming for two hundred patrons and I'm at
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventeen right now. So if you enjoy
Speaker 2: my podcast and want to support what I'm doing, and
Speaker 2: it is just me doing it, I get no other help.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of work, and I know there's a
Speaker 2: lot of you listening out there. You can head over
Speaker 2: to patreon dot com, forward slash Jamie Benning and support
Speaker 2: the podcast that way. It really does help keep these
Speaker 2: conversations going right. So here's my conversation with model maker
Speaker 2: John Duncan, and I'll be back at the end for
Speaker 2: a bit more jabbering on.
Speaker 4: John.
Speaker 3: Great to have you here today. We finally did it.
Speaker 2: I've always been intrigued by the work of a model maker,
Speaker 2: and I just kind of want to know where it
Speaker 2: all started for you. Was this something you did as
Speaker 2: a kid or did you have a different route into this.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I always built stuff as a kid when I
Speaker 5: was as long as I can remember. I remember going
Speaker 5: on car trips as a child and making things out
Speaker 5: of paper and tape, just like to kill the time
Speaker 5: while we were driving. And you would arrive at my
Speaker 5: cousin's house with a little tiny paper suitcase with like
Speaker 5: folded clothes inside of it, and so just you know,
Speaker 5: stuff to keep me busy. And I've always had a
Speaker 5: fascination with miniatures as well, So it was always the
Speaker 5: smaller the better for me when I was little, and
Speaker 5: it kind of less so now as an adult. I've
Speaker 5: gotten into bigatures too, but the it was that was
Speaker 5: kind of the draw for me was Wow, you can
Speaker 5: take something that's existing in the real world and make
Speaker 5: a little version of it, and that always and I
Speaker 5: can make it. That was that was the thing that
Speaker 5: was always fascinating for me. My parents were both kind
Speaker 5: of crafty and do it yourself for types, and so
Speaker 5: they just encourage that in, you know, with my my
Speaker 5: w and I to you know, do things ourselves, like
Speaker 5: if the car broke, we.
Speaker 4: Go out and we fix it. You know. I remember
Speaker 4: learning how to do you.
Speaker 5: Know, carpentry and sewer repair and all kinds of different
Speaker 5: things because hey, when it needed to be done, and
Speaker 5: that's what you did, and so it gave me a
Speaker 5: sense of I can do that sort of thing. So
Speaker 5: that I was I always felt like, well, I don't
Speaker 5: know how to do that, but somebody does that, so
Speaker 5: or I should be able to learn how to do that.
Speaker 4: So I would try it.
Speaker 5: And eventually you can try enough things and you start
Speaker 5: learning that you.
Speaker 4: Can do stuff. Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2: I mean it's very not my skill level, what I
Speaker 2: have to say on I think I had sort of
Speaker 2: parents that had that kind of attitude of oh, give
Speaker 2: it here, I could do it quicker.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was never really sort of my parents never seem
Speaker 2: to have that kind of patience to teach me. That's
Speaker 2: a different mindset altogether.
Speaker 5: But I found that I have a little bit of
Speaker 5: what you were talking about, your parents wanting to help
Speaker 5: my kids. I'd be like, oh, hey, let me show
Speaker 5: you how to do that, and I would end up
Speaker 5: doing it for them, and my kids actually had to
Speaker 5: tell me sometimes, Dad, let me do it. We're like, oh, okay, sorry,
Speaker 5: I'm just trying to help.
Speaker 4: I was so exciting.
Speaker 2: It sounds like like your your skills were also drawn
Speaker 2: through sort of just being in that environment, through osmosis
Speaker 2: in as many ways as not not necessarily sitting you
Speaker 2: down and saying, sound, this is how you do this necessarily,
Speaker 2: but maybe just being in a world where your parents
Speaker 2: would fix things, they would make and mend and when
Speaker 2: it was necessary, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or just learning you know, doing crafts, you know,
Speaker 5: making candles or you know, paper mache or that sort
Speaker 5: of thing. When I after I got my driver's license,
Speaker 5: I crashed a car and my dad said, I guess
Speaker 5: you're learning automotive repair.
Speaker 4: This summer so I learned how to do bodywork that summer.
Speaker 4: That's great. So it was always this sort of that's
Speaker 4: what you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when you were a small kid making these
Speaker 2: little paper models and things, was there a particular model
Speaker 2: in a shop that you wanted, like did you have
Speaker 2: or is there one you can remember buying and thinking, Wow, I've.
Speaker 3: Always wanted to build this.
Speaker 4: I recall a number of different things. There was.
Speaker 5: The first, well, the first model kit that I ever
Speaker 5: got was a submarine model.
Speaker 4: My dad.
Speaker 5: Well, I'd building things. I'd start out with paper, and
Speaker 5: then I moved into cardboard, and then I started getting
Speaker 5: interested in, you know, plastic models of like ships and
Speaker 5: cars and what have you. And so my dad took
Speaker 5: me to the store and we picked out a model kit,
Speaker 5: and I came home and I was young, I think,
Speaker 5: maybe ten or something like that, and all I had
Speaker 5: was Elmer's glue, which is just white glue, and so
Speaker 5: I built it all with that, and of course you
Speaker 5: put in the submarine, put the submarine in the bathtub
Speaker 5: then and all that water gly just just alls away
Speaker 5: and it falls apart.
Speaker 4: But it was so fun doing that.
Speaker 5: But I remember there were these little tiny cars that
Speaker 5: I saw in a store once and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I got.
Speaker 4: To get some of those.
Speaker 5: And then my dad got me into trains, so I
Speaker 5: had an HO train set. And then of course I
Speaker 5: learned that there were N scale train sets.
Speaker 4: And I said, oh, I must have those, Dad.
Speaker 5: And then I think around the age of fifteen, I
Speaker 5: just discovered that Markland did Z scale trains.
Speaker 4: So I gotta have the Z scale train.
Speaker 5: I just kept going smaller and smaller and smaller throughout
Speaker 5: as time progressed.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember I was a sort of avid radio controlled
Speaker 2: car builder with my dad, So I would have those
Speaker 2: Tamia cars and i'd get a Tamir catalog. I've still
Speaker 2: got a couple of them over here actually, where I
Speaker 2: kind of pore over the pictures and be amazed at
Speaker 2: how well people could make these models. Then I buy
Speaker 2: one and make a complete mess of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: there is a sort of lowering of expectations at a
Speaker 2: certain point for a young kid when you know, when
Speaker 2: buying those models, But when did you realize that maybe
Speaker 2: you had this kind of knack for it.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, as a kid, I always felt that
Speaker 5: I was pretty good at it. I was in boy Scouts,
Speaker 5: when I was younger, and this was what pre around
Speaker 5: twelve thirteen years old or something like that, and we
Speaker 5: had carved the little neckerchief slides and it was an
Speaker 5: Indian head and you just basically got a block of
Speaker 5: wood that had the shape.
Speaker 4: Of an Indian drawn on it.
Speaker 5: Native American, I should say, but anyway, the uh so,
Speaker 5: everybody in the troop was carving them, and I carved mine,
Speaker 5: and it was a thing we did over the course
Speaker 5: of a few weeks. And I went home and I
Speaker 5: carved mine at home, finished it up, and I brought
Speaker 5: it in and all the other kids were accusing me
Speaker 5: of having my father do it because it looked like
Speaker 5: what it was supposed to do. And the same thing
Speaker 5: happened with a birdhouse that I built that you did
Speaker 5: your dad build every and.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, I did.
Speaker 5: And so I kind of felt like, Okay, well, I
Speaker 5: have a knack for making these sorts of things that
Speaker 5: and then I discovered science fiction and I had a
Speaker 5: I would make money by mowing people's lawns and then
Speaker 5: as soon as I'd get I'd run down to the
Speaker 5: to the local drug store and I'd buy all the
Speaker 5: star trek kits because Star Wars didn't exist then, so
Speaker 5: Star Trek was.
Speaker 4: It for me.
Speaker 5: And I'd get the Enterprise and the Klingon Ship and
Speaker 5: all those things.
Speaker 4: And that was that. I bought every single one of them.
Speaker 2: Did you have them hanging from your bedo ceiling, hanging
Speaker 2: in my room and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it was it was fun.
Speaker 5: It was a fun time because you just I would
Speaker 5: work with whatever I had at my disposal. So if
Speaker 5: you know, I remember the the what is it called
Speaker 5: the technical the star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual came out
Speaker 5: and I got a copy of it and it had
Speaker 5: drawings of full size drawings of what the phaser, communicator
Speaker 5: and the tricorder.
Speaker 4: All looked like. I was saying, oh, I got to
Speaker 4: build those.
Speaker 5: And they were built. I built them out of basically
Speaker 5: stacked corrugated cardboard like for just shipping boxes, and you know,
Speaker 5: painted in black, and and they looked really good. The
Speaker 5: top could flip open on things. But you know, if
Speaker 5: you looked at it, you could see, you know, on
Speaker 5: the side, it's all that corrugated cardboard, waviness and stuff.
Speaker 4: But it you know, as a kid, you just use
Speaker 4: what you can find. I used to.
Speaker 5: Hoard, you know, like broken pens and toys and stuff,
Speaker 5: so that I could use those to to.
Speaker 4: Build other things with.
Speaker 5: And it was just that was that was part of
Speaker 5: my my growing up was just what can I make
Speaker 5: this out of.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you sort of major own apprenticeship almost
Speaker 2: for what you were going to become as an adult.
Speaker 2: When did that When did that switch kind of happen
Speaker 2: for you? When did you realize, oh, maybe I could
Speaker 2: make a career out of this.
Speaker 5: It was it was it was well, I think it
Speaker 5: was after of course Star Wars came out and then
Speaker 5: they had the behind the scenes makings of and it's like, oh, wow,
Speaker 5: there's people that do this for a living. And I'm
Speaker 5: sure that's the story that a lot of people have said,
Speaker 5: Uh is you know, oh you can get paid for
Speaker 5: doing that? Well, it's not just a hobby.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Of course, at that time, I thought, well, what are
Speaker 5: the chances that I would ever get to work on
Speaker 5: Star Wars or anything like that? And so I and
Speaker 5: that was what that was around high school for me.
Speaker 5: Jedi came out in eighty three and that's when I
Speaker 5: graduated high school, and so I was kind of I
Speaker 5: was sort of the prime demographic for Star Wars. I
Speaker 5: think I was already a science fiction fan into Star
Speaker 5: Trek and Space nineteen ninety nine and Battlestar GALACTICUD all this,
Speaker 5: and then and and Star Wars comes out, and it
Speaker 5: just took the world by storm, and it drew me
Speaker 5: in immediately.
Speaker 4: I was always drawn.
Speaker 5: To the the robots and the bad guys. Those were
Speaker 5: my Those are the ones that I paid attention to
Speaker 5: the most. But then in college, I tried a number
Speaker 5: of different major and eventually kind of stumbled across television
Speaker 5: film production and I ended up getting a degreen television
Speaker 5: film production and thought I was going to go work
Speaker 5: at a TV station.
Speaker 4: I actually did for about a year and a half.
Speaker 4: I was working for an.
Speaker 5: NBC affiliate doing the evening news as a technical director,
Speaker 5: and and found immensely boring vision So.
Speaker 2: You actually like vision mixing as we call it here TV.
Speaker 2: You would call it, yeah, just pushing the camera buttons
Speaker 2: kind of thing.
Speaker 4: I was pushing the buttons and you know, yes, different.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it was after a year and a half
Speaker 5: of doing the nightly news, found it exceedingly tedious.
Speaker 4: And just boring.
Speaker 5: So I yeah, while I was working on my degree,
Speaker 5: I did an internship in San Francisco at KQDFM, the
Speaker 5: NPR affiliate there, and of course they also had their
Speaker 5: television station there and it so I got exposed to
Speaker 5: it then, but I wasn't really working in it, but
Speaker 5: I was making money because of course the internship was
Speaker 5: not paid doing architectural models. A friend of mine had said, hey,
Speaker 5: why don't you come work. It was also in San Francisco,
Speaker 5: so I could make money while I was doing my internship,
Speaker 5: and I was building architectural models in San Francisco, and
Speaker 5: then through that ended up doing a commercial, met some
Speaker 5: people from that, and then started doing ride films like
Speaker 5: Star Tours. I didn't do Star Tours, but I did
Speaker 5: ride films like that. And then eventually the company I
Speaker 5: was working for was right across the bay from where
Speaker 5: ILM was located in San Rafel and we were having
Speaker 5: a lull our. Producer called ILM and said, hey, I
Speaker 5: got a couple of guys we're going to be down
Speaker 5: for a little while. They could use some work. Do
Speaker 5: you have anything available? And they said sure, send them over.
Speaker 5: So I got hired for two weeks like everybody else
Speaker 5: does there, and ended up staying for nearly a decade
Speaker 5: and a half.
Speaker 4: What year was that when they say that was.
Speaker 5: Nineteen ninety three when my first project that I did
Speaker 5: there it could just been done kind of No, that.
Speaker 4: Was ninety three. That was just prior to the release.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think right, So you were early ninety
Speaker 3: three kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, because I remember I remember going to see
Speaker 5: it and everybody was being really like worried about future
Speaker 5: of our careers.
Speaker 4: And I was just so excited I was here. I
Speaker 4: was like, Yay, I'm finally here where I never thought
Speaker 4: i'd be.
Speaker 5: So it was it was sort of a weird feeling
Speaker 5: to have everybody go, oh my god, this is the end.
Speaker 4: So what were you first hired to do?
Speaker 3: Iland?
Speaker 5: The first project I worked on was actually a commercial,
Speaker 5: was for Malaysian Airlines. And that was an amazing day
Speaker 5: for me because, like I said, I was a fan
Speaker 5: of Star Wars. So I'm showing up my first day
Speaker 5: and I'm just trying really hard not to geek out
Speaker 5: over everything. And I walked into the model shop and
Speaker 5: I'm assigned to Larry Tan who's heading up the project
Speaker 5: or that part of the project, and he says, hey, Okay, welcome,
Speaker 5: You're gonna be working with Steve today. And he introduces
Speaker 5: me to, of all people, Steve Golly, and inside my
Speaker 5: little little John was like I have his Bubblegum card.
Speaker 4: And it's like, hell, hello, mister Golly, and he's like,
Speaker 4: hey Steve, call me Steve. You know.
Speaker 5: But that's how it was. It was so relaxed there.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was just so welcoming. I felt to
Speaker 5: to be there, and everybody there was someone who could
Speaker 5: teach me something and was willing to teach me something.
Speaker 5: That was one of the wonderful things about working there
Speaker 5: was you didn't get a lot of gatekeeping.
Speaker 4: You got people who were like, hey, let me show
Speaker 4: you how to do this, or hey check this out.
Speaker 4: And yeah.
Speaker 5: But shortly after that commercial came Star Trek First Contact.
Speaker 5: So again one of my childhood thrills was to get
Speaker 5: to work on Star Trek. And here I was building
Speaker 5: the new enterprise, the enterprise e for for Star Trek
Speaker 5: First Contact and a new board ship and you know,
Speaker 5: other things like that.
Speaker 4: So that it was it was this like.
Speaker 5: The culmination of these childhood fantasies were coming true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ticking things off as you guys want taking things.
Speaker 5: And at that point, the whole idea of Star Wars
Speaker 5: coming back was completely off the table.
Speaker 4: As far as we knew, George was done making Star Wars.
Speaker 4: Star Wars was never good.
Speaker 5: There were gonna be no more Star Wars movies made,
Speaker 5: you know. So I was just excited to be there
Speaker 5: working on other movies.
Speaker 4: And it was a little while after that.
Speaker 5: I think we had Men in Black and there was
Speaker 5: a couple of other movies and oh, I think this, well,
Speaker 5: the Jurassic Park of course came out. Yeah, And that
Speaker 5: was when and then Steve Golly came to me and said, hey,
Speaker 5: the you it's been requested that you come up and
Speaker 5: work at the ranch on the new Star Wars film.
Speaker 5: And I was like, what the way? So yes, yes, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: Just just going back to us one second, like when
Speaker 2: you arrived there, though initially you're used to making models
Speaker 2: on your own, right now you're in this very collaborative world.
Speaker 3: Did that take some adjustment?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, because in the of course, in the film industry,
Speaker 5: you're not building them for yourself. You're building them for
Speaker 5: the show, for the shot, for the director. And I
Speaker 5: got a good lesson than that on that first Malaysian
Speaker 5: Airlines commercial that I did, because you can't be precious
Speaker 5: about what you do. Whatever you make could be you know,
Speaker 5: not used, destroyed, whatever, repainted and something I'd built this
Speaker 5: nice little model of a tram. They got it on set,
Speaker 5: realized it was too big for what they needed. So
Speaker 5: somebody took it, just ran it through the band saw,
Speaker 5: took a few inches out of the middle of it,
Speaker 5: closed it up and redid it. And you know, of
Speaker 5: course all the detail I'd thrown in there was like, oh,
Speaker 5: it was gone. And but you have to just go,
Speaker 5: you know, that's the way it is. That's what's needed
Speaker 5: for the shot. So you don't build things to be
Speaker 5: viewed up close unless it's going to be shot up close.
Speaker 4: And so you have to learn like how to build
Speaker 4: for what's needed for the film.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 4: And I guess as well.
Speaker 2: When you're doing it for yourself, you can kind of
Speaker 2: take your time and you can really labor over it.
Speaker 2: And but when you're working on a production, obviously you've
Speaker 2: got to have sort of speed and accuracy and and
Speaker 2: the level of finish and be problem solving all in
Speaker 2: this world of uncertainty that you've just kind of joined
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: That must have been.
Speaker 6: Quite an Anything you could do to do it faster
Speaker 6: and better was was, you know, needed, because the deadlines
Speaker 6: were never long enough.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't think there was ever any model
Speaker 5: that went out on set where you went, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's done, we didn't need another week or so on
Speaker 5: that that was that was I mean that maybe that happened,
Speaker 5: but that so rare. You were always like, oh, if
Speaker 5: we just had another two weeks. I think every model
Speaker 5: maker has probably said that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I imagine as well, like when you get a
Speaker 2: design from somebody like First Star Trek, First Contact. Obviously
Speaker 2: the enterprise kind of changed throughout that series of movies,
Speaker 2: didn't it. There was always like a sort of bigger
Speaker 2: and better one in a way. Are you working with
Speaker 2: quite detailed drawings from the concept department and the design
Speaker 2: departments or did they leave enough for you to really
Speaker 2: kind of put your own stamp on.
Speaker 5: It on every production? Every production varied, of course, but
Speaker 5: the production the production drawings were always fairly loose. I
Speaker 5: mean they would do close ups of things that they
Speaker 5: were they felt were important. The drawings were often I
Speaker 5: mean we never got blueprints per se.
Speaker 4: Well, I take that back.
Speaker 5: On parates of the Urban, we did get blueprints because
Speaker 5: Disney was producing that one, and they were building full saze.
Speaker 4: Sorts of the ship and stuff too, But a lot of.
Speaker 5: Times it was just they were just loose concept drawings
Speaker 5: and we would take that and then interpret that to
Speaker 5: get the look of what they wanted. And there was
Speaker 5: always this back and forth that art directors would be
Speaker 5: in and out of the shop to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: can you make that longer or narrower or whatever to
Speaker 5: fit what they were really trying to get from the
Speaker 5: from the model.
Speaker 2: And it's part of that learning process, also knowing what
Speaker 2: level of detail you have to do for the camera,
Speaker 2: because obviously you can go beyond that for the naked eye.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen some of the models I've been
Speaker 2: to Ilm and to the Runch in recent years, and
Speaker 2: I was kind of blown away at the level of
Speaker 2: detail because when I compared to something like that Mate painting.
Speaker 2: Some of those Mate paintings are like Chris Evans and
Speaker 2: Mike Pangratzio and Jeck Green did some of them are
Speaker 2: quite sort of, you know, rough a point because they
Speaker 2: knew they didn't need like the finest detail because the
Speaker 2: camera would do what it needs to sort of run.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they could trick the camera the way.
Speaker 5: What I always loved about the mat paintings was like
Speaker 5: where the cutout was, where the insert shot would go,
Speaker 5: That's where all the detail was, That's where all the
Speaker 5: sharper details.
Speaker 4: And then it's sort of the edges of the painting.
Speaker 2: Which is that's where you're going to focus your eyes.
Speaker 2: And do you apply that to the model making as
Speaker 2: well to a certain extent, like you know what's going
Speaker 2: to be in the foreground for this shot?
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you.
Speaker 2: Know, otherwise you have to complete it as near as
Speaker 2: possible to perfect.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And we would always provide coverage too, Like we would
Speaker 5: get the storyboards to show like, Okay, the model is
Speaker 5: going to be shot from this side and above and
Speaker 5: below and over here, and so you'd realize, oh, this
Speaker 5: whole backside of the model doesn't even need to be painted.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 5: But at the same time you would provide coverage, you
Speaker 5: detail beyond what the storyboards would say, because you wanted
Speaker 5: to make sure that if they changed their mind, which
Speaker 5: often happens, they get down and they go, oh it's
Speaker 5: a slightly better shot if we take it from this
Speaker 5: angle or move over here, or they've added a shot
Speaker 5: that wasn't in the original storyboards. Now we need to
Speaker 5: see it from this site. So you'd try to give
Speaker 5: them as much. But then, of course that's always part
Speaker 5: of the budget too, as your you're having to balance out.
Speaker 4: How much work can we do on.
Speaker 5: It and stay within budget and time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and not drive ourselves crazy.
Speaker 5: That's always and that's always the flight in films is
Speaker 5: how much can you put on the screen.
Speaker 4: With the amount of time and money you have?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw one of the ships you would have
Speaker 2: worked on when I was at the presidio when was
Speaker 2: that twenty twenty three from Galaxy Quest?
Speaker 3: The protector is hanging there.
Speaker 4: It is huge.
Speaker 2: I was as much bigger than I expected it to be.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I'm a big obviously a big
Speaker 2: fan of behind the scenes stuff, but I've always sort
Speaker 2: of taken aback when.
Speaker 4: I see these things in reality because they're.
Speaker 5: Right, okayt Yeah, Because there was the there was a
Speaker 5: smaller one about three feet long that was built as
Speaker 5: the TV version of the uh yeah and uh and
Speaker 5: so it had a little bit lower resolution detail, so
Speaker 5: that it looked like a you know, a TV era model,
Speaker 5: and then the big Galaxy Quest had to look like
Speaker 5: it was a really actual, big existing ship and so
Speaker 5: that you know, so we we scaled it up and
Speaker 5: added detail and all the deep weathering and that sort
Speaker 5: of thing that goes into it.
Speaker 4: That's really cool. And that was a very fun project too. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was just gonna ask that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it tied together, of course, the Star Trek and
Speaker 5: Me and the Star Wars and me and and and
Speaker 5: it was being and it was a parody, so there was.
Speaker 5: That was one of the most fun projects I think
Speaker 5: I worked on there.
Speaker 4: That and probably Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 5: I mean, they had a lot of projects that were
Speaker 5: good fun for different reasons, you know, Star Wars of course,
Speaker 5: but you know, Galaxy Quest was one that was just
Speaker 5: so much fun because of just.
Speaker 4: The subject matter.
Speaker 5: And it was obviously written by people who love Star Trek,
Speaker 5: so they weren't making fun of Starguars.
Speaker 4: They were having fun with it. Yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 4: one of the best Star Trek movies in a way.
Speaker 4: For me.
Speaker 2: I just I know it's not Star Trek, but I
Speaker 2: just I've shown it to my kids who have no
Speaker 2: real reference. At the time, I had no real reference
Speaker 2: to Star Trek itself. And in subsequent years they sort
Speaker 2: of worked out what Star Trek is, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, that's where that comes from. You know,
Speaker 2: they saw it back to front. But did you get
Speaker 2: a sense that it was the director and that was
Speaker 2: a Dean paraso, wasn't it?
Speaker 4: I don't recall.
Speaker 3: Did he ever come into the model shop?
Speaker 4: You didn't know?
Speaker 3: You didn't meet the director.
Speaker 4: Now I didn't meet the director. No, some directors did.
Speaker 5: We had a number of directors that came to the
Speaker 5: shop and sometimes they and sometimes it was all shot
Speaker 5: by our our directors of photography, and the director wasn't
Speaker 5: It was viewed the stuff from from a remote location.
Speaker 2: And did you did the villain ship on that show
Speaker 2: as wellther was it?
Speaker 3: Sarahs Yes, Sarah, that's a very.
Speaker 2: Very different design, far more kind of organic and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that one was we had a team that
Speaker 5: it was all sculpted in clay. And again it was
Speaker 5: what eight nine feet long or something like that, and
Speaker 5: it had a structure within it. But then all the
Speaker 5: detail was we just sat there and you know, sculpted
Speaker 5: the clay to make all the scales and spikes and.
Speaker 4: You know weirdness on it. Uh.
Speaker 5: And and then we took a mold off of it
Speaker 5: and cast it in fiberglass. But the yeah, the original sculptive,
Speaker 5: it was all just you know, oil clay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, A very different sort of approach to doing
Speaker 2: a spacecraft that you know we have because yeah, you're
Speaker 2: going for like detailed and symmetry, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I actually have a little trouble with that.
Speaker 4: I'm much much better with.
Speaker 5: Rectlinear things like you know, or mechanical things. Doing organic
Speaker 5: stuff is always a challenge for me. And trying to
Speaker 5: make things look random is is tough for me because
Speaker 5: I sort of innately want to do, you know, keep
Speaker 5: things regular. I have a funny story about that from
Speaker 5: Pirates of.
Speaker 4: The Caribbean.
Speaker 5: Was we had to glue barnacles on the bottom of
Speaker 5: the pirate ship. The Black Pearl was probably twenty five
Speaker 5: thirty feet long, and so there's a scene where it
Speaker 5: rolls over in the water and they wanted to see
Speaker 5: barnacles on the on the on the bottom of the ship.
Speaker 5: And so I'm sitting there with Randy Ottenberg and a
Speaker 5: few others. R. Randy is a fantastic scenic, and she's
Speaker 5: really good at random organic looking things, and I'm gluing
Speaker 5: mine on. I'm trying really hard to keep them, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of random clusters of of of of of things.
Speaker 5: And then I stepped back, and my random clusters are
Speaker 5: all equally spaced along the side the whole and I
Speaker 5: look over at hers, and hers just looked like they
Speaker 5: grew there, and Randy, please help me out here.
Speaker 4: It was it was so challenging.
Speaker 5: I'm trying so hard to do it, and it was
Speaker 5: coming out so perfectly regular that I.
Speaker 2: Saw the pattern that wiring must be very difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're so used to doing that, it must be very tough.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And Sarah's was interesting that way because it was all
Speaker 5: like just clay, and so I wasn't making straight lines.
Speaker 5: It was all curves and with grapes, striations and things
Speaker 5: in it.
Speaker 4: But it was great, very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well it's nice, always nice when you have to sort
Speaker 2: of learn a new discipline, isn't it. And kind of
Speaker 2: you know, talk about the brain being you know, elastic,
Speaker 2: and you know, you just want to kind of create
Speaker 2: a new a few neural pathways into a new into
Speaker 2: a new zone. Do you still do you still find
Speaker 2: the sort of model making meditative? I guess is the
Speaker 2: word I'm looking for, because as a kid, I'm sure
Speaker 2: I can imagine you sat in your room with like
Speaker 2: a desk, lamp and magnifying glass and maybe there for hours.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very different to what kids do today.
Speaker 2: But do you do you find a sort of meditative
Speaker 2: state that you get into and.
Speaker 4: Now you're working.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's funny. Steve Garley asked me one day what
Speaker 5: I did for Harby's. That was early on when I
Speaker 5: started there, and I said, I build models.
Speaker 4: And he was like, this is my.
Speaker 5: Because he came from a design background, and so I
Speaker 5: guess he didn't build models for fun.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, I still build models today.
Speaker 5: I have a few of them, a few projects going
Speaker 5: right now. But it is it is nice to be
Speaker 5: able to kind of have the time to just sort
Speaker 5: of get into that flow of just making it and
Speaker 5: and and you're gluing the parts and shaping the pieces.
Speaker 5: And it's one of the things about il M that
Speaker 5: was so good for me was it was it was
Speaker 5: like a candy land of learning new things. And if
Speaker 5: I you know, if I didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 5: There was somebody that did, and so they I could
Speaker 5: go ask them and they would teach me and show me.
Speaker 4: I mean I learned.
Speaker 5: I learned machining, you know, how to use you know,
Speaker 5: the mill in the lathe and molding and casting. You know,
Speaker 5: there's there was so many different techniques that it's like
Speaker 5: I've never done that before, but hey, let's try it,
Speaker 5: and somebody would have advice on how to do it,
Speaker 5: and you and you learned how to do it.
Speaker 4: It was just I just ate that up. That was
Speaker 4: That was just.
Speaker 5: You know, it was like having living in a in
Speaker 5: a in a fairy tale to have the opportunity and
Speaker 5: the encouragement to try anything and everything. So yeah, it
Speaker 5: was it was. It was a wonderful place to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've spoken to Lawn Peterson. Who did you ever
Speaker 2: work alongside Lawn?
Speaker 4: Yes? In fact, on that first commercial I worked with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good guy Lawn. And I wonder if like,
Speaker 2: if there's anything of those people you work with, like
Speaker 2: Steve Gorley and Lawn Peterson, that is that you would
Speaker 2: sort of regard as specifically theirs, you know, like oh,
Speaker 2: that's Lawn's kind of thing, or that's Steve's kind of thing,
Speaker 2: because I know Lawn talks about that kind of boiler
Speaker 2: plate idea, you know, making sure the piping is making
Speaker 2: sense on on a spaceship and all that stuff. Is that, Yeah, gone,
Speaker 2: what what do you think about those guys?
Speaker 5: Steve, he was just a fantastic model maker, and I
Speaker 5: recall him really enjoyed like he he seemed to have
Speaker 5: an affinity for like trains too.
Speaker 4: Because he he.
Speaker 5: For the longest time had like the blueprints on his
Speaker 5: wall of the train from Back to the Future that
Speaker 5: they did. I think that was something that really appealed
Speaker 5: to him. He and uh uh Irack Heeler was one
Speaker 5: that I kind of sat at his knee and learned
Speaker 5: a lot about making patterns, uh carving patterns with techniques
Speaker 5: and tricks and stuff. And he was way into trains
Speaker 5: as well. He actually did some things for some some
Speaker 5: special cars and stuff for for some oak age train
Speaker 5: sets and things. And then Lord Peterson was always he was.
Speaker 5: He was sort of known for coming up with unusual
Speaker 5: choices for uh materials to use. I mean, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: what I and ground up walnut shells seemed to be
Speaker 5: one that came up a lot Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he spoke to me about that. Wasn't that for
Speaker 3: a wild West?
Speaker 4: I think?
Speaker 5: And they got used for a lot of other things too. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and maybe he wasn't the only one. I remember Bill
Speaker 5: George showing me a model of it was a very
Speaker 5: small model.
Speaker 4: Of the Was it the Devastator? It was Darth's Darth
Speaker 4: Vader's Superstar Destroyer executed. That's what it was called.
Speaker 5: Sorry, Yeah, and the they needed a shot of it
Speaker 5: like way in the distance, so they made one that
Speaker 5: was maybe a foot long or something like that, and
Speaker 5: for detail on that, they covered it in walnut shells,
Speaker 5: so it was just this lots of little shadows, but
Speaker 5: he couldn't make out what it was, but for a
Speaker 5: distance shot it worked. I remember Lauren also came up
Speaker 5: with using salt for waterfalls, I believe after using sugar
Speaker 5: and finding out that it drew drew ants, so switching after.
Speaker 2: That, And I guess that would have been on the
Speaker 2: Phantom Menace when that the water. Yes, that was on
Speaker 2: other pictures as well. But you said you worked on
Speaker 2: the Star Wars movie as well, So tell me about
Speaker 2: that experience working on on the Star Wars film.
Speaker 5: Well, it started off I was in the art department,
Speaker 5: uh for as a concept model maker. So that was
Speaker 5: when Steve Golly came to me and said, hey, they
Speaker 5: want you up at the ranch to to do to
Speaker 5: do work for the new films, and uh so.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: I showed up at the ranch my first day and
Speaker 5: I met Doug Chang and the first, I want to say,
Speaker 5: the first model I was a son mind was the
Speaker 5: Naboo Fighter, the end one, and I remember getting the
Speaker 5: design and looking at it and going, this doesn't look
Speaker 5: anything like Star Wars because I, as I was all
Speaker 5: indoctrinated into the boilerplate technology as they called it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, here was this swoopy, shiny, clean.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh okay, And of course they
Speaker 5: explained it as like this is pre war so like
Speaker 5: nineteen twenties automobiles, you know, just these swooping pontoon fendered ships,
Speaker 5: you know, boats, land, yachts, whatever, And in this case,
Speaker 5: this was pre war spaceship technology. So that was that
Speaker 5: was my first introduction into it and.
Speaker 4: What was really tough to get used to it.
Speaker 5: First there was the ranch. We were on the third
Speaker 5: floor of the main house at the ranch. The main
Speaker 5: house is not designed to be a model shop. It
Speaker 5: had dark blue carpeting, lovely paneled walls. We had dust
Speaker 5: with plants on them. And every day John Goodson and
Speaker 5: I would sit there making just snow drifts of plastic
Speaker 5: chips and things on the floor and bits of you know,
Speaker 5: sanding dust all over everything, and every every evening somebody
Speaker 5: would come in and they would vacuum it all up
Speaker 5: every day and we'd come back to a nice clean desk.
Speaker 4: And it just felt wrong. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: And so you know, over time we ended up we
Speaker 5: built a spray booth and some other things to try
Speaker 5: and keep it cleaner.
Speaker 4: But it was, it was.
Speaker 5: It was a very unusual environment to be building models
Speaker 5: in because building models is a messy job and you
Speaker 5: don't want to be ruining the This is beautiful house
Speaker 5: that we were in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a stunning place, isn't it really is?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: But you said you worked as a concept model maker
Speaker 2: on that was that? Did you ever consider that kind
Speaker 2: of step back compared to making stuff.
Speaker 4: For the screw? Not at all?
Speaker 5: Actually, And and actually I did both on the Star
Speaker 5: Trek Star Wars, but I was I couldn't.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't allow me to have two credits. So I
Speaker 4: had to choose the one. So I chose the concept
Speaker 4: model one. But so what is that exactly involved? Then?
Speaker 2: So you've got this drawing from Doug Chang and you
Speaker 2: just have to find the three dimensional yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he would design.
Speaker 5: He would say, oh, this is the important this is
Speaker 5: what how it was inspired, or here's what the details
Speaker 5: that are important to me or important to George and uh,
Speaker 5: and then we'd start off doing like a quick just
Speaker 5: foam model something all you know, maybe you know, five
Speaker 5: inches or something, and just do a few of them,
Speaker 5: shape them out of foam and then uh. And then
Speaker 5: we'd have our meetings with Georgie every Friday, and he
Speaker 5: would talk about what he liked or what he didn't like,
Speaker 5: and then we'd eventually roll into doing a larger model
Speaker 5: that was more finished, had details.
Speaker 4: And I have to say this, that was one of the.
Speaker 5: One of the times when I was really allowed to
Speaker 5: sort of indulge myself in the details. Because the we
Speaker 5: came up with the term of three D blueprints. Basically
Speaker 5: what we were doing was making it. Rather than making
Speaker 5: very loose models, we were making three D version, you know,
Speaker 5: versions of what was going to be used by the
Speaker 5: computer department, by the set department, by the model shop,
Speaker 5: and they all needed to match. So if we had
Speaker 5: a really loose model, then there might be some interpretation
Speaker 5: that didn't match up.
Speaker 4: And so the we ended up get.
Speaker 5: The luxury of kind of detailing them out to where
Speaker 5: we almost wanted them. There were some times there were
Speaker 5: off Oftentimes he said, I wish I could have a
Speaker 5: lot more time on that. Funny story, one of the sculptors,
Speaker 5: Robert Barnes, was doing a maquette and he he was
Speaker 5: one that he would work on it right up to
Speaker 5: the very last minute, and he was never done. And
Speaker 5: so one model we actually had to pick up off
Speaker 5: of his desk while he's still sculpting it and take
Speaker 5: it down the hall to the meeting because George was
Speaker 5: coming in like any moment now and he had to
Speaker 5: be there for it.
Speaker 4: So and that was the thing I minded to put
Speaker 4: all the detail you possibly could into these things. Couldn't
Speaker 4: let go of his baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right though in saying that, you know you
Speaker 2: were doing this model that was like a three D
Speaker 2: blueprint because in those films, and that film in particular,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking back now, I haven't seen it in a
Speaker 2: few years, but the full scale versions that the actors
Speaker 2: are sitting in do match the model versions, the CG versions.
Speaker 2: You don't really know where the line is on.
Speaker 3: A lot of that stuff. Good Yeah, well yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I was in it, you know, I was.
Speaker 2: I was not in it, but I was in that
Speaker 2: world when I was watching it as what was I
Speaker 2: eighteen when that came out. I think I love those
Speaker 2: designs to this day. I think Doug's work is fantastic,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that design team's work has really
Speaker 2: stood the test at time.
Speaker 5: And it was really nice because the well, for instance,
Speaker 5: Doug was really nice about letting you kind of take
Speaker 5: the ball and roll run with it. He would give
Speaker 5: you what was important to the design and then and
Speaker 5: then trust to you to fill it out to do
Speaker 5: the rest of it. Parts that weren't you know, they
Speaker 5: didn't always have drawings of everything, Like most of the
Speaker 5: robots didn't have feet, or they had really rough the
Speaker 5: sort of shading bits that sort of looked like a foot.
Speaker 5: So so I got to design the feet for all
Speaker 5: the robots that I did, So I put different different
Speaker 5: shoes on different robots for different It's like the Battle
Speaker 5: Droid they're wearing spats because they felt like they were
Speaker 5: more sort of like show you know, show soldiers. And
Speaker 5: then the Super Battle Droids have combat boots, and the
Speaker 5: the Pit Droids have sneakers, like high top sneakers.
Speaker 4: Those are sort of like things I got to do. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's cool.
Speaker 2: You know, you've already got this language of the universe,
Speaker 2: the styles universe, and then you're putting on another layer
Speaker 2: of another design language on top of that in a way,
Speaker 2: and were the sort of rules you felt you had
Speaker 2: to obey or well, I suppose you've already said it.
Speaker 2: Really that you had a bit of you know, you
Speaker 2: had a bit of leeway to add to your own
Speaker 2: flair to it if you like.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and like I said, Doug was very clear about
Speaker 5: things that were important or to keep an aesthetic style
Speaker 5: with something like the The Battle Droids, for instance, were
Speaker 5: inspired by the the Skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts,
Speaker 5: so they wanted to have this sort of gaunt thinness
Speaker 5: to them, sort of skeletal looking. They were originally bone
Speaker 5: white and then they changed it to us and color.
Speaker 5: And the Super Battle Droids there was some inspira inspiration
Speaker 5: with blades. So if you look at the forearm, it
Speaker 5: kind of has this sort of you know, knife like
Speaker 5: edge on it. Yeah, those were sort of things that
Speaker 5: he would kind of give you and let you run
Speaker 5: with it, and and and you know add that into
Speaker 5: the to the rest of the model.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: So you worked making models for the screen, You've worked
Speaker 2: in concept. I see that you've worked in the props
Speaker 2: department as well on movies.
Speaker 4: So yes, I've done some specialty props for things.
Speaker 5: On the last Matrix movie, I got to do the pills,
Speaker 5: and which was a sort of a strange little bit
Speaker 5: to do. And they because the first pills I think
Speaker 5: for the first films they came out that they wanted
Speaker 5: they were gel tabs, and and that was sort of
Speaker 5: a new thing, and so now they wanted something to
Speaker 5: look different because gel tabs are very common now, and
Speaker 5: so they wanted something that looked sort of metallic, and
Speaker 5: so that's what inspired those. Did some some rubber rubber
Speaker 5: ice cubes to get thrown into uh someone's face for
Speaker 5: a movie, and other.
Speaker 4: You know props like that.
Speaker 5: One prop for commercial that I really enjoyed doing was
Speaker 5: for a Nokia commercial.
Speaker 4: It was to tie in with.
Speaker 5: Men in Black and you remember the the Men in
Speaker 5: Black worm guys. Yes, So the puppets for those are
Speaker 5: actually oversized so that they can puppeteer them easier. So
Speaker 5: for the commercial, they needed an oversized cell phone for
Speaker 5: them to to use, and so I got to take
Speaker 5: a Nokia phone and scale it up like eight times
Speaker 5: or something like that.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: Kind of comically huge, but it had to look like
Speaker 5: a Nokia phone because it was an Nokia commercial. So
Speaker 5: you see, you can't make it not look like the
Speaker 5: actual product. So that was a lot of fun kind
Speaker 5: of taking something and and going the other direction that
Speaker 5: I'm used to going. It was like taking something small
Speaker 5: and making it big. Is both some big and make
Speaker 5: it small?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what what did you think people see as a
Speaker 2: kind of the John Duncan signature thing? That because it
Speaker 2: sounds like you've you've done such a range of things.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's bound to have been conversations without
Speaker 2: you hearing the way people said, you know, who's the
Speaker 2: guy for this? John Duncan could do this for you.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you think that is?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: Around the shop, I was known for being fast and detailed.
Speaker 5: That was that was my thing. John Goodson and I
Speaker 5: were both kind of that way. We ended up working
Speaker 5: in a lot of projects together. In fact, someone jokingly
Speaker 5: told us that they had a meeting where they're asking
Speaker 5: how many Johns would it take to do this project?
Speaker 5: And also because we had several Johns in the shop,
Speaker 5: because there was John Foreman, John Goodson, John Duncan you know.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing about the work that you did
Speaker 2: is it wasn't really built to last forever, right, These
Speaker 2: things were.
Speaker 3: Built for the screen for a couple of weeks and
Speaker 3: a couple of days.
Speaker 4: Shoot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the joke was if it falls apart after
Speaker 5: the camera stops rolling, it did its job. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: And yeah, they weren't.
Speaker 4: They weren't necessarily built to last.
Speaker 2: So what do you think about these people then who
Speaker 2: collect this stuff? You know, this stuff goes to walks
Speaker 2: and sell the sales for a fortune. In a way,
Speaker 2: they sort of need to be preserved for history. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, you know they're not. They're not
Speaker 2: these kind of gilded precious objects in a way that
Speaker 2: an antique is.
Speaker 5: Let's say, yeah, yeah, but it's they're they're their own
Speaker 5: pieces of art.
Speaker 4: In a way. Definitely. Yeah, there's so.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm a member of the Replica Prop Forum, so
Speaker 5: I interact on there a lot. And it's amazing what
Speaker 5: because they're some of these guys are are replicating the
Speaker 5: props that were built for the films, and the amount
Speaker 5: of research that they do have done is just remarkable,
Speaker 5: because when we're putting the models together, we're just digging
Speaker 5: through bins of parts and we often don't know what
Speaker 5: model the piece came off of, because it could just
Speaker 5: be like, oh, there were a couple of them loose
Speaker 5: in the bottom of the box. We used to have
Speaker 5: these big boxes upstairs at at ILM that were filled
Speaker 5: with the model park trees from different model kits, and
Speaker 5: then we had kits that we could open up brand
Speaker 5: new ones and stuff too. But then eventually the park
Speaker 5: trees would just ended up getting dumped into these boxes
Speaker 5: and you just dig through them and they'd be green
Speaker 5: and gray and blue and brown, and you just pluck
Speaker 5: off the parts you wanted and stick no.
Speaker 3: Idea where they came from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they people would just research the heck out
Speaker 5: of what kits were available and what the model trees
Speaker 5: it looked like. They'd look at the back of the
Speaker 5: piece sometimes and that's it's amazing what they've done, and
Speaker 5: I truly remarkable replicas of the ships. I take my
Speaker 5: hat off to them. It's amazing what they've done. It
Speaker 5: was so much, so much harder than what we did
Speaker 5: when we were making them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're reverse engineering it all, aren't they.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, I'm amazed at some of the stuff I've
Speaker 2: seen over the years at places like prop Store here
Speaker 2: in the in the UK. In London they had a
Speaker 2: few mountions this last year and got to see some
Speaker 2: of the things up close, which is such such cool items.
Speaker 2: And I do love that people kind of pour over
Speaker 2: them and research them, and you know, like Boba Fett's
Speaker 2: rifle was there, and it turns out the hilt was
Speaker 2: from a real World War two flamethrow or something.
Speaker 3: You know, somebody had found.
Speaker 2: That this chunk of wood that was taken out of
Speaker 2: it happened along, you know, decades and decades ago, and.
Speaker 3: It's just it it does kind of blow my mind.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know David Mandel as well, who you
Speaker 2: know paid three million dollars for an X wing, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's it's crazy money. But I never can understand what, Oh,
Speaker 2: you didn't know who bought it?
Speaker 4: No, I didn't. I never heard who bought it. I
Speaker 4: was I was wondering.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, David Mandel, Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's because it's really I mean, it's I mean Star
Speaker 5: Wars has made such an indelible mark on modern life
Speaker 5: that people people want that connection, and especially some of
Speaker 5: these things that that when they get out of the
Speaker 5: public arena, it's just it's it's yeah, they want to
Speaker 5: have it, and I remember, I will have it. I
Speaker 5: build replicas of things all the time. And it shifted
Speaker 5: a little bit when I actually started working on the
Speaker 5: real things. Then of course I wanted to build real things.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I still build replicas all the time.
Speaker 2: Just have you got is there one in particular that
Speaker 2: you have that you you really love having around?
Speaker 4: I would see there's a lot of them.
Speaker 5: I'm working on a Probe droid right now from Empire Strikes,
Speaker 5: and uh, there's there's there's those models that that just
Speaker 5: have a special connection for you. Like I have to
Speaker 5: finish painting it, but I have a model of the
Speaker 5: MTT from from the film.
Speaker 4: And it's it's a casting of one of the original ones.
Speaker 5: Well, long story so I made the original maquette of
Speaker 5: the MTT the Troop Transport, and it was about two
Speaker 5: feet long, and it actually ended up being used as
Speaker 5: a shooting model for when it coming out of the
Speaker 5: landing ship that they made casting molds the original and
Speaker 5: used it for that. But then we needed to make
Speaker 5: it in different sizes. So there's a six foot long
Speaker 5: version that I worked on with Brian Dewey, and then
Speaker 5: there's about an eight or a nine inch long version
Speaker 5: that's the one I have that I carved for a
Speaker 5: shot where they're all lined up I think in a
Speaker 5: hangar bay. And then somebody else made like a little
Speaker 5: about like inch and a half long version for another
Speaker 5: long shot. So there's like four different sizes of that
Speaker 5: particular ship, that particular vessel. So that one kind of
Speaker 5: has a place in my heart because it's just it's
Speaker 5: a neat looking thing.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of.
Speaker 5: A a railroad train and a charging elephant, So it's, uh,
Speaker 5: it's just I really enjoyed making that. I got to
Speaker 5: put a little fun bit on the as part of
Speaker 5: the detailing of it. It reminded me a little bit
Speaker 5: of when I was working on the on the the
Speaker 5: mackeat of it. It reminded me a little bit of
Speaker 5: the sand Crawler, and so kind of in my head,
Speaker 5: I was imagining that what if one of these had,
Speaker 5: you know, been destroyed on Tatooine and the Jawas.
Speaker 4: Had turned it sand crawl off the front or whatever.
Speaker 5: And uh so I actually went into the archives and
Speaker 5: took reference of the details on the top and so
Speaker 5: it's not exactly the same, but I mimicked some of
Speaker 5: the details on the top of the sand Crawler onto
Speaker 5: the top of the the MTT.
Speaker 4: That's very cool. Another fun story about the MTT is
Speaker 4: it's it's a it's a Honda. I'm very black of it.
Speaker 5: There's all this detail in this just greebally. First in
Speaker 5: the middle and at the very bottom of it is
Speaker 5: a Honda symbol that I stuck on the original mackead
Speaker 5: of it, and then when we built the six ft
Speaker 5: or six foot long version, we did another version with it.
Speaker 5: It also has was that from a from a model
Speaker 5: kit or was it just like a decal or something?
Speaker 5: I think that, yeah, the mackuette it was a model
Speaker 5: kit part that just the symbol, the nose emblem from
Speaker 5: some car and I just stuck it on there, and
Speaker 5: then when we did the big version, we were like, okay,
Speaker 5: we got a copy it, so what's the on there.
Speaker 2: I bet the probot is a hard one to do
Speaker 2: because that's quite individual design in a way. There's nothing
Speaker 2: else like it in those films. I mean, that's what
Speaker 2: I really like about those original films, actually, that everything
Speaker 2: feels like it was designed by many designers, you know,
Speaker 2: rather than like none overarching.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, and that and claws and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's and that.
Speaker 5: Fortunately for me, there's folks on the replica prop forum
Speaker 5: who've researched all those parts and have a list of like,
Speaker 5: here's all the kids you buy to build this, and
Speaker 5: you still have to make your own patterns and things,
Speaker 5: but that it's that's something I can do. But it's
Speaker 5: it's just, yeah, it makes life a lot easier having
Speaker 5: the fandom that has done all this legwork for me
Speaker 5: to do it again super big thanks to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet there are some model kits that are
Speaker 2: hard to find though, right, there must be. It must
Speaker 2: be getting to a point where trying to find a
Speaker 2: model kit that they used on an original ship or
Speaker 2: character or whatever.
Speaker 4: Back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some of them are and some of them are
Speaker 5: just ridiculously expensive too. Yeah, like, well, some of them
Speaker 5: are still in production. Like there's a lot of the
Speaker 5: Tamiya and Hasagawa kits that are still around. The c
Speaker 5: Lab kit was used for a number of different models
Speaker 5: and it went out of production and people were like
Speaker 5: hoarding them like their gold. And then but there's a
Speaker 5: company I think that's just actually re releasing that kit
Speaker 5: kind of almost specifically for the the scratch built model
Speaker 5: companies or fans that want to, you know, use it
Speaker 5: for Star Wars stuff, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: That's that. That's how it's happening. Yeah, that the comand
Speaker 4: comes from that world.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But then there's like these old was it uh,
Speaker 5: it's like a Porsche kit. I think it was a
Speaker 5: large scale Porsche kit. I think it's out of production
Speaker 5: and so trying to find one is like hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 4: So it's nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, pretty cool though.
Speaker 2: I love I love the level of research, the deep
Speaker 2: research you've been let's say, in the public eye with
Speaker 2: the with Adam Savage doing the R two build and stuff.
Speaker 2: I've seen that last week and that looked like a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. But I sort of wanted to no,
Speaker 2: because I looked at the viewing figures and it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, seven hundred thousand people have watched it
Speaker 2: or something. People love the kind of physical items that
Speaker 2: you guys build. So where do physical models still kind
Speaker 2: of win outright for you? And where does digital genuinely
Speaker 2: replace the need to have physical models.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, well, there's.
Speaker 5: As far as the industry is concerned, the models get
Speaker 5: used I think primarily as said, extensions and things now
Speaker 5: and then maybe for like specialty work like pyrotechnics and
Speaker 5: water because it takes a lot of process power to
Speaker 5: do particle effects like so water splashes and movements, fog
Speaker 5: and fire and that.
Speaker 4: Sort of thing.
Speaker 5: Those are all things, of course, you get for free
Speaker 5: with when you have an actual physical object. When the
Speaker 5: water splashes up against the side of it, it splashes
Speaker 5: just like water would splash. I know there are some
Speaker 5: directors who really like to use models still, and I think.
Speaker 4: There's also a desire.
Speaker 5: From the fans to have models. It just becomes sort
Speaker 5: of this physical touchstone I think to the production the
Speaker 5: so like even like shows like The Mandalorian or and
Speaker 5: or they they may not build models of every spaceship
Speaker 5: that's used in it, but they do do a couple
Speaker 5: and I think that is the production saying this is
Speaker 5: something the fans want and.
Speaker 4: So we're giving it. Yeah, I mean, and there's some
Speaker 4: things that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure the marketing department likes it as well because
Speaker 2: it creates a story around the film as well.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it to a certain demographic as well?
Speaker 4: And I think it's that.
Speaker 5: I think that's it's really good too because it lets
Speaker 5: other directors know that, hey, because I think model's got
Speaker 5: a reputation for being difficult to shoot, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 5: they're really time consuming and difficult to shoot, and you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes they can be. But it's again one more sort
Speaker 5: of a tool in the drawer, as it were, because
Speaker 5: computers are great for a lot of things, but when
Speaker 5: computers do everything, some things don't look quite right because
Speaker 5: it all comes down to the artists that are using
Speaker 5: it and the and the limits of the technology and
Speaker 5: the time. So that's I think it's it's it's important
Speaker 5: to know as a filmmaker what the proper tool is
Speaker 5: because you can do everything with you can't build a
Speaker 5: house with just a saw. Yeah, so's you gotta you
Speaker 5: gotta you gotta use the right thing for the right,
Speaker 5: the right to get the right thing.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 2: I like that line, like I like the line you
Speaker 2: can't build a house with justice all. I was looking
Speaker 2: through your films when I was doing a bit of
Speaker 2: research on you, and I was like, Okay, so Star Trek,
Speaker 2: Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Hulk, these are all
Speaker 2: like you know you so you've been in the Star
Speaker 2: Trek universe, the Star Wars universe, the Planet of the Apes,
Speaker 2: the Marvel though, although Hulk was kind of pre Marvel
Speaker 2: in a way before it kind of took.
Speaker 4: Off, like yeah, that was the angry Hulk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mission impossible. I mean, what's left?
Speaker 4: What's left?
Speaker 2: Like for you as a as a desire of a
Speaker 2: film to work on our franchise.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's funny because Pirates of the Caribbean came along and
Speaker 5: that was such a fun.
Speaker 4: Project for me. Sorry about the noise.
Speaker 2: My dog just I just had a dog snore.
Speaker 4: I've ah, he snorts like a pig.
Speaker 5: But I was gonna say, uh, Pirates of the kerb
Speaker 5: and was such a fun thing to work on because
Speaker 5: it was a big departure from all a lot of
Speaker 5: the things i'd done were you know, robots and spaceships
Speaker 5: and things like that, and sort of work on pirate
Speaker 5: ships was so fun.
Speaker 4: We even had.
Speaker 5: A a shipwright come and work with us who taught
Speaker 5: us all about tying knots and what the names of
Speaker 5: the sales were and all this sort of thing, and
Speaker 5: it was it was so much fun to learn all
Speaker 5: that stuff because it was, like I said, it was
Speaker 5: it was so different than you know, building a spaceship,
Speaker 5: which i'd done at a hundred times at that point.
Speaker 3: So now you've worked on a couple of those, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, three of them? Yeah, the first three? Oh three? Yeah,
Speaker 4: the first three.
Speaker 3: I always think there's three, that there's four.
Speaker 4: I think there's four or five. Yeah, yeah, at least four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you worked Yeah, so you worked on three.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the thing in those films, In those science fiction films,
Speaker 2: people expect visual effects, right, they expect models, and they
Speaker 2: expect computer graphics these days. But with a film like that,
Speaker 2: you don't expect effects necessarily, so you're not really looking
Speaker 2: for them as well, and it's a very different.
Speaker 4: Experience, I think for the for the.
Speaker 5: Viewer, and maybe it's more if nobody notices. Then you
Speaker 5: did the job, right, Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: You kind of Well, let's face it, you do want
Speaker 2: to show off a little bit. You want people to say, Wow,
Speaker 2: that was a that was a cool set piece or whatever,
Speaker 2: that was a cool ship. But you don't necessarily want
Speaker 2: them to say that that was clearly tense scale y.
Speaker 5: Or that was a really that was a crummy model,
Speaker 5: or that's what you want to say, or recognize it,
Speaker 5: or that looks a little off and I don't know why.
Speaker 5: That's that's what you don't want them to say. You
Speaker 5: want them to just see it excepted for being real
Speaker 5: and keep them in the movie.
Speaker 4: You know. That's that's that's what the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I saw that you worked on Wally Wally
Speaker 2: as well, doing models on that, so these are models
Speaker 2: to be scanned.
Speaker 5: Or well, that was actually it was a costume that
Speaker 5: I worked on for that one.
Speaker 4: Fred Willard was in in Wally and he's I think
Speaker 4: the first.
Speaker 5: Maybe only live action human in a Pixar film.
Speaker 4: He he played.
Speaker 5: I don't remember the name of the character or anything,
Speaker 5: but he was he was supposed to be telling there
Speaker 5: was a video that was watched on the ship in
Speaker 5: the in the Wally movie, and he was saying, you know,
Speaker 5: when the planet is safe for human habitation, you guys
Speaker 5: can all come back. And in the meantime, you know,
Speaker 5: and in the background there's a spaceship taking off and
Speaker 5: it's supposed to be like when all the humans are
Speaker 5: leaving Earth because it's uninhabitable, and he's saying, when it's
Speaker 5: all habitable again, you all come back and it'll be
Speaker 5: all great. Don't worry about a thing. And then he's
Speaker 5: like trying to skid out all out of there because
Speaker 5: it's not safe for him to be there anymore. But
Speaker 5: we shot that at thirty two ten Studios and the
Speaker 5: so the costume that he was wearing had like this
Speaker 5: chest play with the beeping lights and things on it,
Speaker 5: and that was that was what I built for that.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, Yeah, it seems like you've done lots of
Speaker 2: different disciplines over the years. But what would John Duncan
Speaker 2: have done if model making had not come along?
Speaker 3: What was what was oh the other path in your destiny?
Speaker 5: Well, when I was younger, my parents kept saying you
Speaker 5: should be an ear surgeon, because I was. I was
Speaker 5: always working a little tiny things, and so they thought
Speaker 5: working on the inner bones of an ear.
Speaker 4: Would be something that got it work for me. I
Speaker 4: don't think I would have enjoyed people are weird and
Speaker 4: squishy and blood and all that stuff. That's something I
Speaker 4: think I would enjoy working on.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like you made the right choice all
Speaker 2: along on the you know, it feels like you know,
Speaker 2: you set out with an intention and the sort of
Speaker 2: the path came to meet you almost, which is often
Speaker 2: the case when I speak to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. It was. I didn't I didn't set
Speaker 4: out to go work for ILM.
Speaker 5: I I thought that was a cool thing, and I thought,
Speaker 5: you know, when when I realized it was actually a career,
Speaker 5: I did think about, like, oh, that would be cool
Speaker 5: to do, but I never thought it would be something
Speaker 5: that I would do. And then life just kept sort
Speaker 5: of diverting me that way, and and it was I mean,
Speaker 5: I I just kept going with it.
Speaker 4: That was the thing I I tried to say.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was my chat there with John Duncan. Thanks
Speaker 2: so much to John for his time and for his
Speaker 2: dog snorting on the recording.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: One's there's something about hearing from people who are you know,
Speaker 2: were right there in the physical era of effects work,
Speaker 2: building things with their hands, solving problems on the fly,
Speaker 2: figuring out how to make something look right for the camera,
Speaker 2: you know, not just for the eye. And John's got
Speaker 2: that great perspective of having seen the shift from physical
Speaker 2: into digital without losing sight of what makes physical stuff
Speaker 2: so valuable. And this is not an anti CGI podcast.
Speaker 2: I find it interesting to talk to people who've had
Speaker 2: hands on I like talking to people who are coming
Speaker 2: up with new digital effects. This podcast is very much
Speaker 2: about celebrating that that creative mind and whatever the tool is.
Speaker 2: So if you enjoyed that episode or any of the others,
Speaker 2: please do share it around, tell a friend, or leave
Speaker 2: a rating or review wherever you're listening Patreon, dot Com,
Speaker 2: forward slash Jamie Benning as well. It's just gonna help
Speaker 2: more people find the show. All Right, that's it for
Speaker 2: this episode. Thanks for joining me, and I hope you
Speaker 2: can do so for the next episode of the Film
Speaker 2: You Mentors podcast.
Speaker 3: Red Thingy Moving toward the Green Thingy? What red thing
Speaker 3: you moving towards the Green thing.
Speaker 1: I think I think really green Thingy weird in a way.
Speaker 1: Media