Speaker 1: Weird Being Way Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode one hundred and fifty two of the
Speaker 2: Formiamentary's podcast. This is Jamie Benning talking to you here
Speaker 2: from my house in London, England. It's the twenty eighth
Speaker 2: of July and this is the first episode for a
Speaker 2: little while. So firstly an apology. Things just got a
Speaker 2: bit crazy around with work and family and fiftieth birthdays
Speaker 2: and then had a few health things going on, so yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's just it just slipped past me. I just
Speaker 2: couldn't find the time to get the podcast edited and uploaded.
Speaker 2: But the good news is this is a great episode.
Speaker 2: If you're a first time listener, welcome. The podcast is
Speaker 2: dedicated to preserving film history the stories behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: and you can treat this in the one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty one episodes before it as an archive of entertainment
Speaker 2: and research. I hope you find it enjoyable. For the
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Speaker 2: just me. You know. This is a small, dependent podcast
Speaker 2: and it thrives on your help in spreading the word. Now,
Speaker 2: for this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with
Speaker 2: John Goodson. John is a model maker and a digital
Speaker 2: artist who spent more than three decades at ILM. It's
Speaker 2: recently working on Mandaloriin and Grogo. But you worked on
Speaker 2: Star Treks and Star Wars prequels and Rogue one and Transformers,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of stuff, and we talk about his
Speaker 2: sort of childhood obsessions with Lost in Space and Staralog
Speaker 2: magazine and how a friendship formed which eventually led him
Speaker 2: to ILM's door, and the first terrifying few days in
Speaker 2: the model shop, which he goes into some detail about.
Speaker 2: And also there's a great story about a decommissioned Air
Speaker 2: Force base, a thirty three foot Zeppelin model, some kerosene
Speaker 2: and a cherry picker. Yeah, and the disaster that ensued. This,
Speaker 2: by the way, is part one of two. John is
Speaker 2: in a situation where he can't always get a good
Speaker 2: connection at the moment, so we actually lost the call
Speaker 2: connection and couldn't get it reestablished the night that we
Speaker 2: did this, And he's agreed to come back on and
Speaker 2: talk more about the later work as well. So you're
Speaker 2: here right at the end there you'll just hear him
Speaker 2: stop talking mid sentence, but hopefully it's tantalizing enough to
Speaker 2: want to listen to part two when that comes along.
Speaker 2: So here's part one of my conversation with John Goodson,
Speaker 2: and I'll be back at the end for a bit
Speaker 2: more jabbering on John. Actually, I'm going to just bring
Speaker 2: up before we start. I actually met you very briefly
Speaker 2: at Skywalker Ranch in twenty twenty three. I was being
Speaker 2: given a tour by one Max Smith and Lawn Peterson, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Lorn and you. You were surprised to see Lawn.
Speaker 2: I think you were in the middle of shipping stuff
Speaker 2: out of the archive. Maybe there was some museum stuff involved,
Speaker 2: but I think at that point he said, oh, you
Speaker 2: should get John on the podcast. And it's only taken
Speaker 2: us two years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Well, I met the ranch pretty much every
Speaker 1: single day, and Laurren would just appear and I'm like,
Speaker 1: why don't you tell me you're coming, you know.
Speaker 2: So I was surprised when he just yeah, that was
Speaker 2: really sweet of him. I said I was coming, and
Speaker 2: I'd interviewed him a couple of times, and he said, oh,
Speaker 2: I'll come and I'll give you a tour, you know,
Speaker 2: and he just turned up.
Speaker 1: And it was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very good, right, John, Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining me. I love your work. I love to speak
Speaker 2: to people's work I really admire. But I also want
Speaker 2: to sort of go back to the beginning and find
Speaker 2: out like where this was all sparked from. Did you
Speaker 2: live in a kind of creative household, were you a
Speaker 2: creative kid? Where was that kind of first spark of
Speaker 2: imagination to end to the industry?
Speaker 1: The thing? Okay, so the thing I remember clearly was
Speaker 1: when I was about three years old, there was an
Speaker 1: episode of Lost in Space called the Derelict that came on,
Speaker 1: and it had the Jupiter two gets taken into this
Speaker 1: giant alien spacecraft and once it's inside, it was all
Speaker 1: dark and kind of creepy and the Jupiter too basically
Speaker 1: filled frame and that made such an impression on me
Speaker 1: when I was really little, And that's the first thing
Speaker 1: like that that I can recall. Then the other thing
Speaker 1: was that somebody gave us a three page color flyer
Speaker 1: about the Saturn fire rocket. Is that was when the
Speaker 1: Moon missions. You know, that was all sort of and
Speaker 1: that was all coming together and those were really intriguing.
Speaker 1: And then my dad was in the Air Force and
Speaker 1: he was a surgeon. My mother was a homemaker, but
Speaker 1: she did paintings for the sculpture, so that there was
Speaker 1: that window into you can make stuff, you know, And
Speaker 1: so we moved to this we were on Air Force
Speaker 1: Base and the next door in the was a fighter pilot.
Speaker 3: He got me watching Star Trek.
Speaker 1: And somebody got me a copy of the book The
Speaker 1: Making a Star Trek, and I was five or six,
Speaker 1: and so I got right away this stuff wasn't real,
Speaker 1: you know, but there was an industry where people did
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I thought that was fascinating, and so
Speaker 1: I remember space In nineteen ninety nine, I begged my grandmother.
Speaker 1: We were in a grocery store and there was star
Speaker 1: Log I think was issue number seven, and it had
Speaker 1: a picture of X winging the Tie Fighter on the cover.
Speaker 1: It was that promotional shot that used all the time.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what Star Wars was, but there
Speaker 1: were pictures in there of Brian Johnson and Nick Alder
Speaker 1: with the Eagle spacecraft models from nineteen ninety nine, and
Speaker 1: that was what I wanted because it was there wasn't
Speaker 1: much reference available. You didn't find pictures where you saw
Speaker 1: people relative to the miniatures, and here these guys were
Speaker 1: holding these three different sizes of Eagles, and I was
Speaker 1: just that was I had to have it. So she
Speaker 1: bought it for me, and then in there with the
Speaker 1: story about this movie called Star Wars and I thought,
Speaker 1: this looks really interesting. So I was there opening day
Speaker 1: and saw it, and then it was in the theater,
Speaker 1: and back then the movies would stand theaters for like
Speaker 1: a year, and I think I saw thirty one times
Speaker 1: in a year. And I would start writing letters to Island, going, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to come and work for you guys.
Speaker 3: They'd write me back then, thank you for your inquiry.
Speaker 1: Your letter's on file. You don't need to write us anymore.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I was fourteen years old, but
Speaker 1: so that was kind of where it all really got gone.
Speaker 1: And in the back of the art of books that
Speaker 1: came out back then, and again there wasn't that much
Speaker 1: reference information. The art of books were gold because they
Speaker 1: had photographs of the models, the matte paintings, costumes, artwork,
Speaker 1: and in the back there were bios of a lot
Speaker 1: of the people that worked on them. And in this
Speaker 1: bios a lot of it was theory, either architecture or
Speaker 1: industrial arts. And so that was kind of how taylored
Speaker 1: by college curriculum. I went to in c State, the
Speaker 1: School Design, and you know, frankly, that was really interesting,
Speaker 1: but the stuff I was doing school design didn't really.
Speaker 3: Changed any of that much in terms of what I
Speaker 3: wanted to do in terms of building marbles.
Speaker 1: So that was how they got gone. So and then
Speaker 1: it led to a job at Ilanic.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you didn't have a chance, really, John,
Speaker 2: I knew what.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do very clearly. I knew what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. It was just well in my dad
Speaker 1: bless him, he's a surgeon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds like you had the right influences
Speaker 2: there from your parents as well. You know, you've got
Speaker 2: the kind of artistic side, you've got the technical side.
Speaker 2: It's sort of approaching you from both sides, and you've
Speaker 2: got that perfect combination of engineer and artists. But how
Speaker 2: did you then? You know, having the intention to get
Speaker 2: into that field is one thing, and being knocked back,
Speaker 2: of course, is something that often happens when you write
Speaker 2: letters to these companies. How did you sort of end
Speaker 2: up at ILM? What was that story?
Speaker 1: So? I went to high school with the fullen name
Speaker 1: Tony Hudson, and Tony and I we kind of recreated
Speaker 1: the Hath the Walker battle. So he built a big
Speaker 1: snow set in my one of my bedroom and we
Speaker 1: had a folding picnic table, and that whole top of
Speaker 1: that was snow. We had another table behind it there
Speaker 1: was snow, so we could stand up between the tables
Speaker 1: to do the animation. And I built three different sized walkers,
Speaker 1: and the walkers they made a poster, paper, cardboard, and
Speaker 1: mattboard because paper was the medium I could afford to
Speaker 1: work in. But one of the walkers was about the
Speaker 1: size of the film. It was about twenty two inches,
Speaker 1: and there was a nine inch and there was a
Speaker 1: really tiny one which I still have. And we made
Speaker 1: a little beam splitter so we could add in lasers
Speaker 1: and things like that. And so we did that stuff together.
Speaker 1: And you know, at that point, I was like seventh
Speaker 1: grade or something like that, and we both said, you know,
Speaker 1: if either one of us gets to Island, we got
Speaker 1: to let the other guy know. Well. A few years later,
Speaker 1: it was been about eighty five, I think Tony got
Speaker 1: hired in the creature shop, and so I came out,
Speaker 1: spent five weeks and stayed on Tony's couch and went
Speaker 1: to work with him pretty much every day. And I
Speaker 1: got this spend an hour with Greg Jean, and Greg
Speaker 1: Jean was the model supervisor and close encounters nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1: He worked on most of Kris Nolan's movies until his
Speaker 1: passing about three years ago. But he's big in Star
Speaker 1: Trek and Greg was a huge model, script prop artwork collector. Huge.
Speaker 1: Greg had two houses that were side by side with
Speaker 1: two car garages. The yards were full, the houses were full,
Speaker 1: the garages were full. There was a van in the driveway.
Speaker 2: This full.
Speaker 1: And he had five storage units. I mean it was
Speaker 1: and when you looked at and it was piles of stuff,
Speaker 1: but I mean when you look at it's like, is
Speaker 1: that the original.
Speaker 3: Of this or that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's it. It was unbelievable. And so I
Speaker 1: got an hour with Greg.
Speaker 3: He was working on batteries not included at ILM at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Got an hour of Steve Gowing, hour with Charlie Bailey,
Speaker 1: power with Isojung, and an hour with Warren Peterson. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're all really great. There wasn't a job
Speaker 1: at the time, but Greg said, he goes, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a year left in school. He goes, go
Speaker 1: back and finish school. This is going to be here
Speaker 1: when you get back. So I did, and that was
Speaker 1: good advice. And Greg was a really good mentor all
Speaker 1: through my career at a lovely human being, one of
Speaker 1: the nicest people I've ever met and always supportive, and
Speaker 1: he helped get me into the academy. He got me
Speaker 1: connected with Paramount, so I was restoring what Star Trek
Speaker 1: stuff they still have. So over the years has been
Speaker 1: a number of things I've done for them, but he
Speaker 1: was just a great influence. But that was really good advice.
Speaker 1: So back in finished school and then moved back out
Speaker 1: here without a job and got here and got hired
Speaker 1: to come in for a week on Body Worse, which
Speaker 1: was like Star to Wars, but you get miniaturized and
Speaker 1: put into the human body. And so in that week
Speaker 1: kind of segued into about thirty one years as an
Speaker 1: employee of Lucasfilm.
Speaker 2: So you joined the Model shop there in the kind
Speaker 2: of in the peak of its influence in a way.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're working alongside Bill George and on peaceing
Speaker 2: and like you said, you know you contemporaries in Greg
Speaker 2: Gene as well. What was the culture of that shop
Speaker 2: like at the time, and you know, what did you
Speaker 2: absorb from those people that still kind of informs the
Speaker 2: way you were today.
Speaker 1: I learned so much from those folks, and it was
Speaker 1: really interesting. The model shop was a great place to
Speaker 1: be because people shared what they knew, and we had
Speaker 1: so many people from so many different backgrounds, and all
Speaker 1: those different things combine. I mean, it's alchemy, all these
Speaker 1: things combined to make magic, you know. And you know,
Speaker 1: people literally came from such random and different backgrounds and
Speaker 1: all of that played into it. Everybody's life experience played
Speaker 1: into it, and people were very sharing and you just
Speaker 1: learned constantly. And I always had this vision in my
Speaker 1: head that I've got this thing. It's like a quiver.
Speaker 1: You put arrows into it, but it actually hangs under
Speaker 1: my arm and you would learn something, you'd put that
Speaker 1: in your quiver, you know, and you're constantly feeding this thing.
Speaker 1: And when I got to ILM, I thought I knew
Speaker 1: how to paint. I did not know how to paint.
Speaker 1: And I got there and I was really perplexed because
Speaker 1: they used this hideous paint called railroad colors, and everything
Speaker 1: was kind of matt and ugly, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this stuff is terrible. That was because of blue screen,
Speaker 1: you couldn't have reflective surfaces and so and by working
Speaker 1: then environment with people like Bill and Lauren, Larry, Tan
Speaker 1: and Steve and all those guys. By osmosis, you learn,
Speaker 1: you start, you get a sense of what things are
Speaker 1: supposed to look like, you know how what level of
Speaker 1: texture does it have or need to have to look
Speaker 1: good on film. And so just by the process of
Speaker 1: being immersed in that environment and working with all these
Speaker 1: incredibly talented people, you learned how to develop that look.
Speaker 1: And it was one of the things the Model Shop
Speaker 1: was so wonderful because it was all about problem solving
Speaker 1: and that was what made it really interesting. But you
Speaker 1: also worked with such a wonderful group of people. And
Speaker 1: what I think is really interesting is the Model Shop
Speaker 1: still gets together on a regular basis. We see each
Speaker 1: other more than once a year, you know, and that
Speaker 1: is something that Model Shop has been disbanded for like
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen years, and essentially it's this big extended family,
Speaker 1: you know. And I am so thankful for all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen some of those fighttoes that to get together,
Speaker 2: as they always looks like there's so much well, you've
Speaker 2: got so much shed experience. You just got this kind
Speaker 2: of shared language language with each other. You can see
Speaker 2: that there's love between all of you and admiration for
Speaker 2: each other's work, and it looks like a really friendly environment.
Speaker 2: But when you first walked in there, I mean, you're
Speaker 2: in this place you've dreamed of being. What was the
Speaker 2: first thing you were tasked with doing? And did you
Speaker 2: feel nervous? Did you feel like I'm up to this was?
Speaker 2: What was that first day?
Speaker 1: Like? Oh? Spirit shitless? I mean, you know, I got
Speaker 1: there Larry Tan, Larry Tam was too week started was
Speaker 1: doing the Body Worst ride. And so I got there
Speaker 1: in the morning and I went into reception and Larry
Speaker 1: came down and met me, and he said, okay, wait
Speaker 1: down here, Jeff ma'am will come and get you. I
Speaker 1: had met Jeff when i'd been there previously at eighty six,
Speaker 1: when I was there visiting staying with Tony. So this
Speaker 1: was August of eighty eight. So I sat in the
Speaker 1: lobby and Jeff never materialized, and it got to be lunchtime,
Speaker 1: and here came Larry trotting through the front office and
Speaker 1: he goes, did Jeff not come down? He goes, no,
Speaker 1: I never saw him. He goes, well, come with me,
Speaker 1: so he just follow me. So I start following Larry
Speaker 1: and he goes, I'm going to give me to Steve. Golly.
Speaker 1: Steve hats rookies, just so you know, and I'm like great.
Speaker 1: So he takes me in the wood shop and there's Steve,
Speaker 1: and Steve hands me this piece of paper with the
Speaker 1: miniaturization platform and he goes Bill disk and he walked out.
Speaker 1: I don't know where the bathroom is, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to get back out of the building. I don't
Speaker 1: know where anything is, you know. I'm standing in the
Speaker 1: wood shop by myself, and I'm like okay. So I
Speaker 1: walked out in the hall and I saw Dennis barn
Speaker 1: where I recognized from seeing him on making of you know,
Speaker 1: and I said, can you can you point me to
Speaker 1: the model shop, said Natal. He took me up to
Speaker 1: the model shop and I went in and Bill George
Speaker 1: was in there. So Bill and I talked for a
Speaker 1: minute and I said, we're going to make this thing.
Speaker 1: He goes, well, why don't you sit? Here was Eric
Speaker 1: Christensen's old desk. Eric Eric was not there anymore. So
Speaker 1: I sat at Eric's desk and for three days I
Speaker 1: tried to be the invisible man, because I thought if
Speaker 1: they figure out him in here, they got to throw
Speaker 1: me out. So I started building the miniaturization platform, but
Speaker 1: as quietly and as visibly as I could. And on
Speaker 1: the third day, I think I was going to use
Speaker 1: the restaurant. I ran into Jeff in the hall and goes, hey,
Speaker 1: was I supposed to talk to you? I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: do I work here? And goes oh, yeah, yeah you're
Speaker 1: working here? Like okay, good. So for three days I
Speaker 1: had no idea if it was really there or not.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning.
Speaker 2: Wow, baptism of fire. Steve really sort of druped you
Speaker 2: in there and just said single swim. Was that was
Speaker 2: that very Steve?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, kind of. I mean I know Steve really well.
Speaker 1: I see Steve pretty regularly, so you know, he's just
Speaker 1: it was just like Bourne said he where Larry said
Speaker 1: he he hates rookies, and I was like, okay, give
Speaker 1: me the drawing. If he walked out, I'm like okay,
Speaker 1: and I I have no idea what to do. I
Speaker 1: don't know where to go, you know, but I was
Speaker 1: able to do it, so it all worked out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure being so keen and so young as well,
Speaker 2: that you were putting in the hours. I mentioned, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it was a dream come true to
Speaker 1: be there. Like I said, I tried to be invisible
Speaker 1: for those for three days because I thought, if they
Speaker 1: figure out I'm here, they're gonna throw me out, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: you know, when I actually had a job, I was
Speaker 1: like this, that was incredible. I mean, I mean I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. You know, here are all these people,
Speaker 1: because you know, there wasn't that much making up stuff.
Speaker 1: When Star Wars came along, there was a lot more
Speaker 1: of that. Not that there was that much of it,
Speaker 1: but that sort of stuff wound up on regular television.
Speaker 1: There were these specials where it's all about the making
Speaker 1: of Star Wars. So these were these guys I was watching.
Speaker 1: They were showing all these instinct and here I was
Speaker 1: in the same space with them. It. I mean, I
Speaker 1: still don't believe it. I was sitting there. The other night,
Speaker 1: I took my daughter to the premiere of Mandalorian and
Speaker 1: I went to that. I mean, I'm living on this ship.
Speaker 1: I don't have a great wardrobe. I wore a Sampedro
Speaker 1: t shirt that had the walker and one of the
Speaker 1: cargo cranes here and it says I am your father.
Speaker 1: That's why I were the premiere. I also didn't expect
Speaker 1: to be doing kind of like fifteen minutes where you
Speaker 1: get there, get this text and we'll send you to
Speaker 1: the press and photo. Ay. I'm like, I didn't come
Speaker 1: dressed for that, so wound up doing it. But I
Speaker 1: was there when the movie ended, you know. John Fiber
Speaker 1: came out at the beginning and spoke to everybody, and
Speaker 1: and and the credits were rolling, and I saw my
Speaker 1: credit go by, And it doesn't seem real that I'm
Speaker 1: in the film business. And it's been thirty six years,
Speaker 1: but it still doesn't seem real. It's such a dream
Speaker 1: come true, it really is. It's just I am thankful
Speaker 1: for every did of it, you know, and I'm so
Speaker 1: aware of how lucky I was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Do you remember that first moment of seeing
Speaker 2: your work on the screen? Oh, that was mine?
Speaker 1: Do you remember There's a strange thing that goes on
Speaker 1: with that where I always have a disconnect because I
Speaker 1: see this stuff on screen, I'm like, that can't be
Speaker 1: the one I built. I mean's just something there's some
Speaker 1: magical intermediary process that happens, and one on screen is
Speaker 1: something different. I still get that vibe. But yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was funny the Manda movie. It was
Speaker 1: really gratifying to see that ship on screen because we
Speaker 1: really get to see it. And you know, we went
Speaker 1: from a model shop of you know, a model shop
Speaker 1: covered around between forty and sixty people, and we ballooned
Speaker 1: up to something like one hundred and ten during phanom Menace,
Speaker 1: and a model like that would have involved you know,
Speaker 1: thirty maybe forty people because you had you know, sculptors, electricians,
Speaker 1: mold makers, painters, you know, all these different things. And
Speaker 1: now it's me and Dan Petrescu putting these things together.
Speaker 1: Every time we do it, I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how we're doing this. I don't know how we're pulling
Speaker 1: it off. So yeah, it's it's pretty interesting, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of sad too because I miss I miss those people.
Speaker 1: I missed that.
Speaker 3: I miss getting to work together like that a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, that was what and that's why we also
Speaker 1: get together because we really we really integrated as a
Speaker 1: group and it you know, and you really those relationships
Speaker 1: mean a tremendous amount, and I miss getting to work
Speaker 1: with him Larry Tan. Larry's the guy that hired me. Larry.
Speaker 1: Actually I asked Larry if he come and helped us
Speaker 1: some on Mando, and he came in for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks and helped us out with some things. And
Speaker 1: that was fantastic because Larry had not worked on a
Speaker 1: he hadn't worked on film in twenty five years, so
Speaker 1: that was really sweet having him there.
Speaker 2: So wow, yeah, great to bring into that experience, you know,
Speaker 2: working together. As you say, I mean, yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: thing when you're working on these jobs that can be
Speaker 2: quite intense. Having you know, just good people around you
Speaker 2: such a difference. As I work in live TV and
Speaker 2: it can be very stressful. You know, I work on
Speaker 2: Formula one, so I have, like you know, there could
Speaker 2: be five hundred million people watching a race, and if
Speaker 2: I do something wrong, everybody sees it. So having good
Speaker 2: people around you to support you and kind of you
Speaker 2: keep you kind of level, is so important, is there.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that when you first arrived at ILM
Speaker 2: that you were you surprised by the amount of or
Speaker 2: the lack of time that you had to work on things,
Speaker 2: because obviously there's a deadline. You've got to get this
Speaker 2: this model finished. Was that a surprise to you, as
Speaker 2: having been somebody who was a hobbyist up to that point.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember it being really I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember the first big thing that I did was
Speaker 1: I was going to build a model of the Titanic
Speaker 1: for Ghostbusters too, and the model was eighteen feet long,
Speaker 1: m and I was hesitant to get started. I did
Speaker 1: a full sized drawing of it, you know, and I
Speaker 1: kept messling with the drawing stuff from Bill. George said,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to actually build it. You gotta
Speaker 1: stop doing this, you gotta build it. So I had,
Speaker 1: because I was says in it to do it. And
Speaker 1: once it got going, it was great, you know, no problem.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean yeah, and film work is such
Speaker 1: a different animal, and you know the production needs, especially
Speaker 1: when you get on stage. I mean, my god, you
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, they're paying stage mental, they're paying
Speaker 1: for the lighting package, epe grips, everybody, all those people
Speaker 1: are there, and when they're waiting on you all that money,
Speaker 1: there's a taxi meter at the front of the thing
Speaker 1: that's spending at an incredible rate. And if they're waiting
Speaker 1: on you, you don't see that, and so it was
Speaker 1: amazing to me something could happen on stage in twenty
Speaker 1: minutes that could have taken two or three days in
Speaker 1: the shop. But there there's an intensity to it. You're
Speaker 1: literally shaking because you're operating. It's pure adrenaline. You're such
Speaker 1: a high speed. And it was funny. A few years back,
Speaker 1: Paul Houston and I wound up doing something for the
Speaker 1: Agent Carter series from Marvel, and it was a couple
Speaker 1: of DC threes, Yeah, and it was two shots, one
Speaker 1: of them on the ground and snow so them. We're
Speaker 1: just monogram kits I bought and we put it in
Speaker 1: baking soad on a four by four sheep and we'd
Speaker 1: move it five degrees, photograph at each you know, each
Speaker 1: one of those increments. And then we had another one
Speaker 1: that we hung on wires, whereas on fishing line they
Speaker 1: had motors in it. It was a flying shot and
Speaker 1: you know, trying to puppeteer this thing. You know, we
Speaker 1: went from being this company that had the the state
Speaker 1: of the art must control equipment to Paul and Arrow
Speaker 1: down there, he's got a handheld camera. We got a
Speaker 1: model hanging on fishing line trying to make it look
Speaker 1: like it's gently turning, which doesn't just turn you start
Speaker 1: to do anything to it starts wiggling into it, all
Speaker 1: this stuff. And he said, I can't believe it's come
Speaker 1: to this. I'm like, I know, it's pathetic, but he said,
Speaker 1: and look around, nobody's in a hurry. Everybody on the
Speaker 1: stage was just kind of hanging out. It's like we're
Speaker 1: so used to when you're on stage, you're on fire,
Speaker 1: and he's like, nobody here. This is not that. It's
Speaker 1: not the culture anymore, you know, it's very different. So
Speaker 1: and we got the shot and it was just it
Speaker 1: was just kind of I thought, this is this is
Speaker 1: pitiful fishing line and handheld camera. Really, So it's been
Speaker 1: great to go back and do their TV show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and have John build these most control cameras and
Speaker 1: so we kind of have that the capability. Again.
Speaker 2: The thing is when that taxi meets is taking along,
Speaker 2: as you said, it just has to get done, doesn't
Speaker 2: it Like live TV that I work in. I'm amazed
Speaker 2: we get on air sometimes. You know, there can be
Speaker 2: so much planning and so many sort of obstacles and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it's like, oh, we've got
Speaker 2: ten minutes and bam we're on air and it's everyone's
Speaker 2: firing on all cylinders. Somehow it just comes together. Was
Speaker 2: there ever a time, and you don't have to say
Speaker 2: a specific time, but was there ever a time where
Speaker 2: you know, you really felt like it didn't come together?
Speaker 1: Yeah? There are a couple. Rocketeer was one where, Yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Story just interested to know because you know, I think
Speaker 2: we just assume that everyone is always you know, always
Speaker 2: gets there in the end, but sometimes it just doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Things do sort of for down around you don't.
Speaker 1: We did get there in the end, but so this
Speaker 1: was an interesting story if you ever heard. So there
Speaker 1: was a thirty three foot model of the Hindenburg which
Speaker 1: was called the Luxembourg in the film, and we had
Speaker 1: it took about eight months and it was a you know,
Speaker 1: Steve Gay was doing that and I think Arakila and
Speaker 1: Mike Fulmer and it was a huge project to build it.
Speaker 1: And then Larry Tannet and Richard Miller and I came
Speaker 1: in and did the skinning of it. Because it was
Speaker 1: a wooden quarter inch apple ply plywood that was laser
Speaker 1: cut for the internal framework. So there's this complete framework
Speaker 1: inside of it, and then that was covered with like
Speaker 1: black cheese cloth, black fish net, and then on top
Speaker 1: of that we used this aerial called solar text and
Speaker 1: it's a synthetic fabric in its heat train. So you know,
Speaker 1: Larry and Richard would stand either into the zeppelin and
Speaker 1: I would give one of them this two foot roll
Speaker 1: of stuff and we'd roll it out, and we cut
Speaker 1: off about a forty foot length of it and then
Speaker 1: had a clear film on it, and I would walk
Speaker 1: that off depending on which direction I went. When I
Speaker 1: got the end of that, I had a massive static
Speaker 1: charge on me, so I would zapp either Larry or Richard.
Speaker 1: They knew it was coming and there's nothing they could do.
Speaker 1: They couldn't put it in. But so we skinned this
Speaker 1: thing and then I painted it. Took a week to
Speaker 1: paint it, and I'm a fullick on scaffolding with a
Speaker 1: bank skun running back and forth painting this thing. It's
Speaker 1: like a tractor trailer trailer, you know, not quite that big,
Speaker 1: but big. And then we took it out to an
Speaker 1: Air Force base that's local here, that was decommissioned and
Speaker 1: we had an unobstructed skyline and the thing they had
Speaker 1: filmed live action elements of the tier and his girlfriend
Speaker 1: running from the bad guy on top of the zeppelin,
Speaker 1: and so it's exploding right behind him. So starting at
Speaker 1: the nose that's going towards the tail. When they get
Speaker 1: to the tail, Howard Hughes flies over in a pit
Speaker 1: care and auto gyro and they jump onto the rope
Speaker 1: ladder and fly away as the back of the zeppelin
Speaker 1: explodes and it crashes. So they'd already filmed the live
Speaker 1: action of all that stuff. So now we have the model.
Speaker 1: So we took it out there and they were going
Speaker 1: to load ten bombs in it. There were kerosene and
Speaker 1: black powder, and there were six openings in the bottom
Speaker 1: of that model where it connected to a dolly we
Speaker 1: could drive it around with just to move it. And
Speaker 1: we said before we were going to take lunch or dinner,
Speaker 1: whatever is. It's like two am the night shut We
Speaker 1: said to the power guys before you guys loaded up
Speaker 1: with pyro. When you pick it up, let us come
Speaker 1: and close the bottom. Oh yeah, yeah, So we break
Speaker 1: for the meal. We come back. It's twenty five feet
Speaker 1: in the air. It's got ten black powder and kerosene
Speaker 1: bombs in it. There's kerosene running out of the holes,
Speaker 1: and now we got to go up there and iron
Speaker 1: and we're using the irons that are plugged in iron
Speaker 1: the bottom shut and so you know, we go to
Speaker 1: the cherry picker and the Bob Finley Senior he comes
Speaker 1: by and he goes, if she flashes five second light
Speaker 1: for the explosion, I'm like, oh. And then Dave parent
Speaker 1: who's driving the cherry picker, I mean, goes.
Speaker 3: Flashes a five second land cherry picker.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, what are we gonna do? And
Speaker 1: he goes, well, we jump and I'm like, and what
Speaker 1: it blows up and falls on us, and he goes, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: they gave us these Nomac suits that put your face
Speaker 1: in your hands, you know, because you don't need those.
Speaker 1: And we went up and there's a picture of me
Speaker 1: in Cineffects magazine with the iron, like just with this
Speaker 1: mortified look on my face, ironing this thing shut. And
Speaker 1: there's literally kerosene running out in the holes, and I
Speaker 1: think Charlie Bailey and one of the teamsters was in
Speaker 1: the other picker. So we got it all sealed up,
Speaker 1: didn't blow up. We get back down. Now you got
Speaker 1: about ninety people out there. You got fans, smoke, blowers, lights,
Speaker 1: all this equipment, and I think we had six high
Speaker 1: speed cameras and every one of those cameras you have
Speaker 1: to get a speed call off O, because shoot three
Speaker 1: hundred a second. And once you get all six speed
Speaker 1: calls action, then you know. So they went through all that,
Speaker 1: we'll do this. We'll turn on the fan, the smoke lower,
Speaker 1: all this, blah blah blah. We'll get the speed calls
Speaker 1: and on action. It will go one through ten, and
Speaker 1: when it gets to ten, there's a guy whose own
Speaker 1: job is to push a button that'll cut the two
Speaker 1: cables and we'll fall out a frame. So okay, everybody
Speaker 1: gets going, fans, smoke, going, action, speed and boom and
Speaker 1: it goes one and ten and the guy cuts the
Speaker 1: cable and it falls out of frame and it blows
Speaker 1: up on the ground and in fifteen seconds. I think
Speaker 1: it took eight months to build it. In fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: it is this charred rubble pile that iron I stuck
Speaker 1: into a dumpster the size of a desk. The next day,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gone. And that was the climax of
Speaker 1: the movie. And it's gone, and I said, I was
Speaker 1: standing next to Dicky Dova. Dicky is one of our hands.
Speaker 1: Dickie's dad was a vaudelt performer named Ben Dova, and
Speaker 1: his dad had been on the Hindenburg when it came
Speaker 1: over on that last flight. His dad actually shot color
Speaker 1: film during that last flight and Dicky. There's footage of
Speaker 1: Dickey on his mom's shoulders when the Henderburg arrivdal. Dicky
Speaker 1: was there when it blew out, and his dad survived.
Speaker 1: But I'm standing next to Dicky and the thing goes
Speaker 1: boom boom, falls on the ground, blows up, and I
Speaker 1: turned around Dickie, I said, is that what was supposed
Speaker 1: to happen? He goes, oh, I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. So that night, that's journal the next
Speaker 1: day mid front page. Why visual effects cost so much money?
Speaker 1: And I don't know if they ever sorted out exactly
Speaker 1: what went wrong. But a second Zeppelin got built in
Speaker 1: about six weeks with three ships going around the clock,
Speaker 1: and that's the one that's in the film. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's one of those places where it didn't go as planned.
Speaker 1: They were able to recover, you know, and it worked,
Speaker 1: but what a what a stressful evening and it was
Speaker 1: just that realization it's gone and we did not get
Speaker 1: the got and we only had one so you know,
Speaker 1: that was a gamble usually built three for pipes. So yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's one of those.
Speaker 2: Time, right, yeah, yeah, lessons lent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It was a you know, and not everything
Speaker 1: worked and that's part of the price that says, you know,
Speaker 1: it's experimentation, especially pyro, you know, because I always treated
Speaker 1: like a science experiment. You don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: so that was always fun to try different stuff. And
Speaker 1: Howie weed Camp with a really good idea and that
Speaker 1: was using pasta in pyro stuff because it comes to
Speaker 1: all kinds of interesting shapes you paint it and during
Speaker 1: the explosion you can't tell what it is, but it's
Speaker 1: great debris and it really is you know, really responds
Speaker 1: to the shockwave brings them all up. So that was
Speaker 1: a really great thing, you know, but it's all experimentation,
Speaker 1: and that was the cool thing. You know, you're doing stuff,
Speaker 1: you're using materials in ways that weren't ended, you know,
Speaker 1: and wild ideas. Ever, we were doing Fire in the
Speaker 1: Sky and that was an alien abduction movie with DB's swinging. Yep,
Speaker 1: there's dB swinging. But they had an alien spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: the way it was described it was you were looking
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the characters looking up at the
Speaker 1: bottom of it, and it's these islands of black with
Speaker 1: lava flowing between them, and at a certain point, the lava
Speaker 1: of the islands kind of go away from the center
Speaker 1: and exposed in the middle of it, and a shaft
Speaker 1: of light.
Speaker 3: Comes down and take it away.
Speaker 1: So we had a model of the spaceship that's about
Speaker 1: three feet in diameter, which was basically it looked like
Speaker 1: a big mushroom cap kindo and it was a clear
Speaker 1: plastic one. And then over the top of the clear
Speaker 1: it used bondo and put kind of a shell over it.
Speaker 1: There's about a quarter it's thick, and then went back
Speaker 1: with drimal tools and carved all these rivulets in it
Speaker 1: that emitted from the top down the sides and from
Speaker 1: the bottom towards the top. And then inside of it
Speaker 1: we had color gels and we had polarizing gels. And
Speaker 1: I've been down on the set for Star Trek the
Speaker 1: Next Generation and they had all these flat panel monitors
Speaker 1: and I was with my Kakuda and I said, you
Speaker 1: have Bill George, and I said, how does this work?
Speaker 1: We pulled one of them out and it's literally this
Speaker 1: polarizing FuMB that's printed on plastic. And then if you
Speaker 1: take a polarizing wheel, when those when the polar polarity
Speaker 1: lines up and goes in and out of line, it
Speaker 1: causes animation. So they had all these different samples of
Speaker 1: different things that would create move So having seen that,
Speaker 1: I put that inside the saucer and they were about
Speaker 1: I think there were like one hundred. There are one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty lights, six cooling fans, nine spinning polarizing discs,
Speaker 1: and a thing called the salad bowl in the bottom
Speaker 1: that had polarizing film in it. So all this stuff
Speaker 1: is turning in there, and it made the lava appear
Speaker 1: to come down from the top. It was animated and
Speaker 1: come up from the bottom. And so for the shot
Speaker 1: where he looks up and gets sucked into the bottom
Speaker 1: of it, we took some of this ripple plex that's
Speaker 1: like used for shower doors and heated it up on
Speaker 1: the vacuum form and made it into kind of a
Speaker 1: dome shape and it was four feet square. Then on
Speaker 1: top of that we put pancake syrup. Then on top
Speaker 1: of that we took styrofoam bead foam and cut it
Speaker 1: into thin, like sixteenth inch sections and painted that with
Speaker 1: black temporary hairspray, and those were the islands where the rivulets,
Speaker 1: you know, And we'd bottom line this thing, and then
Speaker 1: we had we would right before we would shoot, we
Speaker 1: had silk. That was it. We laid silk. They were
Speaker 1: like silk strands that were about four inches wide and
Speaker 1: they all intersected over the center of it. But when
Speaker 1: you poured the pancake shirt over, it became transparent. We
Speaker 1: stuck the bead foam islands on top of that, and
Speaker 1: right before we'd shoot, spray it with ab smoke, and
Speaker 1: that's you've got this. I don't know if you use
Speaker 1: it anymore, but it was two components. Spray the first
Speaker 1: component on it, and right before you shoot, spray the
Speaker 1: second army, and you get this really low hanging smoke smoldering,
Speaker 1: and it's like if you see Terminator one, you see
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger at one point it's sort of drifting around on
Speaker 1: his head, and that's what it is, as ap smoke.
Speaker 1: So that gave us this really interesting low lying smoke,
Speaker 1: and then when we went to film, we had about
Speaker 1: five or six people around it. Everybody would grab one
Speaker 1: of these silk things and then we'd spray it with
Speaker 1: acetone so the islands would dissolve. And at the same
Speaker 1: time we'd pull the silks and ride on the pancakes
Speaker 1: and all the islands would leave from the center and
Speaker 1: expose that. So it was this crazy setup, but you know,
Speaker 1: it gave us what we're looking for. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's all experimentation, you know, it was really it's you know,
Speaker 1: that was the fun part. You're always coming up with
Speaker 1: wild ideas and look when we'd bid stuff and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: we think said take sixty six weeks. I'm like, we
Speaker 1: don't know how we're going to do it exactly, but
Speaker 1: we think it will take this long, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was always Steve Golly always referred to it as
Speaker 1: swag scientific wild ass guests. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: It really is a science experiment, isn't it. Every time?
Speaker 2: That's the attitude I always come across with people that
Speaker 2: worked to ILM was sure, we'll do it. We don't
Speaker 2: know how, but we'll find a way, whatever way that
Speaker 2: turns out being, and it might be something that you
Speaker 2: then taken to the next show, or it might be
Speaker 2: something you never do again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah. I mean there are a lot of things.
Speaker 1: All those experiences, they don't all build towards something, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them contribute, you know, and that was
Speaker 1: the cool thing. Everybody's different experience really helped. When you
Speaker 1: blend out, blended it all together, you got really stuff
Speaker 1: from it. And I remember as people were getting poached
Speaker 1: and going to computer graphics that you know, prior to that,
Speaker 1: I felt like we had this amazing machine and you
Speaker 1: could plug in a drawing on one end of it
Speaker 1: and you're going to get something out of the other
Speaker 1: end of it. And then as people started going away,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, they're taking parts of the
Speaker 1: machine away and it's not going to work as well.
Speaker 1: And it was really it was very difficult. And then
Speaker 1: I went to computer graphics, so but it was an
Speaker 1: inevitable It was kind of like the model shop was
Speaker 1: not the direction things were going, you know, that was
Speaker 1: very apparent. The digital thing was picking up steam and
Speaker 1: that was where all the emphasis was. And there's still
Speaker 1: you know, still room for using miniatures and things like that.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of productions the comfort level
Speaker 1: because they don't know practical comfort level is to, you know,
Speaker 1: have it be a digital solution, and you know, practical
Speaker 1: people have less experience with it, and it is sort
Speaker 1: of unpredictable, but you know, the results tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good.
Speaker 2: Did you did you really feel that kind of tiede
Speaker 2: of the you know, the digital wave coming towards you,
Speaker 2: and did you feel that you had to be kind
Speaker 2: of agile and move into that direction because that if
Speaker 2: you wanted to stay in the industry, that's where you
Speaker 2: needed to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At ILM, it was like I always think about
Speaker 1: the never ending story of the great nothing that's coming,
Speaker 1: and that's what it felt like. It was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, And there were a couple of times we
Speaker 1: were really close to being shut down, you know, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that saved us at one point
Speaker 1: was you had a commercial division, and commercial the response
Speaker 1: there so fast you turn around us. What is so
Speaker 1: quick that without the model shop we couldn't have done
Speaker 1: those And so that was one time that saved us.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately, I think really what it came down
Speaker 1: to was there was less and less work for the
Speaker 1: model shop. But I think also George wanted to remove
Speaker 1: any kind of a crutch that the model shop provided
Speaker 1: and forced computer graphics that next step, you know, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty hard, you know, it was very difficult
Speaker 1: some people. Some people were retired at that point, some
Speaker 1: people didn't make the transition, and it was it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: I mean, Light Magic Season two kind of covers a
Speaker 1: lot of that, and you know, and it's it was sad,
Speaker 1: you know, and I wanted one into computer graphics. It
Speaker 1: was just it was an adaptation because if you didn't,
Speaker 1: you weren't going to be working anywhere. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: When when you sort of came back to making models
Speaker 2: later on, I think obviously the Mandalorian was one of
Speaker 2: those you returned to that physical what what what felt
Speaker 2: different to you and what kind of came back immediately?
Speaker 1: Well, I never stopped building stuff, so that was always
Speaker 1: I was always doing things in computer graphics. And there
Speaker 1: were things that would come up at ILM where I
Speaker 1: do Minish look, but not that often. But it was different,
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest thing was not having the model
Speaker 1: shop and not having all the people. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a different world. It's just kind of a low
Speaker 1: type thing. You know. I worked with one other guy
Speaker 1: primarily and Dan, and that that's that's it. That that
Speaker 1: was That was the hardest part, you know, not having
Speaker 1: that camaraderie, not having that, you know, and it I
Speaker 1: was really sad that somebody didn't step in and acquire
Speaker 1: the model shop because you had this talent pool that
Speaker 1: was phenomenal and I thought this this hastened to it,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, but nobody did it just it
Speaker 1: was allowed to just dissolve, you know, And that was
Speaker 1: that was very sad. So, you know, and the other thing,
Speaker 1: it's different. Technology changed spot so information, you know, is
Speaker 1: you're getting it as getting it as email and you're
Speaker 1: getting digital vender's things like that, and that's a different animal.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of the design work has done
Speaker 1: digitally too, so elements to it or were different, but
Speaker 1: then so much of it was very much the stay
Speaker 1: mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And I guess you've also got that you've lost that
Speaker 2: kind of library of objects as well in the model shop,
Speaker 2: whether it's a tool or whether it's you know, a
Speaker 2: model or an area you went to because I know,
Speaker 2: I need this thing, and I know that's over there
Speaker 2: in that corner. All of that's gone. Well, that physical library.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's that's way and more of
Speaker 1: a challenge all the time because materials go away. I
Speaker 1: mean the other the day, I went to a hobby
Speaker 1: shop here in the LA area and all in one
Speaker 1: of us brass wire and they're like, oh, we're having
Speaker 1: trouble getting it from a distributor. I'm like, what I mean,
Speaker 1: brass wire? And you know, and the K and S
Speaker 1: is a brand of metal materials. They make contens of
Speaker 1: tubing and it's telescoping tubeings and rods and square tubes
Speaker 1: and all kind of stuff. And I noticed that those
Speaker 1: racks which you'll see in hardware stores, a lot of
Speaker 1: them either they're not restocking you altogether gone. And I
Speaker 1: went the other day to buy some solvent, which I've
Speaker 1: been using since I've been in the business. And I
Speaker 1: went to a plastic shop I really like down here
Speaker 1: in southern California, and I bought a bunch of styrene
Speaker 1: and said, I need some this particular product. They said,
Speaker 1: we can't sell to you. And I said, what, we
Speaker 1: can't sell that type of solvent in La County And
Speaker 1: I'm like, but you're a plastics fabrication facility. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't operate without it. And they said, we're Vegas
Speaker 1: and buying it and bringing it back because they can't
Speaker 1: get it locally. So materials way constant. You know, the
Speaker 1: type of primer that you like goes away. I mean
Speaker 1: you name it railroad colors, which was the primary pengus
Speaker 1: that I that's been out of production now for I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe sixteen twenty years. So you know, you
Speaker 1: have to adapt and try and find other stuff to
Speaker 1: do the job with. And that's that's front. A guy
Speaker 1: talked to me the other day. He works in a
Speaker 1: fabrication facility where they make looseite and it's large, large
Speaker 1: loose objects. Plexiglass was a type of plastic they used,
Speaker 1: and I can't recall the name of it, but they
Speaker 1: would vacuum form the part. Then they would use the
Speaker 1: vacuum forms and cast the leo site into that and
Speaker 1: the loose sit wouldn't interact with this plastic, and it
Speaker 1: was their primary means of doing this. That plastic is
Speaker 1: no longer manufactured and there's not a substitute, and he
Speaker 1: is scrambling to try and figure out how they can
Speaker 1: make these parts because they have to be baked in
Speaker 1: an autoclave and any other plastic will blend into the plexiglass.
Speaker 1: They wind up combined where it's this other material to
Speaker 1: do that, and they don't have a solution at this point.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're going to do. But that's
Speaker 1: a constant that the materials keep changing in its air
Speaker 1: quality or environmental reasons. And you know, if it's really good,
Speaker 1: if it works great, it's really bad, it's carcinogenic, or
Speaker 1: it's toxic or you know, we're both and so you know,
Speaker 1: those things keep going, and so that substitution process, it
Speaker 1: gets harder and harder to do the same things. Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we often talk about, you know, new technologies. Really
Speaker 2: hear much discussion now in the outside world about the
Speaker 2: technology kind of being left behind. It's really an interesting subject,
Speaker 2: I think, because it you know, one element of that
Speaker 2: chain is removed and suddenly you can't do the thing
Speaker 2: that you know you can do quickly, let's say, because
Speaker 2: it no longer exists.
Speaker 1: Well, it even goes on with the newer technology. Because
Speaker 1: I was reading something the other day that in the past,
Speaker 1: for fighting forest fires, the four services reached out to
Speaker 1: the military and they've gotten next military aircraft to do
Speaker 1: the fire mantions and that sort of thing. And then
Speaker 1: I read they said, the limitation is not the hours
Speaker 1: on the aircraft anymore. It will probably be software that
Speaker 1: will make it so. But the plane can't fly. And
Speaker 1: so it's really interesting that the obsopleuscence of this yeah,
Speaker 1: makes the plane not usable anymore, and we run into
Speaker 1: it all the time with equipment, and it was that
Speaker 1: was the thing. So I thought was interesting was I
Speaker 1: went and talked to a tenth grade class and I said,
Speaker 1: you're you're all going to work in an environment where
Speaker 1: you're going to use computers. And it's interesting because periodically
Speaker 1: you're going to get new hardware and there will be
Speaker 1: changes that will happen. It's like when you get in
Speaker 1: their phone. Now your printer doesn't work and you can't
Speaker 1: you know, all these different things don't function, so it
Speaker 1: requires buying all new stuff. And I said, so you'll
Speaker 1: have to adjust to the new hardware, But I said
Speaker 1: the software will change way more frequently than that, and
Speaker 1: you will have to continue to relearn how to do
Speaker 1: the same job with new software because it doesn't stay
Speaker 1: static for long. You know, it's always transitioning. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you know, materials go away, but then also
Speaker 1: support for a lot of these things it doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take very long for come ups.
Speaker 2: And like you're in the business as well, and so
Speaker 2: I carry on, said I just said, carry on. I
Speaker 2: like my old fashioned stuff that doesn't have software, but
Speaker 2: you know, it just works. Yeah, yeah, talking about like
Speaker 2: it just working. You you've also on the other side
Speaker 2: of your job. You've got to create these spacecraft, for instance,
Speaker 2: that actually look like they function as a real vehicle.
Speaker 2: I think you've talked before. I've heard you an interview're
Speaker 2: talking before about the mechanical language you kind of have
Speaker 2: to instill in these items, like how you how'd you
Speaker 2: go about doing that? Is it a feeling thing? Is
Speaker 2: it looking at references? Is it a combination of a
Speaker 2: bunch of things? But how do you sort of you know,
Speaker 2: I think of like the ship in ah Soka. I
Speaker 2: think you were at celebration here in London with that model,
Speaker 2: weren't you.
Speaker 1: I know I was with it at celebration Anaheim was Anaheim?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, But I think of that ship in
Speaker 2: terms of you know, it's got sort of mechanical movement
Speaker 2: in it, and it's another sort of way for us
Speaker 2: as the audience to just buy it. There's something about
Speaker 2: a spaceship that you can just buy. Whether it's like
Speaker 2: a snow speeder that's using a flap to turn to
Speaker 2: bank or whatever. You know, you just there's those little
Speaker 2: kind of tricks. Is that something you just learn over
Speaker 2: time or do you Is that something you really study hard?
Speaker 1: Well? I think I think really a lot of artists
Speaker 1: are really good observers, and so you pay attention to
Speaker 1: a lot of deep And it was funny because one
Speaker 1: of the folks was working on an issue on one
Speaker 1: film and they had these vehicles and he was doing
Speaker 1: design work and the vehicles were cargo vessels, but the
Speaker 1: whole top of them was flat and there was anything
Speaker 1: up there. And he said, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to put up here. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think about it, it's a cargo vessel.
Speaker 1: If I had a cargo vessel it had a flat
Speaker 1: top on it, I would put containers on top of it.
Speaker 1: I put something use that surface. And I said, why
Speaker 1: don't you come up with like a track system that
Speaker 1: goes up there. That implies and you don't have to
Speaker 1: actually execute it at all. But if you do it
Speaker 1: in a logical manner, it makes sense. That'll telegraph, it'll read,
Speaker 1: and that's where you know, if you look at I
Speaker 1: remember like transformers. You know, it was funny when we
Speaker 1: did the first film. We did them without any damage
Speaker 1: or weathering or anything like that, and when they're rendered
Speaker 1: they look like big computer graphics things. But going back
Speaker 1: in and putting the metal scrapes and the oil leaks
Speaker 1: and all those things on it, all those real world
Speaker 1: cues helped convince you that this thing is functional than
Speaker 1: it's real. And I always say that the job in
Speaker 1: visual effects is lit liars, And if we've done our
Speaker 1: job well enough, you don't realize you've been lied to.
Speaker 1: But you know, conveying all those real world elements, that's
Speaker 1: why weathering is so important, you know, with vehicles and things,
Speaker 1: because that convinces you it's real. It also helps to
Speaker 1: find the scale every one of those things. Anything you
Speaker 1: can do, it gives you an advantage in terms of
Speaker 1: making it more realistic, giving it a level of texture
Speaker 1: that reads like a real thing. You know, an implying
Speaker 1: mechanical language. I love how the falcon is covered in
Speaker 1: model kit parts and you don't know what any of
Speaker 1: it does, but the way it's put on there, it
Speaker 1: implies that there's a function to it. It looks like
Speaker 1: it does something. And there was a film called Star
Speaker 1: Crash that came out right at the same time as
Speaker 1: Star Wars came out shortly after the first Star Wars,
Speaker 1: and they made spaceships but it looked like they've covered
Speaker 1: them in glue and then rolled them through a vat
Speaker 1: of model kit parts and that was it. And it's like,
Speaker 1: it so doesn't work because there was no sensitivity to
Speaker 1: kind of trying to create a mechanic mechanical language that
Speaker 1: makes there's a certain charm to it, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: look real. Yeah. So yeah, it's that it's a thing
Speaker 1: of taking it in the real world, putting into these
Speaker 1: fictional things and using them to convince you that it's real. Well,
Speaker 1: we did a kip Bash class and it was interesting
Speaker 1: because people thought we gave them some basic shapes model
Speaker 1: kep parks and some people just blewed stuff all over it.
Speaker 1: And then Keith London was in charge of the Model
Speaker 1: Stop and said, let's do this. Let's give them all
Speaker 1: a camera, those camera and have them go out and
Speaker 1: photographics the mechanical language. And that was such a great ideeah.
Speaker 1: And that was such a good thing to point them
Speaker 1: towards because it gave them something go out in the
Speaker 1: real world and photographs out of the garbage. You know,
Speaker 1: is that all the hydraulic cylinders, all that stuff, that's
Speaker 1: mechanical language that's after So that was really interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: to try and kind of get that idea across. But
Speaker 1: I love things like the falcon, all that stuff's on it.
Speaker 1: You don't know what it does, but it sure looks
Speaker 1: like it does something important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you mentioned weathering there, and what interests me
Speaker 2: about that is that how much did you find that
Speaker 2: that change between film and digital, like what the camera
Speaker 2: would sell to the audience as weathering. Did you have
Speaker 2: to change those techniques when you moved from from film
Speaker 2: to digital.
Speaker 1: In terms of the projection medium. Yeah, it was terrifying
Speaker 1: because you know before for a Phantom Menace, that was
Speaker 1: the first thing we shot digitally and you could, you know,
Speaker 1: put a piece of black tape on what we are
Speaker 1: rule of thumb was you know, unforcas try a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's what film sees, plows your eye, and that's what TVCs,
Speaker 1: you know. And then digital came on the scene, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that piece of black tape is obviously
Speaker 1: a piece of black tape. And it was Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a learning curve there for sure. Who adjusted that
Speaker 1: because it was very different, you know, fields seemed like
Speaker 1: you could everything digital and you know the thing that
Speaker 1: at first it was really difficult for me doing the
Speaker 1: computer graphics thing, and I don't know if I ever
Speaker 1: got all that good at it. But we switched to
Speaker 1: a paint software called Mari, and Mari allowed you to
Speaker 1: paint in layers of materials, and that was such a
Speaker 1: huge advantage. And I remember painting the y wing and
Speaker 1: the ewing on Rogue one. It was fantastic because you
Speaker 1: could go in and I could have a layer that
Speaker 1: was you know, rushed aluminum. I could have a layer
Speaker 1: that was called clay, which I used a rename is primer.
Speaker 1: Then I had a layer that was you know, to
Speaker 1: my gloss car paint, and I could sit there and
Speaker 1: do scratches on the surface that exposed the metal, exposed
Speaker 1: some of the primer, and then you had the car
Speaker 1: paint on top of it, way better than doing it
Speaker 1: as a practical model. For me, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is amazing. I could do greasy handprints because there was
Speaker 1: an oil material and all you have to do is
Speaker 1: go find a photograph of a fingerprint or handprint and
Speaker 1: if it was black and white, whatever was white was
Speaker 1: that material. So you'd have the whole shit black and
Speaker 1: have these handprints on it. It's time to oil material
Speaker 1: and now you've got whaly fingerprints. I mean, it was easy,
Speaker 1: so it it was better than the real thing. So
Speaker 1: that was really really cool. I love that. So it
Speaker 1: was too bad. That was right the time I left,
Speaker 1: you know, it was right when it got really and
Speaker 1: I finally connected with them. Wow, this is amazing. You're out.
Speaker 2: But then you've since come back making models. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: talk to me about the Razor cres because it's sort
Speaker 2: of you know, in the public eye and under scrutiny
Speaker 2: at the moment with the new film in Imax there.
Speaker 2: But the Razorcrest started out for the TV series of course,
Speaker 2: The Mandadorian And didn't that correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: But didn't that start out as a three D printed
Speaker 2: assembly and then it wasn't kind of like strong enough,
Speaker 2: so you had to sort of revert back to kind
Speaker 2: of original mold making techniques.
Speaker 1: And yet how the couple of things going on it
Speaker 1: was I think that the main body was like fifty
Speaker 1: two pieces, so fifty two prints, and they were all
Speaker 1: done fairly quickly, and they're all you know, build lines.
Speaker 1: They're all done differently. These things have got built lines
Speaker 1: running in different directions all over it, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to skin it and aluminum. Every one of those built
Speaker 1: lines is going to read right through the aluminum, so
Speaker 1: they can't be there. And so it was a question
Speaker 1: I had to put it all together, dem all the gaps,
Speaker 1: and then keep spraying at with sandable primer and standing
Speaker 1: it to get rid of the build lines. And by
Speaker 1: the time you get through doing all that, starting to
Speaker 1: lose detail. Things are starting to go away. And it
Speaker 1: was just a byproduct of that being the process. And
Speaker 1: a three D print like that is not strong enough
Speaker 1: to take out on stage in my opinion, and you
Speaker 1: need to cut out mounta doors and things. You've got
Speaker 1: to have doors that are basically invisible. You have left right, top, bottom,
Speaker 1: front back typically, and the three D print you can't
Speaker 1: drill it. It would shatter, you know, And so you
Speaker 1: can't use the material that was coming out of the hole.
Speaker 1: You can't cut it out and reuse that door. And
Speaker 1: then they were going to print them. I'm like, they
Speaker 1: won't be flat. I guarantee they won't be flat. So
Speaker 1: once it was all cleaned up, seamed and primed, then
Speaker 1: I made a big two part mold of it and
Speaker 1: I recast it into proxy fiberglass.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you enjoy Part one of my conversation
Speaker 2: with John there. As I said, we got cut off midflow,
Speaker 2: which is frustrating but also a good sign. It means
Speaker 2: there's plenty more to come. And Part two is being
Speaker 2: recorded in the next couple of weeks, and I'm looking
Speaker 2: forward to getting to know the Razor Crest build and
Speaker 2: all the proper detail behind that and the latest techniques
Speaker 2: that he was using, along with all the techniques that
Speaker 2: he's learned over his career. Coming up on the podcast,
Speaker 2: I've got some great guests, including a composer a very
Speaker 2: very big film series if you like more of the
Speaker 2: first two anyway, I actually met him whilst working on
Speaker 2: my Joe Al's documentary. He's actually married to somebody that
Speaker 2: was in Jaws too, who we interviewed. More details on
Speaker 2: that later. Keep the support coming, I do need you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining me and I hope you can do
Speaker 2: so far. The next episode of the film Thementaries podcast
Speaker 1: We are Tingaway Media