Speaker 1: Weird Being Way Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Film Youmentaries podcast. This is
Speaker 2: Jamie Benning, your host. I'm going to cut to the
Speaker 2: chase here. I'm a bit jet lagged, just got back
Speaker 2: from a job in Las Vegas. Not as glamorous as
Speaker 2: it sounds. Vegas isn't great, honestly, so in this episode,
Speaker 2: I'm chatting with model maker Jim Davidson, whose career spans
Speaker 2: some of the most iconic practical effects work in the
Speaker 2: late twentieth century, from Terminator to and Batman Returns through
Speaker 2: to Titanic and beyond. Jim was right there in the
Speaker 2: thick of it, working with the Scotach Brothers during what
Speaker 2: was arguably the peak and the turning point of large
Speaker 2: scale miniature effects. We get into his early fascination with dinosaurs,
Speaker 2: discovering the work of Ray Harry Housen, and that moment
Speaker 2: of seeing Star Wars when he was twelve years old
Speaker 2: that made him realize that maybe this could actually be
Speaker 2: a career for him. From there, it's a brilliant story
Speaker 2: of chance, meetings, graft and as usual, being exactly in
Speaker 2: the right place at the right time. We also talk
Speaker 2: about the nuts and bolts of the work, including the
Speaker 2: unforgettable nuclear Nightmare sequence in terminated too. How those miniatures
Speaker 2: were built, destroyed, and reset, and when it was like
Speaker 2: working in a small, tight knit crew where everybody knew
Speaker 2: their role. And then there's the shift, the arrival of
Speaker 2: CGI and what felt like watching the industry change almost
Speaker 2: overnight after Park and Jim's very personal decision not to
Speaker 2: follow that path. It's a really honest, thoughtful conversation about
Speaker 2: craft timing and what it means to have lived through
Speaker 2: that golden era of practical effects. If you enjoy what
Speaker 2: I do here as usual, I want to support it.
Speaker 2: You can head over to patreon dot com forward slash
Speaker 2: Jamie Benning. I'm still aiming for two hundred patrons this year,
Speaker 2: so if you fancy chipping in, that would be hugely appreciated.
Speaker 2: So here's my interview with Jim Davidson and I'll be
Speaker 2: back at the end for a bit more jabbering on. So, Jim,
Speaker 2: what was your childhood like? Did you find yourself kind
Speaker 2: of building models as a kid and were you practically minded?
Speaker 2: Did your parents have that kind of mindset as well?
Speaker 3: No, my parents didn't, but I grew up I was
Speaker 3: a TV kid. I grew up throughout the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: born in sixty five, but my childhood and was throughout
Speaker 3: the seventies and yeah, growing up with TV at that
Speaker 3: time period. And my first love as a kid was dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: Of course when I was like, you know, four years
Speaker 3: but by the time I was three, I was into dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: And then as a kid growing up on TV, anything
Speaker 3: anything that had any dinosaurs in it related to it,
Speaker 3: I was I'd be glued to the set and then
Speaker 3: that evolved.
Speaker 2: I wonder what it is, sorry to interrupt that, just no,
Speaker 2: it is about dinosaurs, because is it something to do
Speaker 2: with kind of beginning to understand scale? I wonder because
Speaker 2: you know, Phil Tip it was into that was his
Speaker 2: first love. One of my first things dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: It's like dinosaurs are the are the introduction of the
Speaker 3: concept of of of monsters. I think. I think it's
Speaker 3: a kid's first actual like like what a monster would
Speaker 3: when you hear the term monster, and you know, because
Speaker 3: the growing up on the Monster movies too as a kid,
Speaker 3: that didn't come until you know, later on, but you know,
Speaker 3: it was all about the science. I don't know if
Speaker 3: dinosaurs were on an upswing in the seventies or but
Speaker 3: I just remember there was so much of it on TV,
Speaker 3: you know, the movie of you know, the fifties, sixties
Speaker 3: and and that were all the fantasy films relating to
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and stuff. And it was just that type of
Speaker 3: thing that I gravitated towards as a kid, which was
Speaker 3: my first like real fascination. Uh. And then the and
Speaker 3: then the you know, in bookstores. I always I grew
Speaker 3: up on books, and just seeing dinosaur books as a
Speaker 3: kid just fascinated me. The dinosaur just looking at them,
Speaker 3: the way they looked. They just looked alien, you know,
Speaker 3: they just looked like these are huge monsters, but they
Speaker 3: were actually here. And that was the fascination as a
Speaker 3: little kid. And then that of course evolved into the
Speaker 3: other interests that followed with that type of fascination of
Speaker 3: creatures and monsters and fantasy, and you know, because they
Speaker 3: seemed like such fantasy, you know, and fantasy. I was
Speaker 3: drawn the fantasy always.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you ever have like model kids then when
Speaker 2: you were a kid, were you the stuff?
Speaker 3: And the For me in my childhood, it was Monogram
Speaker 3: and Ravel were the two big Oh and of course
Speaker 3: the Aurora, my first Model Kids were the Aurora dinosaur
Speaker 3: kids go figure. They came out nearly seventies. They were
Speaker 3: the square box once, not the long box Auroras. But
Speaker 3: oh yeah, model kids were uh one of the first
Speaker 3: avenues ventured down that. You know, how can I get
Speaker 3: involved in dinosaurs or you know that kind of thing?
Speaker 3: So yeah, oh yeah, it evolved to model kits and
Speaker 3: discovering model building and the love of that. And as
Speaker 3: a child, it was I was always into making stuff,
Speaker 3: and I was very uh uh always into art. I
Speaker 3: was always into drawing. I was That was the first
Speaker 3: thing I ever got into, you know, creatively, was drawing
Speaker 3: as a kid, drawing out of my you know, drawing
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and then drawing out of comic books and that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, and you know, just but that's how
Speaker 3: that's how the my creative process started, was withdrawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how do we leap from a kid who
Speaker 2: likes to draw and build dinosaur models to ending up
Speaker 2: in the movie industry?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, that's a there's a lot that happened there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you understand that there was such a thing
Speaker 2: as a job of working in the industry? Like, when
Speaker 2: did that happen for you? Was that teenagers.
Speaker 3: Now, the my obsession with special effects, just the art
Speaker 3: of special effects for whether it be TV or movies,
Speaker 3: just cinematic visual effects. That fascination started with of course
Speaker 3: Ray Harryhausen for me, Yeah, and it was his stop
Speaker 3: motion that I was That was the obsession that that's
Speaker 3: what ignited, you know, my love from that point on.
Speaker 3: My love of visual effects just began there. And and
Speaker 3: so the Harry Housen discovery after finding out the first
Speaker 3: thing I ever saw was one million years BC. That
Speaker 3: I is where I fell in love with visual effects.
Speaker 3: When I saw raised dinosaur stuff, that just it just
Speaker 3: it literally became an obsession with me. I had to
Speaker 3: find out how that was done, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: do that. I wanted to learn to do that. To me,
Speaker 3: that was the coolest thing I had ever seen in
Speaker 3: my life, you know, up to that point of being
Speaker 3: you know, like eight years old. And of course, in
Speaker 3: finding out who this guy was through you know, searching
Speaker 3: in books and magazines at the time, I found out
Speaker 3: his name. All right, so there's one guy that does
Speaker 3: this stuff. And then at that age I was thinking,
Speaker 3: is this something that anyone can get into? Is this
Speaker 3: could this be like an actual job for you know,
Speaker 3: for someone, or is this just a guy that you
Speaker 3: know was in the studio working and just yeah, we
Speaker 3: need this magic to happen. Did anybody in here know
Speaker 3: how to do that kind of stuff? And one guy
Speaker 3: in the back, oh, yeah, okay, you're hired. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know how that went. You know, how did
Speaker 3: they find this guy? Where did this guy come from?
Speaker 3: How do you learn to do something like this has
Speaker 3: come out of nowhere and create magic like this that inspired,
Speaker 3: you know, a kid like me, And I knew there
Speaker 3: were others kids because all my other friends, my childhood
Speaker 3: friend would see these movies and they were enamored by it,
Speaker 3: but not to the level that I was. So that
Speaker 3: became an obsession just in learning about visual effects at
Speaker 3: that point. But at no point did it ever seemed
Speaker 3: like a viable job or an industry until I turned
Speaker 3: twelve years old and I saw Star Wars for the
Speaker 3: first time. And you know, seeing Star Wars when it
Speaker 3: opened as a twelve year old, that was Ray Harryhausen's
Speaker 3: star you know, King Kong was Ray Harryhouse and Star Wars,
Speaker 3: So I understood how that how seeing something like that
Speaker 3: could impress you. You know, I'm digressing on that, but
Speaker 3: sometimes I'll ramble on. You can cut this part out,
Speaker 3: Oh good, good, but but stay back on track. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 2: Like being a twelve year old, because that film kind
Speaker 2: of dropped out of you know.
Speaker 3: I that's something that that I wish I could convey
Speaker 3: to someone that will never experience that. You know, I'll
Speaker 3: never I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the and
Speaker 3: the you know, packed theater and hearing the entire audience
Speaker 3: simultaneously respond verbally and throughout the whole movie and cheering
Speaker 3: at appropriate times, booing the I mean it was like
Speaker 3: you were watching it was like a vaudeville theater, you know,
Speaker 3: seeing a live performance and you're booing and hissing and
Speaker 3: cheering out loud. You know that you just don't get
Speaker 3: that anymore in theaters. And it was just, Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was a magical experience see in that movie, in that
Speaker 3: kind of you know, public uh arena that just you
Speaker 3: just can't Yeah. I wish I could.
Speaker 2: I wish the ball it up and sell it.
Speaker 3: I wish they I wish they'd real I heard that
Speaker 3: they're gonna might be re releasing Get in theaters for
Speaker 3: its anniversary next year. I heard that, and boy if
Speaker 3: they do, and I hope it's the original you know,
Speaker 3: seventy seven release and not the not the.
Speaker 2: I believe it is is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's.
Speaker 2: Believe is because that's what we're celebrating, right, fifty years
Speaker 2: of that original film. And wo what I'd love to see.
Speaker 3: A year you know, like the year that changed the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and it's about so many going.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm just gonna say, think about this half of
Speaker 3: my the first half of my childhood there Star Wars
Speaker 3: didn't exist. So can you imagine childhood not know before
Speaker 3: any knowledge of anything Star Wars?
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, but then I was I was born in
Speaker 2: I was born in seventy six gyms, So Star Wars
Speaker 2: has been there all my conscious life, you know.
Speaker 3: I had the That's what I mean, Yeah, time before.
Speaker 3: It's that. That's why seeing that movie. People see it
Speaker 3: today and they think, well, god, it's it's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a rough looking film in spots, you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: not like a cinematic great achievement, you know, like I
Speaker 3: mean revolutionary for the visual effects, of course, but I
Speaker 3: mean just the story. It was just you know Flash
Speaker 3: Gordon in Wild West, in Space, you know, Rescue the Princess,
Speaker 3: Damsel in Distress, you know, Say Young the Young Adventure.
Speaker 3: You know, it's its age old story. It was nothing
Speaker 3: new story wise. What made that film so, what made
Speaker 3: that film so revolutionary at the time was the aesthetic
Speaker 3: quality was unlike anything ever seen before it and visually
Speaker 3: in a movie. And that included the art direction, It
Speaker 3: included the costumes, you know, the whole aesthetic look of
Speaker 3: the entire film. The fact that the fact that everything
Speaker 3: was dirty and greasy and oily and dark and like
Speaker 3: it wasn't gleamy, shiny, reflective, No, it was the opposite.
Speaker 3: And it was just something so unique. It was just
Speaker 3: so unique beyond anything that looking looking aesthetically and that's
Speaker 3: what made it so That's what made it so popular
Speaker 3: and what made it so I'm breaking in my opinion,
Speaker 3: was the ass of visual not the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those designs are so iconic, aren't they. Like
Speaker 2: I can imagine you as a twelve year old coming
Speaker 2: back and you can immediately have a go at drawing
Speaker 2: the characters and the spaceships.
Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah, Well again, it was all about the
Speaker 3: look of everything. The look of the spaceships. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: there were so many different kinds of kinds of just
Speaker 3: these overwhelmingly detailed, amazingly realistic looking spaceships that you know,
Speaker 3: just yeah, it was. And the way that they flew it,
Speaker 3: it was. It was the way that you got to
Speaker 3: see these ships fly for the first time. It wasn't
Speaker 3: just you know, gliding across on a you know, on
Speaker 3: a wire.
Speaker 2: And yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Or or or just having the camera push on a
Speaker 3: dolly against the model back and forth, like they didn't
Speaker 3: Star Trek. Star Trek had motion control, but it was
Speaker 3: manual motion control. It was again I pushed dolly or
Speaker 3: or they had they had crank that they even rotated
Speaker 3: the big Enterprise on a little a guy was down
Speaker 3: there on a little crank crank in it during some
Speaker 3: of the shots with it turning, you know, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: the effects in Star Wars just made it not only
Speaker 3: what the movie became and what the whole thing became.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, when I left the theater
Speaker 3: for the first time, walking out to the parking lot
Speaker 3: back with my mom, I'll never forget that moment because
Speaker 3: I said, I told her, said, Mom, all that stuff
Speaker 3: you saw in that movie all the spaceships and the
Speaker 3: aliens and all the you know, the amazing world. Everything
Speaker 3: you saw in that movie. That's what I want to do.
Speaker 3: I want to do that with my life. And she
Speaker 3: was like, oh, that's a nice little thing to think.
Speaker 3: That's good, you know, good, Yeah, that's good, and she
Speaker 3: supported me from that point on, but she never really
Speaker 3: took it seriously early on. Of course, twelve year old kid,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like a twelve year old kids, you know,
Speaker 3: watching his first pro baseball game of going, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: going to I want to be a pro athlete. You know,
Speaker 3: I grew up okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but nobody knew that there was a career possibility
Speaker 2: there at that time. Really, I mean exactly those early
Speaker 2: I lemmas. But for the next generation that were your
Speaker 2: imagination is sparked now. I mean, what a perfect age
Speaker 2: to see that movie and and all that stuff to come.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, at that point was
Speaker 3: when because I saw the popularity of what it all
Speaker 3: did and what was happening, and that was when I realized, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is a viable industry now. And I knew at
Speaker 3: the age of twelve that okay, this is this is
Speaker 3: going to spread and it's going to get big, and
Speaker 3: it's going to create an industry. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's given enough time. And and that's when I just
Speaker 3: started following movies at that point. You know, it's all
Speaker 3: of the same kind of genre films. And then of
Speaker 3: course what followed every film after that, there was like
Speaker 3: every year there was these modernized effects laden films that
Speaker 3: were always trying to you know, you know, keep up
Speaker 3: with the Star Wars, keep up with ILM. And then
Speaker 3: ILM just exploded after you know, it left for Empire
Speaker 3: and in the late seventies, and when that all happened,
Speaker 3: that was when I realized, Okay, I might be able
Speaker 3: to actually think about doing this for a career. And
Speaker 3: ever since that, that was how I looked at life,
Speaker 3: you know, getting just getting through high school. I just
Speaker 3: I couldn't wait for school to and I just I
Speaker 3: was like God, and it was killing me as you know,
Speaker 3: seeing Star Wars as a twelve year old, and then
Speaker 3: all these other great effects films that came followed, bang
Speaker 3: bang bang after the other. You know, you had Battlestar
Speaker 3: Galactic on TV, then you had Star Trek, and then
Speaker 3: you had aliens at all. It was just affects, Blockbuster,
Speaker 3: Blade Runner, blah blah blah blah. On down the line,
Speaker 3: Empire strikes back, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: And I was not out of high school yet, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, God, that's killing me. I'm like, I wanted
Speaker 3: to be up there. I wanted to you know, I
Speaker 3: wanted to be up there now, you know. Oh, I
Speaker 3: just couldn't wait for high school to end. It couldn't
Speaker 3: end soon enough.
Speaker 2: So and did you go to film school after that?
Speaker 3: No? I At that time I thought that the only
Speaker 3: you know, I was following my you know, my parents'
Speaker 3: outlook on life at that point, and it was, well,
Speaker 3: you got to have a college degree to do anything,
Speaker 3: you know, to make anything of yourself, you know, you
Speaker 3: got to have a college degree. M And I was
Speaker 3: like and I you know, I was like yeah, but
Speaker 3: but and I was always like but, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's like, well, I wasn't ready to head up you know,
Speaker 3: after high school right away, you know, at that point,
Speaker 3: so I thought, okay, I'll I'll go into college, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, and try to get my AA degree. And
Speaker 3: then from there I was, oh, maybe I could, you know,
Speaker 3: transfer to a film school, and that was the general
Speaker 3: plan at that time. And I was just thinking, it's
Speaker 3: taking it's going to take forever. It's taken to take
Speaker 3: away too long. So anyway, I went in eighty four,
Speaker 3: I went to nineteen eighty four, I went to UH
Speaker 3: the local college here and UH in the next town over.
Speaker 3: And the name of the local college is Palamar College
Speaker 3: Community College, just a you know, and back then it
Speaker 3: was it was it's just a tiny little nuts in school,
Speaker 3: great great school. Though they had a great I'm not
Speaker 3: dissing the school, but it was. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 3: a tiny, no name school, community college. But when I
Speaker 3: went there, that's where I met at my inn to
Speaker 3: the industry, right. It was through a guy that I
Speaker 3: was one of the first classes I took. I was
Speaker 3: taking a full load, but I also put in, ah
Speaker 3: just I was taking a sculpture one oh one class,
Speaker 3: just to like be able to do some art at school.
Speaker 3: So I took a sculpture the sculpture class, uh. And
Speaker 3: first day walking to the class and I met this
Speaker 3: guy named Robert Stromberg. And I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: heard of him, but he's now an Oscar winning art director. Yeah,
Speaker 3: known for Avatar and all that. And so he was
Speaker 3: in my class that day and he had and he
Speaker 3: was talking to this other kid at the time before
Speaker 3: the class started, and he had he had brought some
Speaker 3: photos and pictures of some like paintings that he was doing.
Speaker 3: He was one to work on his sculpture stuff, but
Speaker 3: he brought some paintings that he wanted to show the
Speaker 3: tea shirt and so he shows me. I walked over
Speaker 3: and we introduced each other. He should what'd you bring
Speaker 3: and shows me his artwork and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: this guy's got some great painting, doing some wild stuff.
Speaker 3: And then that's when he told me, yeah, I want
Speaker 3: to get into matt painting. I want to be a
Speaker 3: mad artist. And I immediately knew what that was and
Speaker 3: I was like, are you kidding me? And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what that is, and I go yeah, the
Speaker 3: special effects with the painting on glass, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And right there we clicked. And he had also had
Speaker 3: some photos with him that he brought from where his
Speaker 3: dad had taken him to Ilm on a visit. And
Speaker 3: this was during Dragon Slayer, huh, and the stuff and
Speaker 3: Robert had brought some photos, some polaroids of him holding
Speaker 3: the Chris Whales Vermouth thrashs puppet, Wow the hand puppet,
Speaker 3: and other photos of the setups and stuff. And he
Speaker 3: got to visit there because of his dad. Robert Stromberg's
Speaker 3: dad was William Stromberg, who is known for writing and
Speaker 3: directing the Crater Lake Monster movie from nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: which was the first gig, the professional gig that Phil
Speaker 3: tipp had ever got to work on. Or no, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: he had done some work for Bill on that, but
Speaker 3: Bill Stromberg is the guy that gave Phil Tippett his
Speaker 3: start on a little personal project when Phil was in
Speaker 3: high school. So Phil had an end with Bill Stromberg.
Speaker 3: So that's their connection through how Robert got to go
Speaker 3: to ILM and then I just happened to meet him
Speaker 3: in this art class by chance, pure insane chance, and
Speaker 3: we immediately became friends. And about a year later Rob
Speaker 3: went up to start working on he was helping out.
Speaker 3: He started, he started the bottom level and he and
Speaker 3: his dad got him in with a guy named Tony
Speaker 3: Dublin and David Stipes, and one of Rob's first jobs
Speaker 3: was working on that TV show V The Final Battle, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the second part of the V series. So anyway, Rob
Speaker 3: went up ahead of me and I stayed back. I
Speaker 3: went to one more year of college and then I
Speaker 3: was working a job and carlsbad doing I was a
Speaker 3: fabricutter and I was like, I was twenty two at
Speaker 3: this time. And Robert called me up one day and said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I just got hired on to beat this little budget
Speaker 3: filmmaker's art director and had all the effects for him,
Speaker 3: and he goes, do you want in?
Speaker 2: I was like, you thought about it for two seconds.
Speaker 3: I was like, I've been waiting for this my whole life.
Speaker 3: And so that day I quit my job that I
Speaker 3: had and went up to LA the next day and
Speaker 3: met Rob at the studio and started working on this
Speaker 3: project that the very first gig I ever worked on
Speaker 3: was this film called Empire of the Dark and it
Speaker 3: was made by this guy named Steve Barquette, and it
Speaker 3: was his the last film he ever made, and he
Speaker 3: was only known for making two films. And the first
Speaker 3: film that this guy made, Steve Barquette, back in the
Speaker 3: early eighties was with the working with Jim Danforth and
Speaker 3: Robert Dennis Cotack doing all the effects for him. So
Speaker 3: this guy Steve Barquette gave with his first film, he
Speaker 3: gave the scow Tack brothers their start in the industry.
Speaker 3: That's where they got started from. And then his next
Speaker 3: film is the film that gave me and Robert Stromberg
Speaker 3: our first career you know thing in the industry. And
Speaker 3: then and I mentioned the other film first with the
Speaker 3: Scotax because then because of that Steve Barquette, nothing film,
Speaker 3: that's what would have That's what later led on to
Speaker 3: me getting hired on with the SCO Tax for the
Speaker 3: first time. On Terminator two.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, you can drol this kind of spied the diagram.
Speaker 2: You're sort of linking up with the.
Speaker 3: Individuals exactly what it is. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 3: It was. It was it was like the most serendipitous
Speaker 3: kind of snowballing that just yeah, yeah, it's like is
Speaker 3: there you know, is there something guiding this? You know,
Speaker 3: it's it was just too yeah. For me, it was
Speaker 3: really like I can't believe where I'm at right now.
Speaker 3: That was like half the first half of my career
Speaker 3: was just like I can't believe I'm here, I can't
Speaker 3: believe I'm doing this. I can't. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean through the Strombergs, knowing them one of my first
Speaker 3: gigs following that Barquette film that led to work getting
Speaker 3: to work with Jim Danforth mm and working with a legend,
Speaker 3: you know. To me, he was a legend like Ray Harryhausen.
Speaker 3: He was like the American well no, Harry houses is American,
Speaker 3: but he was like the modern day Harry Housen that
Speaker 3: was still doing it, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and to
Speaker 3: any degree I mean, not that he ever got raised popularity,
Speaker 3: but I mean his work to me is just amongst
Speaker 3: the best ever created. I mean, as far as the
Speaker 3: notion that guy's work is just he was like an
Speaker 3: effects savant, you know, he was just he could do
Speaker 3: it all. He could draw a paint, skulp, do all
Speaker 3: of it and animate and he was a mad artist
Speaker 3: and he excelled at it all. You know. That's ah,
Speaker 3: it was just and getting to work with a guy
Speaker 3: like that early on in my career. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was one of those I can't believe him here, you know.
Speaker 2: Going back to Terminator too, people always think of that film,
Speaker 2: they think of the CGI of course, you know, Steve
Speaker 2: Williams worked on and all the guys that ILM worked on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a lot of miniature work in that
Speaker 2: film as well.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: There's all this sort of key, a key scene that
Speaker 2: you worked on, I think, which was the the kind
Speaker 2: of nuclear blast scene.
Speaker 3: Right right, the nuclear nightmare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the nuclear Nightmare. Yeah, that's such a haunting scene.
Speaker 2: Like for years, that kind of was emblazoned in my brain,
Speaker 2: you know, And because there was that possibility in the nineties,
Speaker 2: I was still at high school until what ninety three,
Speaker 2: there was the like the Iraq War going on. My
Speaker 2: physics teacher was talking about nuclear annihilation and yeah, and
Speaker 2: when that film came out, that really sort of had
Speaker 2: a big impact. That scene in particular has always been
Speaker 2: very kind of haunting. Taught me through some of the
Speaker 2: sort of aspects of that scene, like what scale were
Speaker 2: you working at, and what kind of materials were you
Speaker 2: building stuff out of? And what was the brief from
Speaker 2: Jim at the start.
Speaker 3: It's funny because Jim Cameron never came by to see
Speaker 3: any of our stuff. He never really, he never once visited.
Speaker 3: Bob Scotach would always have to take you know, daily
Speaker 3: stuff to show them and then they would have you know,
Speaker 3: their meetings and then Jim would convey to Bob any
Speaker 3: changes and stuff. So that's how that worked between Bob
Speaker 3: and Jim throughout. It's funny because at that time i
Speaker 3: l M was was pushing the digital boundaries. They were progressing,
Speaker 3: you know, they were just that was just the preliminary
Speaker 3: stuff leading up to Jurassic Park. What followed after that digitally,
Speaker 3: So yeah, Cameron was really focused on that digital stuff
Speaker 3: working right and you know, being able to get the
Speaker 3: proper look that he wanted, you know, as realistic as possible.
Speaker 3: So Cameron was really focused on that, on the ILM stuff,
Speaker 3: and which was the main reason why Jim hired the
Speaker 3: SKO Tex to handle the miniature stuff because of them start,
Speaker 3: because the SCO tax gave Jim Cameron his start at
Speaker 3: the Old Corner Studios as a model maker and effects guy,
Speaker 3: and then that's how Jim started out and got his
Speaker 3: foot in the door. But through Jim and Bob and
Speaker 3: Dennis working together for so long for a few years
Speaker 3: in the beginning, that's how Jim knew that, you know,
Speaker 3: the guys that could pull this off that I don't
Speaker 3: have to you know, I don't have to you know,
Speaker 3: be there too much to guide them in what I want.
Speaker 3: That was the reason Jim hired Bob and Denny to
Speaker 3: do this stuff, because he wanted the stuff done simply
Speaker 3: as possible, you know, and he knew that the Sco
Speaker 3: text that's how they work, you know, the Scow texts
Speaker 3: are all about simplicity. And the reason for that is
Speaker 3: because the majority of our stuff is done in camera. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and at that time, in the early nineties, well even
Speaker 3: throughout the eighties, I think in camera effects were not
Speaker 3: as we're not widely used everything. Most things were shot
Speaker 3: as elements and then combined later in control. So there
Speaker 3: weren't a lot of companies that at this time that
Speaker 3: in the early nineties that even did a lot of
Speaker 3: in camera effects. There were a couple, but they like dabbled,
Speaker 3: they would do both. And Bob and Dennil were always about, well,
Speaker 3: we're always going to try to get it in camera first,
Speaker 3: you know, if we can, if we can do it
Speaker 3: in camera anyway possible, that's how that's how we want
Speaker 3: to do it. And then if anything has to be
Speaker 3: added in later, you know, then we'll worry about that later.
Speaker 3: But that was not the normal approach. It was always
Speaker 3: whatever is going to be the most trolled way to
Speaker 3: do it right off the bat. So Cameron, you know,
Speaker 3: didn't have to come to us because he knew Bob
Speaker 3: and Denny. Whatever they were going to come up with,
Speaker 3: it was more than likely going to work if because
Speaker 3: Bob would Bob would want to pick specific things that
Speaker 3: he would want to do, and talking when they first
Speaker 3: got together about the project, you know, Bob specific specifically,
Speaker 3: it was like, I want to do the nuclear stuff.
Speaker 3: That was the thing that that Jim even left to Bob.
Speaker 3: It's like, what shots do you are you interested in
Speaker 3: doing when they first started playing with the film, you know,
Speaker 3: and yeah, Bob immediately was like, we want to do
Speaker 3: this and so uh so, Yeah, the way that the
Speaker 3: SCO tax worked was just as basic, keep keep everything
Speaker 3: as basic as possible and simple as possible, uh and
Speaker 3: which hugely led to as cheaply as possible. We never
Speaker 3: had the we never had the big budgets that I
Speaker 3: l M got, not even close. And even the guys
Speaker 3: sometimes be like, I can't believe we're doing it this way.
Speaker 3: You know, there's gotta be a similar way. But because
Speaker 3: uh just some of the some of the things that
Speaker 3: that we would come up with. It would just be
Speaker 3: really crazy stuff sometimes that you wouldn't think you'd have
Speaker 3: to think, you know. Necessity becoming Mother of invention was
Speaker 3: like and was like the that was every shot we
Speaker 3: did was like, Okay, how are you gonna, how are
Speaker 3: we gonna? How are we gonna do this? How are
Speaker 3: you gonna? And you know, and then Bob would always
Speaker 3: have certain notions like I was thinking something like this,
Speaker 3: and he'd draws something out a piece of paper while
Speaker 3: he's explaining it to us, and then all right, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'd sit there and think about it. All right, well
Speaker 3: this isn't gonna work, really, we can't. That's gonna be
Speaker 3: too well, maybe we could change it. And then so
Speaker 3: we would take his first notions and then run with it,
Speaker 3: and Bob would let us just run with it, and
Speaker 3: then we would always come back with, well, we could
Speaker 3: do it if we can weld these cages together and
Speaker 3: have it hinged, because it's got to be reset. And
Speaker 3: if we if we have it with cages that can
Speaker 3: collapse and we have a collapsible front and we just
Speaker 3: talk it out and then I'll go all right, go
Speaker 3: for it. And then we would start and there were
Speaker 3: things that would get started and then we would find
Speaker 3: out part way in, oh, this isn't gonna work. We
Speaker 3: got to rethink this. And that happened on T two
Speaker 3: when they were first talking about doing the the the
Speaker 3: building collapses from from the shockwave in the close ups
Speaker 3: and stuff showing the buildings actually go actually get you know,
Speaker 3: blown away and caved in. At first. Joviscosel was hired
Speaker 3: on to handle all the pyro bits for that, including blast,
Speaker 3: blast cannons and stuff, but Joe wanted to shoot. Originally
Speaker 3: the setups the miniature buildings all in a row and
Speaker 3: everything the way that they were set up to camera,
Speaker 3: Joe wanted to set them up vertically and shot vertically
Speaker 3: using real fire and blast cannons shooting up or was
Speaker 3: it shooting down? It was one of the two. No,
Speaker 3: it was shooting up because the flames had to travel,
Speaker 3: so he wanted to fire. He wanted these fireballs to
Speaker 3: travel up and look like they're going sideways. And that's
Speaker 3: how they were starting to build the miniatures in the
Speaker 3: set at first, and they got like the scale little
Speaker 3: bits up, the framework up, and they were trying to
Speaker 3: figure out, you know, camera positions and stuff. And that's
Speaker 3: when I think Bob and Jim had a conversation and
Speaker 3: Bob had figured out that this this isn't this wasn't
Speaker 3: gonna work because there is no fire ball, you know,
Speaker 3: there is no fire flames coming and and he just
Speaker 3: thought that logistically there were a lot of logistic reasons
Speaker 3: why at that time it wasn't gonna I don't think
Speaker 3: we were going to have the control that we needed,
Speaker 3: uh and it was going to be a lot more
Speaker 3: difficult to reset each time working vertically. Uh So the
Speaker 3: idea was scrapped and Joe was replaced with another Pyro guy,
Speaker 3: but not for Pyro, just for uh the electronic timing
Speaker 3: trigger device is used and uh so that like all
Speaker 3: the air canons we use, would go off at once,
Speaker 3: and you know, right because we ditched the fire and
Speaker 3: the vertical bit because Bob wanted to have more control,
Speaker 3: so we went horizontal. We shot at everything you know,
Speaker 3: set up on tabletops or these raised platforms, and we
Speaker 3: just decided to go with air cannons and uh geled
Speaker 3: lighting and uh just having the debris and the shock
Speaker 3: and just the the just the shock wave effect take
Speaker 3: it out because Bob, Bob, there was research in how
Speaker 3: atomic you know, what happens during the blast? What happens
Speaker 3: you know, is there flames that come out or anything
Speaker 3: like that. And so after all the research that Bob
Speaker 3: had done, that's when it was that's when Jovi Scoltz's
Speaker 3: idea was nixed. But what's you know, here's what's kind
Speaker 3: of a funny part about that is that whole idea
Speaker 3: for shooting the miniature with the fire vertically. Joe later
Speaker 3: used that very set up for his Oscar winning work
Speaker 3: in Independence Day. He got to use he got to
Speaker 3: use that gag later in Independence Day. And that's how
Speaker 3: they shot all of that stuff with the fire going
Speaker 3: through the streets and blowing the cars out and all that. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: that's how they shot that with the with the next
Speaker 3: idea that it was, it was started with T two
Speaker 3: and then now we're not going to do it that way,
Speaker 3: but then it wound up working on You know.
Speaker 2: That's nice that you can save an idea for later. Right.
Speaker 2: I'm always kind of amazed that, you know, you would
Speaker 2: build these miniatures, and in this case in T too,
Speaker 2: you built this kind of minute the city. There's cause
Speaker 2: there's the playground, the mushroom cloud, the mushroom cloud, the
Speaker 2: mushroom cloud.
Speaker 3: That a second. That was a big articulated model, right,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that's all that was.
Speaker 2: But I'm always amazing that you build this stuff and
Speaker 2: then you've you've you're shooting at probably high speed, right
Speaker 2: like with the blast. Yeah, there's seconds, there's a second
Speaker 2: or two where all of your work is kind of obliterated.
Speaker 2: But that's what it's built for, all of it, I mean.
Speaker 2: But then you don't see the results of that until
Speaker 2: a day or days later, right, So you have to
Speaker 2: trust in the process.
Speaker 3: We all have. We all have a little screening. We'll
Speaker 3: sit down screening. Yeah there, and we there'd be so
Speaker 3: there would be such oh you think we got it,
Speaker 3: you think we got it. I hope we got it.
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, we gotta do it again.
Speaker 3: And we'd watch it over and over again, and we'd study,
Speaker 3: you know, we go a frame by frame and we
Speaker 3: would study on movie olas. We would just study and
Speaker 3: see what gag, what worked, and what didn't, and then
Speaker 3: we would you know, make our alterations then give another go.
Speaker 3: But oh yeah, we never got anything on the first.
Speaker 2: Day, no way, So what were those buildings built out
Speaker 2: of and the like they I mean, it has the
Speaker 2: sort of effect of kind of tissue paper, you know,
Speaker 2: being kind of torn apart by that last way. But
Speaker 2: what was the materials that were being in the.
Speaker 3: Building facing the actual surfaces of the buildings. Those were
Speaker 3: just cast big cast sheets of the you know whatever
Speaker 3: that whatever the texture was on the building, the window
Speaker 3: texture or whatever, that was just one big solid cast
Speaker 3: out of a mixture that we came up with through
Speaker 3: trial and error and trying different things. And it was
Speaker 3: it was a mixture. It was a breakaway type plaster
Speaker 3: because it had to have a thickness to it. It
Speaker 3: had to be relatively it had to have at least
Speaker 3: like a good inch thickness for it to look you know,
Speaker 3: because it couldn't be like paper thin, because that wouldn't
Speaker 3: look real when it broke apart. So it had to
Speaker 3: have thickness like real concrete wood. And so we had
Speaker 3: to come up with this breakaway plaster solution that was
Speaker 3: like part plaster of Paris and uh. The vermiculite mixed
Speaker 3: in vermiculite was a was like an artificial soil mix
Speaker 3: thing that you would add to soil but it was
Speaker 3: kind of a crumbly substance, and then we would in it.
Speaker 3: We would put in like bits of cork in there
Speaker 3: to like shredd it up cork and stuff, stuff that
Speaker 3: would be really lightweight and brittle, but would adhere to
Speaker 3: the plaster and it would have enough structure that we
Speaker 3: could handle it and get it up against the building
Speaker 3: and fasten against the building, and we just tied we
Speaker 3: just like tied it to the We would tie we
Speaker 3: would drill holes into where the wire frame and where
Speaker 3: the steel cage framing was behind it, and we just
Speaker 3: tied it off with wire and then and then the
Speaker 3: services were painted and everything. But also to help make
Speaker 3: those things break as well, we found out we couldn't
Speaker 3: just rely on the air cannons. So our effects guy, Joel,
Speaker 3: one of our great effects riggers, Joel Steiner, he came up.
Speaker 3: He came up with a wire pulley system yank gag
Speaker 3: where we'd have all these wires connected at certain points
Speaker 3: behind the fronts of the building leading back behind and
Speaker 3: they were all on cables and they would all come
Speaker 3: down to i think two different groups of sand bags
Speaker 3: that were counterweights, and and so there was like a
Speaker 3: all this like there'd be like a dozen at least
Speaker 3: a dozen or fifteen different wires coming back, and then
Speaker 3: they would go through with pulleys and they would filter
Speaker 3: down to like less wires to where there was just
Speaker 3: like a couple of bat a couple of cables with
Speaker 3: weighted with sandbags that would get triggered. They had they
Speaker 3: were hooked up to electronic triggers along with all of
Speaker 3: the the blast cannons, the air cannons that were lying
Speaker 3: in front. So all this stuff was had to happen
Speaker 3: the split second and just that setup when if you
Speaker 3: ever see pictures of it there there are a couple
Speaker 3: of pictures of that setup with all the cables too,
Speaker 3: showing the air cannons and the cables behind. It was
Speaker 3: crazy and just getting that timing right. Man, it was
Speaker 3: amazing to see that thing go. But it was just yeah,
Speaker 3: in a split second, everything would be perfect, lined up
Speaker 3: beautiful again, and then in a split second, man, you
Speaker 3: blink and it was just it was like vaporized. Everything
Speaker 3: was gone, and you just be like, oh man, that's
Speaker 3: what you'd really hope you got it because then you
Speaker 3: think about resetting and that took boy, that took some
Speaker 3: time resetting, we were able to get it down pretty quick.
Speaker 3: You know, we got it. We got it down to
Speaker 3: like where we could have it fully reset in one day, yeah,
Speaker 3: the next shooting day. But of course by that point,
Speaker 3: I think we only had two more takes to do it.
Speaker 3: But then we got it. But uh, but yeah, we'd
Speaker 3: really worked on our we were always trying to get
Speaker 3: faster at resetting and then go ahead.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, And in the film itself,
Speaker 2: it's it's you know, it occupies a matter of seconds
Speaker 2: in the film, like do you remember when you first
Speaker 2: saw it so got into the film.
Speaker 3: The entire sequence is just yeah, it's it's uh because
Speaker 3: there's you know, there's the freeway shot where the freeway overpassed,
Speaker 3: all the cars get blown off, there's the uh yeah,
Speaker 3: there's those buildings to get vaporized. Then there's that shot
Speaker 3: of the city park with the trees or it's just
Speaker 3: it's just a street with some trees and a stop
Speaker 3: sign that all get blown over.
Speaker 4: And and I think that was it just for the nuclear blast,
Speaker 4: and then the the the big aerial view of the
Speaker 4: shock wave as it spread over the distant view of
Speaker 4: the city and it spreads and consumes it.
Speaker 3: That was a one of a kind shot that had
Speaker 3: never been tried before because that utilized very early. Uh uh,
Speaker 3: that that one shot utilized a little bit of cig
Speaker 3: added into it, I really And but that was just
Speaker 3: various layers of painted like there was a photo set
Speaker 3: up done with with photos of the city mixed with painting,
Speaker 3: and then there was a layer of it all destroyed,
Speaker 3: of a full painting of the whole city destroyed, and
Speaker 3: it was done in layers. And then but there's a
Speaker 3: brief moment where you see some of the skeleton bits
Speaker 3: of the buildings fall in the background just a little bit,
Speaker 3: and that was just vector graphic animation that was put
Speaker 3: in very briefly. So that was a real complex shot
Speaker 3: that mixed miniatures and matte paintings and CG all in
Speaker 3: one just for that one you know shot, because then
Speaker 3: there's a foreground model of a house on a hill
Speaker 3: that gets blown out at the very end. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: we were doing really innovative stuff that hadn't been done before,
Speaker 3: you know, incorporating even some incorporating digital stuff back then
Speaker 3: on something like that was was new, I mean completely
Speaker 3: new for us too. I mean, that was like wow
Speaker 3: when we saw the finish saying, because the digital stub
Speaker 3: was done somewhere else later, and so when we saw
Speaker 3: when we saw the finished stuff on the you know,
Speaker 3: we're just like wow. Even we were like wow, hey,
Speaker 3: we didn't do that. What's what those little spits fault?
Speaker 3: You know? So yeah, I mean, and then you know,
Speaker 3: we also shot uh the liquid when he's in puddles,
Speaker 3: the T one thousand and he melted, the melt down,
Speaker 3: We did the We did the the puddles of him
Speaker 3: coming together on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, that was just
Speaker 3: shooting real, real mercury on the concrete floor of our
Speaker 3: studio and we were blowing it around with air nozzles
Speaker 3: on the floor. And that's all that this division Yeah yeah, yep,
Speaker 3: because it had to match. I forget the reason why
Speaker 3: it was. Why that was shot on this division. The
Speaker 3: uh that the shot I was talking about before with
Speaker 3: the with the nuclear blast, you know, wiping out the sea,
Speaker 3: that araoral view that was shot on this Division two.
Speaker 3: All all the stuff for that mm hmmm, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess if they were comping some bits in they
Speaker 2: wanted to sort of maintain their generational quality of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's interesting you say that going into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's interesting you say about how you know that early
Speaker 2: use of vector graphics was in there because over the
Speaker 2: years that that became more and more common, didn't it
Speaker 2: for cg augmentation of miniatures to happen? Did any of that?
Speaker 2: Did any of that happen on you worked on Batman Returns?
Speaker 2: Didn't you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did any of it happen on that? But it was
Speaker 2: digital creeping in on that because that.
Speaker 3: Was not with you, not with you we did because
Speaker 3: for Batman Returns, Uh, we did all of the miniature
Speaker 3: vehicle stuff. Okay, we did the Bat missile change oh stuff,
Speaker 3: and we did the bat ski boat stuff, and we
Speaker 3: did the the entire opening credits sequence, uh was a
Speaker 3: miniature with with the floating through the sewer. Every single
Speaker 3: one of those shots was our miniature stuff, every single one, uh,
Speaker 3: up until from the time he enters into from the
Speaker 3: time uh Paul Rubens and uh the penguin's parents toss
Speaker 3: him over the bridge, from the time the bassinet goes
Speaker 3: underneath that bridge and the credits begin, all of its
Speaker 3: miniature until it comes out and those two big Emperor
Speaker 3: penguins come in at the very you know, directed by
Speaker 3: Tim Burton.
Speaker 2: All this Sudden a short movie really that you made that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was I mean we because that
Speaker 3: all that stuff had to be shot in basically we
Speaker 3: had to use we used that same tunnel. We had
Speaker 3: one big main tunnel which was used for mainly for
Speaker 3: the Batskibo corkscrew shot and all that, but we had
Speaker 3: to use that tunnel for and we branched off of
Speaker 3: that and in a maze of tunnels coming off of
Speaker 3: it to get all that opening credit stuff shot. But yeah,
Speaker 3: all of it's shot in the same tunnel set all
Speaker 3: that stuff and trying to find different angles and you know,
Speaker 3: views that so it's not so it doesn't look like
Speaker 3: the same tunnel every time. So that was challenging. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was.
Speaker 2: Did timber and never get involved with that. I know
Speaker 2: you said Jim Cameron didn't come down to see the tea,
Speaker 2: but did Tim.
Speaker 3: No, Tim Burton never came. We'd always have to go
Speaker 3: to him and show everything. But it was just easier
Speaker 3: for him, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just thinking that they're both directors that kind
Speaker 2: of understand a lot of the elements of filmmaking, James Cameron,
Speaker 2: I wonder whenever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to I'm You've brought up
Speaker 3: a good thing. Point I've never even thought of. Is
Speaker 3: I'm trying now to think of any gig where the
Speaker 3: director did show up for any reason mhm, and I
Speaker 3: can only think of two hmm and nowhere like Cameron
Speaker 3: or Burton, you know, I mean these you know, lesser directors. Yeah. No,
Speaker 3: it's like I think one reason for that is because
Speaker 3: when the score Tax had the reputation at that point,
Speaker 3: you know, ever since you know, Aliens when they won
Speaker 3: their first Oscar, ever since Aliens, filmmakers knew that the
Speaker 3: SCO Tax. You know, if you're going to hire them
Speaker 3: to do your stuff, you don't have to hover over them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can.
Speaker 3: Just let you just because they they the SCO Tax
Speaker 3: get involved with stuff that they're into, you know, so
Speaker 3: they know that they're getting passionate affects people and they
Speaker 3: so Yeah, it was like one of the things where
Speaker 3: they just they never came by, They left us alone,
Speaker 3: and we would just bring it. We'd show them what
Speaker 3: we'd do as we were doing it, and they would
Speaker 3: you know, critique it and go Oh if you could
Speaker 3: change that and that, and that'd be it, you know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, that that that rarely happened ever having
Speaker 3: a director come.
Speaker 2: Was there a film that you worked on where you
Speaker 2: really had like if you think back now, you really
Speaker 2: think you had the best time working on it, whether
Speaker 2: it was the people or the film subject itself. Was
Speaker 2: there one that really stands out to you?
Speaker 3: You'd have to you'd have to ask me the opposite.
Speaker 3: You'd have to ask me which gigs were not fun?
Speaker 3: And I can't even think of one.
Speaker 2: Really, Yeah, because you know, you worked on some big
Speaker 2: demanding movies here, like you know, I look down the
Speaker 2: list again, it's like Titanic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was it. Yeah. I was fortunate I got
Speaker 3: to get and I was at the right time with
Speaker 3: the Go Tax too, because this was when they were
Speaker 3: doing the biggest stuff, was right after Alien and then
Speaker 3: the Abyss, and I just missed the Abyss. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I got to work with those guys from T two
Speaker 3: from nineteen, started with them in nineteen ninety and worked
Speaker 3: with them all the way up into the two thousands.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I've done so many gigs with them.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, there's I can't even think of one
Speaker 3: that was there. They're all it's like it's like I'm
Speaker 3: amongst my family again. With each gig, it was like
Speaker 3: a family reunion kind of a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, nice and yeah and god, we.
Speaker 3: Would just have so much fun on the set because
Speaker 3: we were well one thing about the working with the
Speaker 3: Scow Tax and just working in visual effects back then
Speaker 3: in general, working on a practical analogs a not a
Speaker 3: lot of people. The crews were not big, you know.
Speaker 3: The biggest crew we ever had on any given skow
Speaker 3: Tech gig, the biggest cruise we ever had was for
Speaker 3: Hard Rain, the movie Hardly Ring. The crews never got
Speaker 3: more than you know, a dozen people. And some of
Speaker 3: these films, some of these gigs lasted a good year,
Speaker 3: you know. And so we were working six days, and
Speaker 3: we were working six day weeks on shooting, schedule, model building.
Speaker 3: The first half of production was five days a week,
Speaker 3: but six for some of us. And then but when
Speaker 3: shooting started it was always that was six day weeks
Speaker 3: and no less than twelve hour days. And you're with
Speaker 3: these people for you know, months, and like half for
Speaker 3: a year, two a year. Yeah, you see the and
Speaker 3: we just you know, my best friends to this day
Speaker 3: are those people. You know, my longest dearest friends are
Speaker 3: all these people that I worked with in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't think of a single like, which was the
Speaker 3: best one. What was the most fun? There isn't It
Speaker 3: was just it was just being there. It was just God,
Speaker 3: it was just so much fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I bet there were some projects that kind of surprised
Speaker 2: you though in a way because you can see there's
Speaker 2: those sort of kind of blockbuster movies. But then didn't
Speaker 2: you work on rooms?
Speaker 3: Yes, I but that was not for the Skoll Tax.
Speaker 3: That was Now there's a there's one period of my
Speaker 3: career where I moonlighted moonlit. But I think, yeah, there
Speaker 3: was a period and it started in nineteen ninety when
Speaker 3: I started with the Scotack in between gigs with them
Speaker 3: through my friendship with Rob Stromberg from before Robert Stromberg
Speaker 3: had by the time I started with the Sco Tax,
Speaker 3: Rob had gotten his big career gig moment, becoming the
Speaker 3: chief matt artist at Illusion Arts in Van Nights, the
Speaker 3: matte painting company that start that was started by Albert
Speaker 3: Whitlock and Bill Taylor and Sid Dutton, so he got
Speaker 3: established there like I got established at with the scowtax
Speaker 3: kind of thing. So in between scow Tag gigs, Illusion
Speaker 3: Arts was always working. They had they never stopped. They
Speaker 3: were like there was always they had multiple projects going
Speaker 3: because they were they weren't film television shows, commercials. They
Speaker 3: would get they would get shows that they would have
Speaker 3: to do paintings for us, you know, multiple episodes for
Speaker 3: a particular So they were always busy. And so in
Speaker 3: between my Skowtach gigs, Rob would always there would always
Speaker 3: be some foreground model or foreground miniature where we need
Speaker 3: to be down on something over there. So I would
Speaker 3: go and moonlight over there after hours. I never even
Speaker 3: got paid, you know, I would go after hours and
Speaker 3: hang out with with Robert because Robert practically lived there
Speaker 3: at the time. He was always painting and working on
Speaker 3: stuff all the time, because we were both we were
Speaker 3: both young and and just this was at the moment
Speaker 3: of our careers where it was just all about reveling
Speaker 3: and where we were and just making the most of it.
Speaker 3: You know, we were God, we were just living the dream.
Speaker 3: You know. I'll never forget what it was like walking
Speaker 3: into Illusion Arts. It was like I had the keys
Speaker 3: of the Kingdom. I could walk in whenever I wanted
Speaker 3: and and and that was thanks to Bill Taylor, who's
Speaker 3: now no longer with us. And Bill Taylor was just
Speaker 3: such not only one of the great legends of the industry,
Speaker 3: but he was one of the sweetest guys I ever
Speaker 3: met in my life. And you know, he saw the
Speaker 3: passion in us, so he was like, yeah, you guys
Speaker 3: can hang out here and work here and do your
Speaker 3: stuff here, you know, And we did, and I worked.
Speaker 3: I'd be there all night long and just working on
Speaker 3: you know, some little foreground miniature for like the Four Rooms,
Speaker 3: some kind of hot ball movie that they got, or
Speaker 3: or working on a Star Trek Next Jen episode or something,
Speaker 3: you know, or a Deep Space nine episode I got
Speaker 3: to I got to work on the pilot episode of
Speaker 3: Voyager Startrek Voyager, doing some really cool minor stuff. So
Speaker 3: you know, I was always like, there was never like
Speaker 3: days off for me. I was like, even when I
Speaker 3: had time off, I was on something else, and I
Speaker 3: was always just pursuing it.
Speaker 2: And ye know, your hobby is your work, is your passion.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it was my life. It was
Speaker 3: it was Yeah, it was like a way of life
Speaker 3: and but yeah, illusion Arts became another really great period
Speaker 3: of my career. Not as long as the SKO tax,
Speaker 3: but for a few years a man. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just I got to meet Albert Whitlock, you know. Oh well,
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, you know that was me. Oh my god, wow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, it was. It was just such magical times.
Speaker 3: Magical times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder light as well. Did you have a
Speaker 2: sense that your job was being replaced by c G I,
Speaker 2: I mean Titanic, you know, I think of this, yeah, ship.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure there were models as well that
Speaker 2: were built by yourselves and your colleagues, but you know
Speaker 2: that transition had begun to happen.
Speaker 3: Then.
Speaker 2: Did you feel like you were you were going to
Speaker 2: be out of work any point?
Speaker 3: Uh, when Jurassic Park came out, Yeah, that was when
Speaker 3: we all looked at each other and was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: our times are times limited, and we all knew it.
Speaker 3: We all knew it, and it was just at that point,
Speaker 3: by the mid nineties, it was it was it was
Speaker 3: a collective feeling of you know, how long can It
Speaker 3: was just down to how how much longer we could
Speaker 3: stretch it. Yeah, because it happened when when when it happened,
Speaker 3: When when the studios did that big switch over. It
Speaker 3: happened fast, it happened, I mean within ten years, within
Speaker 3: within ten within a full decade. Yeah, what we did
Speaker 3: was right far in view between at that point.
Speaker 2: It feels to me like that it sort of led
Speaker 2: from you doing creatures and things like that to doing
Speaker 2: more miniature work with vehicles maybe or with with actual
Speaker 2: buildings and stuff, rather than you know, actually working with like.
Speaker 3: Now, the type of work the tip you mean, like yeah,
Speaker 3: like the type of effects and stuff didn't really change.
Speaker 3: It just got less, right, okay, And and well the
Speaker 3: biggest change was when you knew it was Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: definitely we only got this most time left is when
Speaker 3: the projects from the mid nineties, the projects, the budgets
Speaker 3: and the type of gigs, they were no longer blockbuster,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, mhm, the blockbuster the block
Speaker 3: you know. We went from T two to Batman Returns
Speaker 3: to you know, which led to uh Hard Rain, which
Speaker 3: was a big film at the time, the video back
Speaker 3: that it was a huge film, and then Titanic at
Speaker 3: that time too, that followed immediately, So it was these
Speaker 3: big blockbuster and then after Titanic by yeah, by ninety seven,
Speaker 3: that was the end. But that's when the gigs got.
Speaker 3: The budgets got less and the gigs got less, the
Speaker 3: smaller studio gigs type. You know, we started doing more.
Speaker 3: You know, we uh after Titanic we got we got
Speaker 3: gigs like my favorite Martian, that Disney gig that like
Speaker 3: no one even like remembers.
Speaker 2: Yeah are yeah, I yeah, I mean I vaguely remember it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tremi's Fool was later on, wasn't it. But it was
Speaker 2: like you're saying, sort of yeah, diminishing retens.
Speaker 3: We were getting threes and four, you know that kind
Speaker 3: of movie. Yeah, but again Tremor's Four was. God, that
Speaker 3: was a fun That was a fun gig man because
Speaker 3: it was all puppet you know, it went back to
Speaker 3: the puppets we did. All the graboids were puppets. No
Speaker 3: cg because the guy that was directing it was the
Speaker 3: guy that wrote the first one. Yes, what was his name?
Speaker 2: Underwood?
Speaker 3: Run Underwood, thank you, Ron Underwood. Yes, yeah, he wanted it.
Speaker 3: That's why he got the scow text. But that's how
Speaker 3: we got the gig. It was because I wanted to
Speaker 3: be I wanted to have the feel and look at
Speaker 3: the first movie. So it was all we got to
Speaker 3: go back to miniatures then. But I'll tell you one
Speaker 3: interesting thing about when the digital thing, when that realization hit.
Speaker 3: It was in the mid nineties, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: ninety four and ninety five after Jurassic Park, and in
Speaker 3: ninety what was it, ninety five ninety six when Illusion Arts.
Speaker 3: I was at Illusion Arts when that transition happened for them,
Speaker 3: where they rent from strictly traditional hand paintings, hand hand
Speaker 3: painted artwork, to digital paintings and doing them on computer.
Speaker 3: And I was there in the very beginning, when I
Speaker 3: was there when they brought the computer, the brand new
Speaker 3: computers in for the first time and were setting them up,
Speaker 3: and when in Rob's corner where he painted, and the
Speaker 3: upstairs he had a desk and an easel where he
Speaker 3: worked and had all those paintings and everything and all
Speaker 3: the paints, and he had cupboards over there. He had
Speaker 3: a whole side of the upstairs to himself like a loft.
Speaker 3: And they had sun that they had sun roofs or
Speaker 3: skylights that would allow natural sunlight in upstairs. And then
Speaker 3: of course they had to get rid of those because
Speaker 3: the computers came in. So but anyway, when the transition
Speaker 3: happened and the computers came in, and of course all
Speaker 3: digital Matt painting was in the very beginning was photoshop.
Speaker 3: It's all. That's all they used. And I'll never forget
Speaker 3: sitting there with rob late nights, sitting there watching him
Speaker 3: learn photoshop on the computer, and we'd hang out together
Speaker 3: and have the music blasting and drinking beer or whatever,
Speaker 3: and he'd be sitting there learning photoshop, and I'd be
Speaker 3: sitting there right with him, just thinking, oh, man, this sucks.
Speaker 3: That I was verbal about a lot, but I was
Speaker 3: just like yeah, and and and soon after this, both
Speaker 3: Robert and Sid Dunton came came to me and approached
Speaker 3: me and asked me if I wanted to They said,
Speaker 3: if you want to join us and learn photoshop and
Speaker 3: learn how to do this, welcome aboard. Well we'll train you,
Speaker 3: because every mad artist in there had to retrain, they
Speaker 3: had to learn photoshop. And like, you want to learn,
Speaker 3: you want to join m HM. And I was given
Speaker 3: right there. I was given the opportunity right there to
Speaker 3: have steady work, ah, you know, then be on the
Speaker 3: very beginning cusp of this industry, this new industry. I
Speaker 3: got it right there there. It was you want it,
Speaker 3: you want to join it, be part of it. And
Speaker 3: right then and there, I respect very respectfully and very
Speaker 3: politely explained why I didn't want it.
Speaker 2: What was your reasoning?
Speaker 3: Because there was I was watching Robert and the other
Speaker 3: mad artist was named Fumi. Oh I forget his last
Speaker 3: name Japanese.
Speaker 2: Uh Fumi. I said the tip of my mess my
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, he was he was upstairs too, learning at
Speaker 3: the same time. Yeah, and I just told him, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just can't. I can't this. There's nothing appealing about it.
Speaker 3: It's there's I can't. I couldn't do this all day long.
Speaker 3: I could not sit on my ass in front of
Speaker 3: a computer screen all day doing what the way we
Speaker 3: did it before was fun. Yeah, and that's gone. That fun,
Speaker 3: that physical fun, creative fun, is now not there for
Speaker 3: me anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I just couldn't. I wanted no part of
Speaker 3: it because he I ultimately knew where it was going.
Speaker 3: Yeah and yeah, I just didn't want a part of it.
Speaker 3: And I never embraced it. I I you know, I
Speaker 3: to this day, I'm an analog guy, you know, doing
Speaker 3: this right here, this uh this zoom meeting thing we're
Speaker 3: doing right now, audio recording. This is all like I
Speaker 3: have a hard time setting this stuff up, you know this, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just and I just I just long for the
Speaker 3: times when you could walk into a place, I mean
Speaker 3: just walking into an effect stage. I'll never forget the
Speaker 3: first time I ever walked into an effect stage. I
Speaker 3: first started that first day at Dave Stit's when working
Speaker 3: on that Steve Barquette piece of garbage. Oh it's not
Speaker 3: a piece of garbage. It's a fun It's one of
Speaker 3: those movies. It's so it's so bad, it's good. It's
Speaker 3: one of those but anyway, Oh sure, but yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: never forget walked the first time walking onto an actual
Speaker 3: effects set. Mm hm. And I walked in the walked
Speaker 3: in front door on Van Owen Street and it was
Speaker 3: just an industrial looking building right behind Burbank Airport, right
Speaker 3: out of the railroad tracks railroad tracks. Went behind the
Speaker 3: building and walked in the front building, or walked in
Speaker 3: the office, the main office part, and then walked through
Speaker 3: the second door which led out into the big open
Speaker 3: this big open, huge, huge stage, big high ceiling, huge
Speaker 3: stage and I walked out and all the lights were
Speaker 3: out except for these studio lights that were pointing at
Speaker 3: this in the corner of the stage. They had this
Speaker 3: the entire miniature setup of all those uh. It was
Speaker 3: from that V show, the V The Final Battle, And
Speaker 3: it was that shot of all the alien mother ships
Speaker 3: tucked behind the moon, hiding on the dark side of
Speaker 3: the Moon, and the Earth is in the distance, and
Speaker 3: it was like a it was like a pullback shot,
Speaker 3: pull them back from the Moon and then revealing all
Speaker 3: these saucers behind it. And it was all an in
Speaker 3: camera element shot shotting shotting. Its black. But there was
Speaker 3: all there was there was that setup with all these
Speaker 3: alien mothership models. There was like one the one big one,
Speaker 3: and then a couple of smaller ones in the off
Speaker 3: the side, and the and the whole moon was a model.
Speaker 3: The whole Moon was just a half dome model of
Speaker 3: the Moon, and then the Earth was a smaller model
Speaker 3: of the Earth behind it, and it was all just
Speaker 3: simply lit, brightly lit, but it was all against black.
Speaker 3: And I walked in and that was the first thing
Speaker 3: I ever saw of any kind of like a real
Speaker 3: actual movie set thing being shot. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 3: that thing right there, and it was just and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, look at this. This is amazing,
Speaker 3: this is amazing. Look at it. I can't believe it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that sitting behind a computer, I don't get any of that.
Speaker 3: You don't get any of that feet there's there's I
Speaker 3: don't know, there's just no magic there. Yeah for me,
Speaker 3: you know, for me, Yeah, I'm old, old fashioned.
Speaker 2: You know, that's fine. I mean I always think though
Speaker 2: that that that generation, I mean, you were kind of
Speaker 2: the of the the peak and the decline of large
Speaker 2: scale physical miniatures. Yeah, we were in short work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I always think that before. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 2: those affects you. They're often sort of they're more felt
Speaker 2: by the audience than just seen, you know. And I
Speaker 2: think you guys are really sort of individually credited for
Speaker 2: the work you've done, you know, some of these iconic shots.
Speaker 2: So it's always such a treat to talk to people
Speaker 2: like you who had that experience and went through that experience.
Speaker 2: Because now so much of our lives are dominated by computers.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't do bad on my computer, you know,
Speaker 2: and it drives me nuts. So you know, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, to be in such a sweet spot of
Speaker 2: the industry. It must be pretty cool when you when
Speaker 2: you look back at what you achieved over those years.
Speaker 3: I every day, man, every single day, I just feel
Speaker 3: so fortunate. And whenever I see a movie that I've
Speaker 3: worked on that comes up on streeting or whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: all the memory come back, you know, all those all
Speaker 3: just it's that and that's and that's the magic of it,
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's that's what made the that's what
Speaker 3: made the work so special. And yeah, it's a shame
Speaker 3: that that that's not embraced in the industry anymore. You know.
Speaker 2: There is a little sprinkling of that though, isn't there.
Speaker 2: There is a little kind of hearkening back to those times,
Speaker 2: I know, light in some of the more recent I'm hoping.
Speaker 3: So I haven't seen myself, but boy, I god, you hope. So.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean I've seen like it's I get
Speaker 3: a kick out of seeing the stuff. They're still doing it.
Speaker 3: Tip it's from time to time, yeah, because I have
Speaker 3: I have a couple of friends through Facebook. I have
Speaker 3: a couple of animator friends. Uh, young younger guys doing
Speaker 3: stop motion still professionally. And uh, you know, when I
Speaker 3: see their stuff that they're doing a tip, it's still
Speaker 3: like that thing that they did for the Mandalorian with
Speaker 3: the the that big giant crab creature that they did
Speaker 3: stop motion. You know, I look at that and I go, oh, okay, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, yeah great, And wasn't it fun to do?
Speaker 3: Wasn't it fun? And all? Yeah, they're just talking about
Speaker 3: how fun it was and and to do it and
Speaker 3: and and even when people see that, it's still trying
Speaker 3: to be used or utilized, and you know it. I
Speaker 3: find it interesting how whenever like a practical effect is
Speaker 3: done now that that can be like pointed at anyway
Speaker 3: in any shape or form, and it's like it's kind
Speaker 3: of a big deal. Like they kind of advertise like ooh,
Speaker 3: this one's got stop motion. At it actual stop motion,
Speaker 3: and they show how cool it looks. You know, well,
Speaker 3: look at this, we're using an old technique. Still I
Speaker 3: just find that kind of humorous. Now it's kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, but god, it's still cool to still see it.
Speaker 3: And I mean I got to I got pulled after
Speaker 3: I had been out of the industry for years and years,
Speaker 3: I did get pulled back in one last time, and
Speaker 3: it was in twenty nineteen, and it was through a
Speaker 3: very unlikely source, and it was through Greg NIKATARO.
Speaker 2: I know Greg, Yeah, okay, Creepshow, right, yeah, can be
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: And Greg and I had we had never worked together,
Speaker 3: but through a couple of gigs. Our two companies worked
Speaker 3: on the same gig together doing different things. So we
Speaker 3: had to correlate a couple of times, and we had
Speaker 3: to get a couple of we had to get a
Speaker 3: couple of castings of puppets and stuff from them to
Speaker 3: utilize with what we were doing kind of thing. And
Speaker 3: so I knew I knew Greg from that from years ago.
Speaker 3: But in twenty nine when he started up his Creep
Speaker 3: Show series, the TV series that he brought back for
Speaker 3: the first see the whole first season gimmick thing was
Speaker 3: we're all going to use practical effects. We're not going
Speaker 3: to use any CG. It's all going to be about
Speaker 3: practical and recapturing that early eighties feel and look of
Speaker 3: everything is. So he approached me because for the second
Speaker 3: episode of the of the first season, he the he
Speaker 3: had there was a creature in it and he wanted
Speaker 3: it stop motion, and so he came to me and
Speaker 3: asked if I wanted to do it, and I was like, Hell,
Speaker 3: were you kidding me? Yeah? So I got I got
Speaker 3: to come back and do all the stop motion shots
Speaker 3: that are in that episode for him, and I did
Speaker 3: like like nine shots and did a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: for it, and it was that was one of that again.
Speaker 3: It was like all the magic came back from the industry.
Speaker 3: But the only difference was is I was working completely
Speaker 3: alone in my garage, so which I had never gotten
Speaker 3: to do before. And that was really cool getting to
Speaker 3: do something completely you know. I My only critique the
Speaker 3: whole time was Greg what you would just tell me
Speaker 3: how he wanted him to move a certain way or
Speaker 3: looking on Oh, okay, I can do that. So that
Speaker 3: was all the direction I got. But I got to
Speaker 3: work completely alone and uh and working in the digital
Speaker 3: realm doing stop motion, which was weird shooting it traditionally,
Speaker 3: but then taking the footage from the being you know,
Speaker 3: just kept on the computer and then sending that file
Speaker 3: of my stop motion shots through the ether to the
Speaker 3: post production facility was in Georgia and so, which is
Speaker 3: where they were filming and doing everything where they were
Speaker 3: headquartered during Walking Dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: So the post production company was in Georgia, So I
Speaker 3: mean I had to learn. That was a learning experience,
Speaker 3: having to translate what I do into the you know,
Speaker 3: how's it how? And so that was that was Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was a learning experience.
Speaker 2: Was it easier in the end, like once you got
Speaker 2: the hang of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like being able to do it and then
Speaker 3: send it.
Speaker 2: In You get immediate feedback, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they would get back into like the next day.
Speaker 3: It was like sending them dailies, you know, same thing,
Speaker 3: but didn't have to go to.
Speaker 2: The lab, but you could see it before you sent it,
Speaker 2: which is different.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I could see, well I was, I could.
Speaker 3: That was the great thing about digital stop motion is
Speaker 3: now you can record the frames and play them back
Speaker 3: at any time, and you couldn't do that back in
Speaker 3: the old analog stop motion days. And I got to
Speaker 3: do See. I got to experience stop motion both analog
Speaker 3: and modern because in the before I got to do
Speaker 3: a quickie stop motion gig right before Batman Returns. We
Speaker 3: had in between T two and Batman Returns, there was
Speaker 3: a little gig that I did. It took us like
Speaker 3: a month this one month and it was doing effect
Speaker 3: shots for an Italian supermarket chain commercial, like a convenience
Speaker 3: store commercial directed by Woody Allen huh okay random and
Speaker 3: and I have the commercial on YouTube. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a it's crappy quality. But I never got to see
Speaker 3: the fittest product until that. But the job was that
Speaker 3: was my first ever chance getting to work with Randy
Speaker 3: Cook doing traditional stop motion animating a flying saucer all
Speaker 3: uh ray Harry House and the way he did it
Speaker 3: on an aerial brace in Earth's Flying Saucers, So was
Speaker 3: that kind of animated. It was that kind of old
Speaker 3: school Hary House and animation and getting to do it
Speaker 3: with Randy Cook and you know, and another legend to
Speaker 3: me at the time. So yeah, yeah, getting to do
Speaker 3: both getting to experience traditional stop motion back in the
Speaker 3: analog days of the industry and then getting to do
Speaker 3: it again all these are years later, and having to
Speaker 3: you know, work with all the all the evolutions of everything,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so nice to come full circle on that great
Speaker 2: great you worked on so many cool movies and involved
Speaker 2: in so many cool sequences. I know that you know,
Speaker 2: for you, it was your job it was your hobby
Speaker 2: as your passion. Did you ever, like, have you come
Speaker 2: out of this with any mementos of your time there?
Speaker 2: Have you got photographs? Have you've got props of you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Had tons of behind the scenes photos of everything.
Speaker 3: I've got them posted on a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 3: I posed a long time ago on Facebook and I'm
Speaker 3: starting to post some of them on Instagram. But oh yeah,
Speaker 3: a bunch of fun. Most of the gigs, I've got
Speaker 3: at least a couple, uh some, I've got quite a few,
Speaker 3: depending depending on the gig. Because like for T two,
Speaker 3: there was we weren't allowed to even have cameras on
Speaker 3: the set. Yeah, if anybody was. If anybody was, I
Speaker 3: mean we had to sign uh waivers and stuff several
Speaker 3: of them that if anybody was caught with a camera
Speaker 3: on the set, you were terminated immediately, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But I was able to sneak a couple of polaroids
Speaker 3: on set that I used. But I used Denny's polaroid
Speaker 3: that he used for reference shooting, reference photos and stuff
Speaker 3: of the sets and stuff that we used later on.
Speaker 3: So I would take his polaroids sometimes and snap a
Speaker 3: couple of can the shots. So I do have a
Speaker 3: couple of it. I had to hide them in my
Speaker 3: toolbox until the kid was over, till the movie came out.
Speaker 3: That kind of silly stuff. But oh yeah, I've got
Speaker 3: plenty of plenty.
Speaker 2: Of that physical artifacts though anything from like any models
Speaker 2: or I suppose all of that stuff just got trashed, right.
Speaker 3: Hang on a second, I don't want that. I think
Speaker 3: you get a kick out of this because it is
Speaker 3: the only thing that survived. It's I'm kind of close here,
Speaker 3: and maybe I could stand if I stand back here,
Speaker 3: you can see.
Speaker 2: And you see that kind of it's kind of pixelated.
Speaker 2: I can't work out what it is.
Speaker 3: It's it's long. It's a palm tree. This is I
Speaker 3: have another one. I've got to my best friend, Jim
Speaker 3: Toller uh has the other two. These are the only
Speaker 3: screen used props that survived the Nuclear Nightmare UH seen
Speaker 3: from T two. UH. These palm trees were in the
Speaker 3: UH in the freeway overpass shot. Yeah, they just suddenly
Speaker 3: got all for of them get yanked right over into
Speaker 3: center of cameras. So these are like, yeah, these are
Speaker 3: very central to this shot. And these are the only
Speaker 3: things that survived because they were made. It's just it's rubber.
Speaker 3: It's just gauze. It's like it's like wrapped in gauze,
Speaker 3: and it's just coding latex. The latex is getting a
Speaker 3: little cracky. But uh, and then what's inside the core
Speaker 3: is just a fishing pole, fiberglass fishing pole. And because
Speaker 3: these things had to these things had to get these
Speaker 3: things and these are all the were getting blown by
Speaker 3: the air cannons and yanked by cables too, So these
Speaker 3: things took a beating, but they were the only things
Speaker 3: that were built to survive for that shot to be
Speaker 3: put back up.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And all the cars that we used, uh, they've each
Speaker 3: time the cars would have to get put back together
Speaker 3: because they get blown to, you know, several pieces. So
Speaker 3: that freeway overpass shot was the longest, the longest shot
Speaker 3: to reset every time. But yeah, I got that, I
Speaker 3: got the trees, and then I've got I've got a
Speaker 3: penguin casting from the penguins that that were shot that
Speaker 3: the Jim toller Uh created that were the only penguins
Speaker 3: in the movie that shot actually shot the rockets, and
Speaker 3: they shot him at the bat ski boat as it's
Speaker 3: as it as it's exiting the it's corks true, and
Speaker 3: the two penguins fire the rockets at the at it
Speaker 3: and those two puppets were built by Jim Toler and
Speaker 3: I have one of those castings of one of those penguins.
Speaker 3: Very cool and but yeah, because everything else got we
Speaker 3: were we were the effects company that things didn't survive
Speaker 3: are shots mostly because we we we were hired to
Speaker 3: destroy things mostly so we didn't get we didn't get
Speaker 3: to do these hero shots of space. We didn't get
Speaker 3: the fancy spaceship stuff. Yeah. When we were done with
Speaker 3: a gig, it was usually down to just picking up pieces.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, if it was still intact, you hadn't done
Speaker 2: your job right.
Speaker 3: Oh, it was all about getting home and it was
Speaker 3: all getting home at the end of the day. Be exhausted,
Speaker 3: but the best kind of time.
Speaker 2: Jim, thanks so much for your time today. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have to cool a day there. But I love talking
Speaker 2: to you and I loved that we finally got around
Speaker 2: to doing this. I know, I look you down a
Speaker 2: couple of times there. We finally did it, though, So
Speaker 2: I appreciate your time, and you know, I appreciate your
Speaker 2: work and what you what you did in your career
Speaker 2: because you know, we got to experience it on the
Speaker 2: other side.
Speaker 3: That's what it's all about, man if I I mean,
Speaker 3: whenever I hear of people that you know, just love
Speaker 3: what we did and or get it. You know, they
Speaker 3: just they get a kick out of it and it
Speaker 3: get some happy, make them happy, and get some excited
Speaker 3: about it movie or whatever. Then that that's that's everything
Speaker 3: to guys like us.
Speaker 2: That was my chat there with Jim Davidson. Thank you
Speaker 2: Jim for your time. I love having conversations like that
Speaker 2: because it really puts me right there in that era.
Speaker 2: You can almost feel it and smell it, can't you
Speaker 2: walking into those effects stages, everything built by hand, lit
Speaker 2: in camera and then gone in a split second, munster
Speaker 2: shots done. What really stood out to me was that
Speaker 2: turning point in the nineties, you know, when CGI started
Speaker 2: taking over and suddenly this entire way of working, this
Speaker 2: whole craft begins to disappear, almost overnight, and Jim being
Speaker 2: right there offered away into the digital side of things
Speaker 2: and deciding it just wasn't for him. There's something quite
Speaker 2: powerful about that. I mean, I also love that people transitioned.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, each to their own It's just
Speaker 2: kind of amazing that he was able to continue working
Speaker 2: for a lot of the time as well. I also
Speaker 2: love that sense of community. Talks about these small crews,
Speaker 2: long days, working six days a week, and those people
Speaker 2: becoming his closest friends. It feels like a very specific
Speaker 2: moment in the industry that's I guess hard to replicate
Speaker 2: now because the world has changed so much. As always,
Speaker 2: if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it around,
Speaker 2: leave a review, all that good stuff. It really helps
Speaker 2: more people find the podcast. And if you'd like to
Speaker 2: support what I'm doing here and it is just me,
Speaker 2: head over to patreon dot com forward slash Jamie Benning.
Speaker 2: I really want to get to two hundred patrons this year.
Speaker 2: I'm on about one hundred and twelve at the moment,
Speaker 2: so every bit helps to keep these conversations going, and
Speaker 2: I really do appreciate any support that you can give.
Speaker 2: All Right, that's it for me, Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 2: I hope you can join me for the next episode
Speaker 2: of the Filmiamentaries podcast
Speaker 1: Weirding Way Media