1
00:00:08,967 --> 00:00:10,552
Movies are special effects.

2
00:00:11,428 --> 00:00:13,263
They've always been special effects.

3
00:00:16,224 --> 00:00:19,519
<i>From Méliès, to Harryhausen...</i>

4
00:00:21,771 --> 00:00:23,440
<i>To</i> 2001...

5
00:00:26,943 --> 00:00:30,030
<i>Visual effects create the magic</i>

6
00:00:31,322 --> 00:00:33,450
<i>that makes people want
to go to the movies.</i>

7
00:00:34,951 --> 00:00:37,537
<i>Because they can see things they can't see</i>

8
00:00:37,620 --> 00:00:38,621
any other way.

9
00:00:46,004 --> 00:00:47,297
Take a look.

10
00:00:48,423 --> 00:00:50,383
<i>We all start with an empty frame</i>

11
00:00:51,176 --> 00:00:52,802
and anything is possible.

12
00:00:54,888 --> 00:00:58,725
<i>But how can we create the thing the
audience sees that wasn't actually there?</i>

13
00:01:03,688 --> 00:01:07,734
As audiences get smarter, wiser,
sort of see through the illusion,

14
00:01:09,819 --> 00:01:11,738
<i>that bar just raises.</i>

15
00:01:11,821 --> 00:01:14,657
So how do we do this now?
How do we make this look great?

16
00:01:16,826 --> 00:01:18,661
I leave it to the geniuses at ILM.

17
00:01:26,586 --> 00:01:28,755
Most places are a little bit
like <i>The Wizard of Oz,</i>

18
00:01:28,838 --> 00:01:31,132
where you pull back the curtain,
you're like, "Oh!"

19
00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:34,511
<i>But Industrial Light & Magic
is that rare magic trick</i>

20
00:01:34,594 --> 00:01:37,514
<i>where the technique is
as good as the illusion.</i>

21
00:01:43,812 --> 00:01:47,357
<i>It is this hive of
creativity and brilliance</i>

22
00:01:47,440 --> 00:01:52,028
<i>and also incredible
groundbreaking technical wizardry.</i>

23
00:01:56,032 --> 00:01:59,077
They're pushing technology forward
and exploring it.

24
00:02:01,454 --> 00:02:05,125
They keep making it even more exciting,
more realistic, more magical.

25
00:02:26,229 --> 00:02:28,398
It's right there
in the name of the company.

26
00:02:28,481 --> 00:02:29,858
<i>Industrial.</i>

27
00:02:30,692 --> 00:02:31,776
Light

28
00:02:32,986 --> 00:02:33,987
& Magic.

29
00:03:27,373 --> 00:03:28,374
<i>Conrad.</i>

30
00:03:28,625 --> 00:03:30,293
Pick up 601, please.

31
00:03:30,376 --> 00:03:33,046
Conrad, pick up 601.

32
00:03:33,129 --> 00:03:35,465
- Pull in your seat a little bit?
- This way?

33
00:03:36,299 --> 00:03:37,300
Like that?

34
00:03:37,383 --> 00:03:40,553
Yeah, there was a reflection on
your glasses. So we might actually...

35
00:03:40,637 --> 00:03:41,888
Right. Um...

36
00:03:41,971 --> 00:03:45,850
Well, the history of ILM goes way back.

37
00:03:46,226 --> 00:03:49,187
And when we started the first film,

38
00:03:49,270 --> 00:03:54,651
I investigated all of the optical houses
and special effects people,

39
00:03:55,318 --> 00:04:00,156
and realized there was nobody around and
no company around that could really do

40
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:02,951
the things that I wanted
to do on that picture.

41
00:04:03,034 --> 00:04:05,954
So, I realized that I was gonna
have to start a company

42
00:04:06,704 --> 00:04:08,748
and put together a whole group of people

43
00:04:08,831 --> 00:04:12,043
that would just be specifically
for making <i>Star Wars.</i>

44
00:04:14,003 --> 00:04:16,756
<i>Luke Skywalker
was just a farm boy,</i>

45
00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:20,468
<i>until he received a mysterious message
from a princess.</i>

46
00:04:20,551 --> 00:04:22,387
<i>Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.</i>

47
00:04:22,470 --> 00:04:24,806
- She's beautiful.
- Here's where the fun begins.

48
00:04:25,807 --> 00:04:27,809
<i>Twentieth Century Fox presents</i>

49
00:04:27,892 --> 00:04:31,187
<i>the most extraordinary
motion picture of all time...</i>

50
00:04:31,271 --> 00:04:32,272
Got him!

51
00:04:32,855 --> 00:04:33,898
Star Wars.

52
00:04:33,982 --> 00:04:35,358
Here they come.

53
00:04:35,483 --> 00:04:38,403
<i>May the force be with you</i>
<i>in</i> Star Wars.

54
00:04:41,823 --> 00:04:43,700
<i>When I was writing</i> Star Wars,

55
00:04:45,118 --> 00:04:46,786
<i>I spent two years</i>

56
00:04:46,869 --> 00:04:49,622
<i>trying to find the story,
trying to find the script.</i>

57
00:04:52,542 --> 00:04:57,547
I thought spaceships, dogfights in space,
that's a great idea.

58
00:05:03,761 --> 00:05:07,098
I said, I want to do that.
Only I want to do it like a space opera.

59
00:05:07,974 --> 00:05:09,976
<i>Like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.</i>

60
00:05:10,351 --> 00:05:12,979
<i>But it will really have movement,
it will be kinetic.</i>

61
00:05:13,396 --> 00:05:15,690
I'm an energetic filmmaker.

62
00:05:20,695 --> 00:05:21,738
I like speed.

63
00:05:27,535 --> 00:05:31,331
At the time, the last real science
fiction film was <i>2001.</i>

64
00:05:33,791 --> 00:05:37,211
<i>Which is brilliant, and the way
it was made was brilliant.</i>

65
00:05:38,004 --> 00:05:42,342
But the shots were all long takes
and very slow.

66
00:05:43,217 --> 00:05:47,013
<i>So I looked around for special effects
houses, visual effects houses,</i>

67
00:05:47,138 --> 00:05:50,099
<i>and nobody could do</i>
<i>what I wanted to do for</i> Star Wars.

68
00:05:50,683 --> 00:05:54,228
So the big question was,
"How are we going to do the effects?"

69
00:05:58,107 --> 00:05:59,859
<i>I met John Dykstra.</i>

70
00:06:01,069 --> 00:06:05,198
<i>He was working with visual effects,
mostly on commercials.</i>

71
00:06:06,616 --> 00:06:13,247
And I realized that there was a little
cabal of secret special effects people.

72
00:06:14,665 --> 00:06:17,168
<i>Some of them worked in commercials,</i>

73
00:06:17,251 --> 00:06:21,464
<i>some of them were just wishing,
some of them were making home movies,</i>

74
00:06:22,840 --> 00:06:24,384
<i>but they all knew each other.</i>

75
00:06:25,968 --> 00:06:28,930
So and so can do that,
and I know somebody can do this.

76
00:06:29,013 --> 00:06:32,850
<i>And it really was this
kind of gang of outsiders.</i>

77
00:06:35,603 --> 00:06:38,815
<i>And so through John Dykstra
we tapped into that world.</i>

78
00:06:40,525 --> 00:06:42,110
<i>Good morning, America.</i>

79
00:06:42,193 --> 00:06:45,863
In the world of film and television,
even our fantasies have been modernized.

80
00:06:45,947 --> 00:06:49,450
Instead of wizards and magicians,
the people who make our dreams come true

81
00:06:49,534 --> 00:06:51,619
are now called special effects designers.

82
00:06:52,203 --> 00:06:56,207
<i>These new wizards use computers,
calculators, and special cameras.</i>

83
00:06:56,707 --> 00:07:00,545
<i>With these tools and a generous supply
of good, old-fashioned imagination,</i>

84
00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:04,757
<i>John Dykstra created the fantastic</i>
<i>effects scenes for</i> Star Wars.

85
00:07:05,842 --> 00:07:10,012
John. No one says "One day I'm going to be
a special effects designer."

86
00:07:10,721 --> 00:07:11,973
What led up to this?

87
00:07:12,056 --> 00:07:13,724
Oh, a lot of fooling around.

88
00:07:27,196 --> 00:07:31,033
<i>I am definitely involved with
machines. I like machines a lot.</i>

89
00:07:32,034 --> 00:07:34,579
<i>I always played with cars
and things like that.</i>

90
00:07:34,662 --> 00:07:35,705
<i>I like physics.</i>

91
00:07:36,456 --> 00:07:37,665
<i>Always liked photography.</i>

92
00:07:37,748 --> 00:07:40,209
<i>So it was sort of a situation
where I just brought</i>

93
00:07:40,293 --> 00:07:42,753
<i>all of my favorite things together,
all of my hobbies,</i>

94
00:07:42,837 --> 00:07:44,505
<i>and made one big hobby out of it.</i>

95
00:07:45,173 --> 00:07:49,093
Explain to me how you take a scene
from your mind to the screen.

96
00:07:51,721 --> 00:07:53,431
I'm basically a lucky guy.

97
00:07:56,058 --> 00:07:59,395
When I signed up for college,
I didn't have a major.

98
00:07:59,479 --> 00:08:02,231
I just was going to school
because they had accepted me.

99
00:08:03,608 --> 00:08:07,403
<i>The counselor who I was assigned
based on my last name</i>

100
00:08:07,487 --> 00:08:10,656
turned out to be the head
of the industrial design department.

101
00:08:11,532 --> 00:08:15,328
So I went to school
in industrial design, truly a fluke.

102
00:08:16,454 --> 00:08:20,249
<i>From school I had a friend
who was working with Doug Trumbull,</i>

103
00:08:20,750 --> 00:08:25,129
<i>who had done visual effects</i>
<i>for</i> 2001: A Space Odyssey.

104
00:08:26,464 --> 00:08:29,133
<i>And Doug was looking for model makers</i>

105
00:08:29,217 --> 00:08:31,052
and people who could do design work.

106
00:08:31,135 --> 00:08:36,682
So I segued from school
to going to work at Trumbull Film Effects.

107
00:08:38,017 --> 00:08:39,393
<i>I started on</i> Silent Running.

108
00:08:40,561 --> 00:08:43,147
<i>I drew designs for the ships,</i>

109
00:08:43,231 --> 00:08:45,441
<i>then built the models for the ships</i>

110
00:08:45,525 --> 00:08:48,110
<i>and then photographed
the models for the ships.</i>

111
00:08:48,819 --> 00:08:52,198
<i>It was an intense, immersive education.</i>

112
00:08:53,908 --> 00:08:55,117
<i>Coming to work was fun.</i>

113
00:08:56,911 --> 00:09:02,667
Then I was approached by Gary Kurtz,
who was a producer for George Lucas,

114
00:09:03,417 --> 00:09:07,004
<i>and he wanted to talk about
the visual effects for a movie.</i>

115
00:09:14,428 --> 00:09:16,556
<i>I was given the script,</i>

116
00:09:16,639 --> 00:09:20,393
and I go, "How bad can this be?
It's a dogfight in space, right?"

117
00:09:22,186 --> 00:09:23,980
<i>So I came to their offices,</i>

118
00:09:24,689 --> 00:09:29,610
did a lot of hand flying,
did a lot of talking about moving camera

119
00:09:29,902 --> 00:09:34,490
<i>because I'm a pilot and I love speed
and I've been strapping cameras</i>

120
00:09:34,574 --> 00:09:37,535
<i>onto airplanes and stuff
like that for a long time.</i>

121
00:09:38,327 --> 00:09:40,913
So it was like all these things
fell into place.

122
00:09:42,039 --> 00:09:44,166
<i>George had the vision.</i>

123
00:09:45,042 --> 00:09:49,297
<i>George knew what the images had to convey.</i>

124
00:09:52,049 --> 00:09:53,801
And I understood the movie.

125
00:10:02,143 --> 00:10:06,314
<i>But at the time George was involved
with all of the pre-production work</i>

126
00:10:06,397 --> 00:10:09,984
he was doing for the photography
they were going to do in Britain.

127
00:10:10,067 --> 00:10:12,445
<i>I was going back and forth
all the time.</i>

128
00:10:12,528 --> 00:10:17,950
We had one foot in the door with John,
and he said he needed

129
00:10:18,034 --> 00:10:20,578
<i>to build the equipment
in order to get the shots.</i>

130
00:10:20,661 --> 00:10:24,749
So they basically said,
"Okay, you go do this."

131
00:10:27,043 --> 00:10:31,589
<i>I went and found an empty warehouse
in Van Nuys, near the Van Nuys Airport.</i>

132
00:10:33,507 --> 00:10:35,217
<i>And I walked into the place,</i>

133
00:10:35,301 --> 00:10:37,887
they installed the phone,
didn't even have furniture.

134
00:10:37,970 --> 00:10:41,557
I sat on the carpet on the floor
in the office that I was going to use,

135
00:10:41,641 --> 00:10:46,687
and I started calling people that I wanted
to bring in to work on the project.

136
00:10:50,191 --> 00:10:52,360
<i>One day I got this call
from John,</i>

137
00:10:52,943 --> 00:10:57,948
"Richard, I'd like to talk to you
about maybe the photography"

138
00:10:58,032 --> 00:11:01,118
"of this sci-fi movie
for Twentieth Century Fox."

139
00:11:02,620 --> 00:11:04,288
I said, "I'll be right there."

140
00:11:05,498 --> 00:11:10,711
I had finished the program
in the industrial design department

141
00:11:10,920 --> 00:11:13,047
<i>from Cal State Long Beach,</i>

142
00:11:13,130 --> 00:11:16,133
<i>where Dykstra had graduated
a couple years before.</i>

143
00:11:17,677 --> 00:11:21,013
I didn't graduate because
I got a job in Malibu,

144
00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:24,308
<i>and the commute was killing me.</i>

145
00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:26,727
<i>I went back to school on a Saturday.</i>

146
00:11:27,395 --> 00:11:32,024
<i>And I see this flyer taped to the door
of the industrial design department,</i>

147
00:11:32,149 --> 00:11:37,113
and it said, "We are looking for
artists, model builders",

148
00:11:37,238 --> 00:11:40,616
"painters, draftsmen for a..."

149
00:11:40,783 --> 00:11:42,952
I think they said it was a space movie.

150
00:11:44,036 --> 00:11:46,747
And there was a phone number
and address there, so...

151
00:11:46,831 --> 00:11:48,332
I got out the Thomas Guide,

152
00:11:48,416 --> 00:11:52,128
<i>which at the time was the only way
you could find your way around LA.</i>

153
00:11:55,423 --> 00:12:00,636
I took my ruler and I figured out
I could save an hour off my commute.

154
00:12:02,012 --> 00:12:06,142
So I jumped in my Volkswagen,
zipped out to Belgian Avenue

155
00:12:06,225 --> 00:12:08,144
<i>and met with John and Gary Kurtz.</i>

156
00:12:09,520 --> 00:12:12,940
<i>John had this big desk.
It was like the size of a pool table,</i>

157
00:12:13,649 --> 00:12:14,942
and we were sitting across.

158
00:12:15,025 --> 00:12:17,069
Both had beards, you know,

159
00:12:17,528 --> 00:12:20,322
and Gary Kurtz had his Quaker beard,
you know.

160
00:12:22,491 --> 00:12:26,912
The original job offer was for
six weeks doing storyboards.

161
00:12:28,831 --> 00:12:32,752
<i>John asked me if I could do storyboards,
and I said, "Yeah, of course I can."</i>

162
00:12:32,835 --> 00:12:34,962
I had no idea what a storyboard was.

163
00:12:35,921 --> 00:12:39,717
I came across a guy who I went
to college with and lived in Seal Beach

164
00:12:39,925 --> 00:12:43,304
and he said, "Oh, Lorne,
you'd be perfect for the job."

165
00:12:43,387 --> 00:12:46,766
<i>"We're working on this science fiction
movie out in the valley,"</i>

166
00:12:46,849 --> 00:12:48,476
<i>"and we need model makers."</i>

167
00:12:49,143 --> 00:12:50,978
<i>We all came from different schools,</i>

168
00:12:51,061 --> 00:12:53,147
and a lot of people
were friends of friends.

169
00:12:53,230 --> 00:12:56,859
This guy that I was working with
was was older, and he said,

170
00:12:56,942 --> 00:12:59,278
"Well, I got a buddy that
I was in the Navy with,

171
00:12:59,361 --> 00:13:01,572
"who's doing some kind
of a science fiction show,

172
00:13:01,655 --> 00:13:03,240
<i>"and I know you're interested in that."</i>

173
00:13:03,365 --> 00:13:06,076
"He's looking for people.
So here's his number."

174
00:13:06,160 --> 00:13:08,204
"Give him a call.
His name is Richard Edlund."

175
00:13:08,287 --> 00:13:11,207
And it turns out he's looking
for camera people,

176
00:13:11,290 --> 00:13:15,294
which I'm not,
and so I gave them Dennis' number.

177
00:13:18,547 --> 00:13:20,466
<i>Until</i> Star Wars <i>came along,</i>

178
00:13:20,758 --> 00:13:24,178
I've never felt that there was going to be
any place for me in the business

179
00:13:24,261 --> 00:13:27,348
or there was any way
to make any money doing visual effects.

180
00:13:30,601 --> 00:13:34,021
<i>But it was maybe the only
thing I was interested in.</i>

181
00:13:35,439 --> 00:13:36,565
<i>It's in my DNA.</i>

182
00:13:38,359 --> 00:13:41,028
<i>And I had a group of friends my own age,</i>

183
00:13:41,111 --> 00:13:42,988
that were also effects fans.

184
00:13:46,367 --> 00:13:52,373
I've always wondered why I locked
into wanting to do this so early.

185
00:13:56,252 --> 00:13:58,879
I was watching movies like <i>King Kong.</i>

186
00:13:59,880 --> 00:14:05,761
The films of my hero, Ray Harryhausen,
and something just clicked.

187
00:14:09,056 --> 00:14:13,018
When I was about five years old,
<i>King Kong</i> came on television,

188
00:14:13,102 --> 00:14:16,313
and that just kind of changed my life.

189
00:14:19,275 --> 00:14:23,153
And then in 1958, <i>The 7th Voyage of Sinbad</i>
came out, Ray Harryhausen.

190
00:14:24,864 --> 00:14:26,240
To the boat!

191
00:14:29,201 --> 00:14:31,412
I saw Ray Harryhausen's
<i>The 7th Voyage of Sinbad</i>

192
00:14:31,495 --> 00:14:33,581
like eight times the first week
it came out.

193
00:14:33,664 --> 00:14:36,458
The <i>7th Voyage of Sinbad</i>
just melted my brain.

194
00:14:36,542 --> 00:14:38,210
That kind of sealed the deal.

195
00:14:38,294 --> 00:14:39,920
<i>It was like struck by lightning.</i>

196
00:14:40,796 --> 00:14:41,922
I went nuts.

197
00:14:43,465 --> 00:14:47,177
I was just mystified by how it was done.

198
00:14:50,973 --> 00:14:54,393
I didn't even understand, of course,
as a kid, how movies were made.

199
00:14:54,476 --> 00:14:57,396
<i>But my mom liked films,
and she took me to see</i>

200
00:14:57,563 --> 00:15:01,233
<i>one of Ray Harryhausen's first films,</i>
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

201
00:15:03,986 --> 00:15:06,447
<i>I asked my mom,
"Do you know how this is done?"</i>

202
00:15:07,114 --> 00:15:11,327
<i>She said, "Yeah, it's just a lot
of separate pictures of a model,</i>

203
00:15:11,702 --> 00:15:14,955
<i>"and they're moved a little bit
between each frame of film."</i>

204
00:15:15,998 --> 00:15:18,167
I have no idea how my mother knew that.

205
00:15:18,250 --> 00:15:20,586
I didn't even know
movies were frames of film.

206
00:15:21,837 --> 00:15:25,257
<i>But from a very young age
I was attracted to visuals.</i>

207
00:15:26,050 --> 00:15:28,677
This spectacle that
I couldn't see in real life.

208
00:15:29,887 --> 00:15:34,934
It was compelling to be able to see
some sort of giant creature of some sort

209
00:15:35,017 --> 00:15:37,978
that I couldn't walk
out of the theater and see

210
00:15:38,062 --> 00:15:41,023
and I just wanted to,
I wanted to see those things for real.

211
00:15:42,483 --> 00:15:45,527
<i>In those days, you couldn't repeat
a movie over and over again.</i>

212
00:15:45,611 --> 00:15:48,322
<i>There were no DVDs
or streaming or anything for them.</i>

213
00:15:48,989 --> 00:15:51,241
<i>So I just wanted to recreate in my mind,</i>

214
00:15:51,367 --> 00:15:54,036
<i>these memories
of what I see in the theater,</i>

215
00:15:54,119 --> 00:15:56,997
<i>and there was no way to
unless you did it yourself.</i>

216
00:15:57,081 --> 00:16:02,836
I was actually making home movies
when I was in the 6th grade

217
00:16:06,090 --> 00:16:09,051
<i>with this Kodak movie camera.</i>

218
00:16:10,970 --> 00:16:14,306
<i>I think we actually bought it
with Blue Chip Stamps.</i>

219
00:16:19,687 --> 00:16:22,272
<i>It was how it started,
how to invent stuff</i>

220
00:16:22,356 --> 00:16:25,985
<i>without knowing a damn thing
about what you're doing, but feeling it.</i>

221
00:16:26,402 --> 00:16:29,113
<i>And I guess I absorbed it
from seeing so many movies.</i>

222
00:16:32,366 --> 00:16:35,744
Watching movies really precipitated
the interest in prehistoric life

223
00:16:35,828 --> 00:16:39,331
and dinosaurs and kind of became
an amateur paleontologist.

224
00:16:42,793 --> 00:16:47,089
I didn't have any kind of a social life,
I just spent all my time alone

225
00:16:47,172 --> 00:16:49,216
drawing and painting and sculpting.

226
00:16:50,551 --> 00:16:53,053
<i>For Christmas, my parents would buy me</i>

227
00:16:53,137 --> 00:16:58,308
<i>these play sets that had a bunch of
army men or dinosaurs and whatnot.</i>

228
00:16:58,392 --> 00:17:00,644
<i>And so, you would create these scenarios</i>

229
00:17:00,728 --> 00:17:03,397
<i>with World War II characters</i>
<i>and dinosaurs.</i>

230
00:17:03,856 --> 00:17:08,485
<i>You know? And that was that was a big part
of exercising the imagination.</i>

231
00:17:09,403 --> 00:17:12,322
<i>I would mow lawns and get an 8mm camera</i>

232
00:17:12,406 --> 00:17:15,701
<i>and set up in my bedroom
and push clay around.</i>

233
00:17:18,454 --> 00:17:21,915
<i>When G.I. Joes came out,
I would steal them from Sears</i>

234
00:17:21,999 --> 00:17:23,709
<i>because I didn't have enough money.</i>

235
00:17:23,792 --> 00:17:26,170
<i>You know,</i>
<i>I could like fashion them.</i>

236
00:17:27,838 --> 00:17:30,841
<i>You know, all the gears started to turn.</i>

237
00:17:33,218 --> 00:17:36,847
And we tried so many hard things
that we should never have attempted,

238
00:17:36,930 --> 00:17:38,140
<i>but we pulled off some of it.</i>

239
00:17:39,975 --> 00:17:43,270
<i>And you'd go, you'd put it
into the drugstore to be developed.</i>

240
00:17:43,395 --> 00:17:44,980
<i>You'd wait. You get it back.</i>

241
00:17:45,105 --> 00:17:46,523
<i>You put it on the projector.</i>

242
00:17:47,274 --> 00:17:49,860
<i>And if it worked
or even came close to working,</i>

243
00:17:49,943 --> 00:17:53,405
<i>that feeling of excitement,
it's hard to describe.</i>

244
00:17:55,949 --> 00:17:59,536
The goal was to please myself.

245
00:18:03,499 --> 00:18:06,585
And there were a few of us
that got to know each other

246
00:18:06,877 --> 00:18:10,714
<i>through this magazine,</i>
Famous Monsters of Filmland.

247
00:18:13,383 --> 00:18:15,969
It was a Christmastime down in San Diego,

248
00:18:16,053 --> 00:18:19,056
where they used to have newsstands,
and there it was.

249
00:18:20,099 --> 00:18:25,062
I had no idea where the magazine came from
that day or what it was.

250
00:18:25,312 --> 00:18:27,189
But there were photos from effects film.

251
00:18:29,441 --> 00:18:30,859
<i>So I could look at the photo</i>

252
00:18:30,943 --> 00:18:33,487
<i>and start to understand
how it was being done.</i>

253
00:18:35,322 --> 00:18:37,825
<i>Forrest J. Ackerman was the editor,</i>

254
00:18:37,908 --> 00:18:42,538
and I think Forry really influenced
an awful lot of people doing this work.

255
00:18:43,747 --> 00:18:45,582
<i>Forry was very strange,</i>

256
00:18:45,666 --> 00:18:49,586
kind of a quizzical Vincent Price.

257
00:18:49,670 --> 00:18:51,380
And he did stuff like,

258
00:18:51,463 --> 00:18:53,966
if you'd knock on the door
to his Ackermansion,

259
00:18:54,049 --> 00:18:58,053
he called it, and the door would creep
open and his hand would come out,

260
00:18:58,512 --> 00:19:03,517
and on his hand was Bela Lugosi's
Dracula ring from the movie.

261
00:19:03,642 --> 00:19:09,398
Good evening, I am Doctor Ackcula
and I bid you welcome.

262
00:19:10,524 --> 00:19:13,610
Follow me if you dare.

263
00:19:14,153 --> 00:19:17,739
That looked like a regular house on the
outside, and you walk inside and

264
00:19:17,823 --> 00:19:21,869
all there were, were books and photos
and props and paintings.

265
00:19:22,452 --> 00:19:23,996
I was flabbergasted.

266
00:19:24,413 --> 00:19:27,332
There's actual models
from the original Kong.

267
00:19:28,333 --> 00:19:31,336
You know, and you learn more
about how movies are made.

268
00:19:32,337 --> 00:19:34,923
I still remember when I first went
to Forry's place,

269
00:19:35,007 --> 00:19:38,177
there's a group of people there,
and we met Jon Berg.

270
00:19:39,136 --> 00:19:45,017
<i>And Jon invited us to go to Cascade
Pictures of California, where he worked.</i>

271
00:19:45,726 --> 00:19:48,687
<i>We're at Cascade Studios
in Hollywood, California.</i>

272
00:19:49,188 --> 00:19:51,315
<i>And here's Phil Kelli son, the director.</i>

273
00:19:51,607 --> 00:19:54,902
Phil Kelli son was the head of the
effects department at Cascade.

274
00:19:54,985 --> 00:19:57,613
He moved up the street I lived on,

275
00:19:57,696 --> 00:20:01,742
<i>and drove by and saw this sign
from this like museum</i>

276
00:20:01,992 --> 00:20:03,827
<i>some kids and I put on,</i>

277
00:20:03,911 --> 00:20:07,497
<i>but it was just our collection
of movie props and photos, said,</i>

278
00:20:07,581 --> 00:20:10,834
The Museum of Science Fiction
and Fantasy Movies,

279
00:20:11,168 --> 00:20:14,046
and he thought, "What the heck is that?"
and stopped by.

280
00:20:15,214 --> 00:20:17,925
<i>Eventually,
Phil invited me up to Cascade.</i>

281
00:20:18,508 --> 00:20:21,470
He said, "You want to do some animation?"
and I said, "Why, sure."

282
00:20:22,638 --> 00:20:25,349
The commercial was this sheet
that had just been washed

283
00:20:25,432 --> 00:20:28,393
<i>that had come off of a clothesline
and walked by itself.</i>

284
00:20:28,894 --> 00:20:32,898
<i>I was actually doing the stop motion the
walking, the sheets and all that stuff.</i>

285
00:20:33,774 --> 00:20:35,859
I was probably like 17 or so.

286
00:20:37,027 --> 00:20:39,571
<i>The effects department at Cascade began</i>

287
00:20:39,655 --> 00:20:42,616
<i>when the industry was exploding
in the early '60s.</i>

288
00:20:46,036 --> 00:20:48,538
And so many great people worked there.

289
00:20:50,123 --> 00:20:52,542
That's where I met Ken Ralston,

290
00:20:53,835 --> 00:20:55,128
<i>and Dennis Muren.</i>

291
00:20:56,380 --> 00:20:58,006
It was kind of an amazing group.

292
00:21:00,425 --> 00:21:01,760
<i>Cascade closed up</i>

293
00:21:02,469 --> 00:21:05,973
because suddenly visual effects
weren't fashionable anymore.

294
00:21:06,473 --> 00:21:10,018
<i>There were some effects departments
still in the big studios,</i>

295
00:21:10,102 --> 00:21:11,395
<i>but they were closing up.</i>

296
00:21:11,812 --> 00:21:14,064
<i>So it was all going
to kind of come to an end.</i>

297
00:21:15,857 --> 00:21:18,277
<i>I realized I would have to grow up</i>

298
00:21:19,236 --> 00:21:20,737
<i>and get a real job.</i>

299
00:21:22,489 --> 00:21:25,617
But then eventually I started hearing
that George Lucas,

300
00:21:25,701 --> 00:21:27,202
<i>who did</i> American Graffiti...

301
00:21:27,327 --> 00:21:32,165
<i>- Hey. You got a bitchin' car.
- Hell yeah, I know.</i>

302
00:21:32,332 --> 00:21:34,001
<i>Was going to do a space movie.</i>

303
00:21:38,797 --> 00:21:44,219
When I read the script for <i>Star Wars,</i>
I just thought, "This is impossible."

304
00:21:47,222 --> 00:21:50,392
Honestly, I was worried
about the script at first

305
00:21:50,475 --> 00:21:52,227
<i>because, I mean, it was like,</i>

306
00:21:53,603 --> 00:21:56,481
<i>it was like a teenage script in a sense,</i>

307
00:21:56,565 --> 00:22:00,319
<i>"trust in the force" lines
and those kind of things, you know?</i>

308
00:22:01,361 --> 00:22:03,864
I mean, who was going to do this,
Brando? You know?

309
00:22:03,947 --> 00:22:05,866
And so I was worried about that.

310
00:22:06,366 --> 00:22:09,244
For what George was trying to do
with the space battles

311
00:22:09,911 --> 00:22:11,455
<i>this will take forever.</i>

312
00:22:11,830 --> 00:22:14,708
<i>There's no way he's going
to get this done in a year.</i>

313
00:22:15,208 --> 00:22:17,586
I don't even know how to do
a lot of the shots.

314
00:22:18,587 --> 00:22:21,214
I have to say I was a little bit confused.

315
00:22:22,758 --> 00:22:26,011
<i>There was a lot of stuff
that didn't make perfect sense to me,</i>

316
00:22:26,470 --> 00:22:28,930
but then again, I wasn't
a movie person, you know?

317
00:22:29,097 --> 00:22:31,850
In fact, it was probably
the first script I'd ever read.

318
00:22:33,602 --> 00:22:35,312
<i>I remember I was in...</i>

319
00:22:35,395 --> 00:22:37,689
I want to say it was
in Jon Berg's car with Dennis

320
00:22:37,773 --> 00:22:42,027
and we had the script and it was like,
"Wow, this has a lot of cool stuff in it."

321
00:22:43,236 --> 00:22:46,239
And it was like a lot of movies
we wanted to make personally,

322
00:22:46,323 --> 00:22:48,533
full of stuff that no
studio wanted to make.

323
00:23:00,587 --> 00:23:06,009
<i>John Dykstra wanted to hire people
who could do a lot of different things.</i>

324
00:23:06,093 --> 00:23:08,970
- No, it's long.
- No, we want it over normal height.

325
00:23:09,096 --> 00:23:11,556
And most of the people
were not movie people.

326
00:23:12,391 --> 00:23:14,810
<i>They were from all
different walks of life.</i>

327
00:23:15,936 --> 00:23:19,064
<i>The group on the first</i> Star Wars
<i>some of it was very green.</i>

328
00:23:19,147 --> 00:23:22,859
They were basically machinists,
guys who worked on motorcycles.

329
00:23:23,527 --> 00:23:27,906
<i>But John was there to guide them
into what was necessary, what to build,</i>

330
00:23:28,115 --> 00:23:31,785
to use the skills that they had to do
what was necessary for the movie.

331
00:23:36,415 --> 00:23:41,837
<i>They all kind of were experts
in different things</i>

332
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,131
<i>that they couldn't get paid for.</i>

333
00:23:45,424 --> 00:23:47,384
And I brought those people together.

334
00:23:51,012 --> 00:23:55,475
But to be honest with you,
this was a long shot.

335
00:23:56,601 --> 00:24:00,605
<i>We were departing from convention
in several different ways,</i>

336
00:24:01,148 --> 00:24:05,819
and if any one of them failed,
it could have been a disaster.

337
00:24:07,737 --> 00:24:10,407
<i>It was the opportunity
to really go for it.</i>

338
00:24:11,575 --> 00:24:13,952
You know, it's like
when you're a ski jumper,

339
00:24:14,035 --> 00:24:17,998
you're standing on the top of the jump
and you know that you can do it,

340
00:24:18,081 --> 00:24:20,459
and everybody had that attitude.

341
00:24:21,751 --> 00:24:23,837
<i>But we had to school each other.</i>

342
00:24:27,007 --> 00:24:29,759
<i>George wasn't there
an awful lot in the beginning,</i>

343
00:24:29,885 --> 00:24:33,388
but I think he wanted a bunch of pioneers

344
00:24:33,472 --> 00:24:36,892
who maybe weren't
quite sure what they were doing.

345
00:24:39,686 --> 00:24:44,274
<i>He wanted a bunch of guys
who didn't know what was impossible.</i>

346
00:24:45,442 --> 00:24:47,777
- We've got to do some practicing.
- Yeah. Yeah.

347
00:24:47,861 --> 00:24:49,779
They're gonna fire at the bottom.

348
00:24:49,863 --> 00:24:52,616
So, I mean, from the camera,
it'll look like you've cut it.

349
00:24:52,699 --> 00:24:53,783
Yeah. Cut it. Yeah, yeah.

350
00:24:53,867 --> 00:24:57,537
And then they're gonna fire the top
once your sword is about halfway through.

351
00:24:57,621 --> 00:24:59,706
Running. Speed.

352
00:25:04,169 --> 00:25:05,170
Action!

353
00:25:11,009 --> 00:25:12,427
- Okay, cut.
- Cut it!

354
00:25:19,392 --> 00:25:22,062
<i>I mean, who knows what
was going on in England.</i>

355
00:25:22,145 --> 00:25:26,066
But George had left us his material

356
00:25:26,191 --> 00:25:31,947
that he had cut from World War II movies
and, you know, gun camera stuff,

357
00:25:32,030 --> 00:25:36,034
<i>for what he thought he wanted to have
happened in the battle for the Death Star.</i>

358
00:25:39,704 --> 00:25:43,708
So we used that as a template
for what we needed to build.

359
00:25:44,459 --> 00:25:47,003
<i>I approach it from the point of view
of what would I get</i>

360
00:25:47,087 --> 00:25:50,382
<i>if I bolted a camera onto this ship
and went to space and did it?</i>

361
00:25:51,383 --> 00:25:55,554
<i>I wanted to make this stuff
indistinguishable from reality.</i>

362
00:25:57,597 --> 00:25:59,766
<i>And that required motion control.</i>

363
00:26:00,725 --> 00:26:07,399
Motion control is the ability
to record the movement of the camera

364
00:26:07,816 --> 00:26:10,777
<i>through space,
forward and backward, side to side,</i>

365
00:26:10,902 --> 00:26:13,071
<i>rotation up and down.</i>

366
00:26:13,530 --> 00:26:15,782
<i>It makes a record of that movement,</i>

367
00:26:16,116 --> 00:26:19,160
<i>and then you can repeat that move
as many times as necessary.</i>

368
00:26:20,495 --> 00:26:24,583
<i>I had worked with a prototype
motion control system years before.</i>

369
00:26:25,375 --> 00:26:31,172
<i>I had been at the University of Berkeley
on a project about perception.</i>

370
00:26:32,924 --> 00:26:36,886
<i>The idea was to build a miniature
of a portion of Marin County</i>

371
00:26:36,970 --> 00:26:39,139
<i>and photograph it with a camera</i>

372
00:26:39,639 --> 00:26:44,227
<i>and then compare responses from people
who viewed that film of the miniature</i>

373
00:26:44,519 --> 00:26:48,773
<i>with people who were put in a car
and driven through the same environment.</i>

374
00:26:51,568 --> 00:26:54,738
<i>At Berkeley, I met Al Miller
and Jerry Jeffress,</i>

375
00:26:55,655 --> 00:26:58,617
<i>and they had built a very early
motion control system</i>

376
00:26:58,950 --> 00:27:03,079
<i>to move the camera around the miniature
and to be able to repeat the moves.</i>

377
00:27:04,706 --> 00:27:09,002
I got together with them and we conceived
the motion control systems for <i>Star Wars,</i>

378
00:27:10,003 --> 00:27:13,965
<i>because most of the images
were built up of multiple elements.</i>

379
00:27:14,341 --> 00:27:16,343
<i>We'd do Matts on one pass.</i>

380
00:27:16,426 --> 00:27:21,097
<i>We'd do engines on another pass
and the camera had to be able</i>

381
00:27:21,181 --> 00:27:23,767
<i>to duplicate the move exactly, precisely.</i>

382
00:27:24,142 --> 00:27:26,269
So that when we put
those elements together

383
00:27:26,353 --> 00:27:28,521
<i>in the sandwich we call optical printing,</i>

384
00:27:29,022 --> 00:27:31,483
all of the pieces were
in sync with one another.

385
00:27:32,317 --> 00:27:36,488
<i>Berkeley had been
a perfect proving ground for the idea,</i>

386
00:27:36,571 --> 00:27:39,157
<i>but we needed to build new equipment.</i>

387
00:27:42,243 --> 00:27:47,082
Now, you've got to understand
I had to be nuts

388
00:27:47,165 --> 00:27:50,585
to think that the studio was
going to agree to me going,

389
00:27:50,669 --> 00:27:52,253
"I'm going to build all of this stuff,"

390
00:27:52,337 --> 00:27:55,256
"and then I'm going to make
the visual effects for the movie."

391
00:27:55,340 --> 00:27:56,341
But they did.

392
00:27:58,218 --> 00:28:01,179
<i>We designed cameras
and constructed them from scratch</i>

393
00:28:01,346 --> 00:28:04,724
<i>and then doing the motion control system
with all that entails.</i>

394
00:28:05,141 --> 00:28:06,643
<i>We had to build the computers.</i>

395
00:28:06,726 --> 00:28:09,396
<i>We had to build all of the hardware
that was necessary</i>

396
00:28:09,479 --> 00:28:12,732
<i>to make the camera
a numerically repeatable device.</i>

397
00:28:12,941 --> 00:28:14,234
Phew!

398
00:28:14,317 --> 00:28:15,527
Darn it, broke my finger.

399
00:28:16,736 --> 00:28:19,155
<i>We had two
motion control cameras.</i>

400
00:28:19,823 --> 00:28:21,616
<i>One was Dykstraflex.</i>

401
00:28:24,744 --> 00:28:28,164
It was probably just a nickname.

402
00:28:28,373 --> 00:28:30,500
<i>And then the other one
is the Rama.</i>

403
00:28:32,001 --> 00:28:36,339
<i>Which was a Technorama camera
that was like a cubic foot</i>

404
00:28:36,423 --> 00:28:39,050
and it weighed about 150 pounds.

405
00:28:39,551 --> 00:28:43,513
We had to build a follow focus
system for it. 400-foot magazine.

406
00:28:43,596 --> 00:28:48,017
<i>So it would be as low profile as could be.
I mean, it was fantastic.</i>

407
00:28:48,435 --> 00:28:51,855
We were all extreme photography nerds,
you know.

408
00:28:51,938 --> 00:28:54,107
We're experimenting in different areas.

409
00:28:54,190 --> 00:28:58,695
We were using a format that was obsolete,
VistaVision format.

410
00:28:58,778 --> 00:29:03,450
<i>We were able to acquire equipment
that had been used to do VistaVision work,</i>

411
00:29:03,533 --> 00:29:06,244
<i>and then had to modify it
for our purposes.</i>

412
00:29:06,327 --> 00:29:09,456
<i>Paramount had all this
VistaVision equipment</i>

413
00:29:09,539 --> 00:29:12,625
<i>that hadn't been used</i>
<i>since</i> The Ten Commandments.

414
00:29:12,751 --> 00:29:15,253
Behold His mighty hand.

415
00:29:20,300 --> 00:29:23,052
We Frankensteined it
back to life.

416
00:29:23,970 --> 00:29:28,224
<i>That was a classic,</i>
<i>perfect format for</i> Star Wars.

417
00:29:28,892 --> 00:29:34,022
<i>The larger negative allowed us to
make duplicates without generational loss.</i>

418
00:29:34,189 --> 00:29:36,483
And it was in this great
big magazine on top

419
00:29:36,566 --> 00:29:38,318
and we're going to under sling the camera.

420
00:29:38,401 --> 00:29:40,945
So the camera is going to be
hanging from the boom.

421
00:29:41,070 --> 00:29:45,825
<i>Made the camera low profile so I could
fly the camera right close to the models.</i>

422
00:29:47,702 --> 00:29:51,372
Somewhere in there, I just thought,
"You know, I want to learn this stuff."

423
00:29:51,456 --> 00:29:53,917
"This is new technology I've heard about."

424
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,920
<i>So I made a point of
contacting John about it</i>

425
00:29:57,212 --> 00:29:59,255
<i>and ended up getting a job on the show.</i>

426
00:30:00,423 --> 00:30:05,386
John Dykstra was the head honcho,
and I like John a lot, big guy,

427
00:30:05,470 --> 00:30:08,807
and he knew how to take over a room
and get things done.

428
00:30:08,890 --> 00:30:13,895
The brilliance of John Dykstra
was that he could do everybody's job.

429
00:30:13,978 --> 00:30:17,398
<i>He would come into the model shop
sometimes to blow off steam</i>

430
00:30:17,482 --> 00:30:19,442
<i>or something like that,
and he's making models,</i>

431
00:30:19,526 --> 00:30:21,444
<i>or he was a filmmaker.</i>

432
00:30:21,528 --> 00:30:24,072
<i>He could process film,
all that kind of stuff.</i>

433
00:30:24,614 --> 00:30:26,741
All those people,
they were all jack of all trades.

434
00:30:26,825 --> 00:30:28,326
I had no idea what to think.

435
00:30:28,451 --> 00:30:31,538
<i>John was always this big,
outgoing guy and fun,</i>

436
00:30:32,205 --> 00:30:34,332
<i>and a motorcycle guy and a car racer.</i>

437
00:30:34,958 --> 00:30:37,043
<i>Which is as far from me as you could get.</i>

438
00:30:38,044 --> 00:30:40,713
<i>And Richard was more of a kind
of a laid back kind of guy,</i>

439
00:30:40,797 --> 00:30:43,341
<i>but into the technology
and the cameras and precision,</i>

440
00:30:43,424 --> 00:30:45,552
<i>and I didn't understand much of that.</i>

441
00:30:46,094 --> 00:30:49,222
<i>Richard loved to build equipment.</i>

442
00:30:49,806 --> 00:30:51,140
<i>That's what he lived for.</i>

443
00:30:51,474 --> 00:30:53,601
<i>He liked thinking about
mechanical problems,</i>

444
00:30:53,685 --> 00:30:56,229
<i>solving mechanical problems
for photography.</i>

445
00:30:57,313 --> 00:31:00,108
So, it was an ideal place for him.

446
00:31:01,526 --> 00:31:03,152
All right. I'm ready.

447
00:31:06,114 --> 00:31:08,992
<i>I don't have
a classical education.</i>

448
00:31:10,034 --> 00:31:12,370
<i>I read a lot and I experimented a lot.</i>

449
00:31:12,787 --> 00:31:17,041
<i>Took metal shop, printing,
electric shop, mechanical drawing.</i>

450
00:31:17,333 --> 00:31:20,503
I didn't take auto shop,
but I was working on my car at home.

451
00:31:21,004 --> 00:31:23,798
<i>In high school,
I got interested in photography.</i>

452
00:31:24,132 --> 00:31:29,012
I was the photographer for the <i>LA Examiner</i>
already, and I was like a young Weegee.

453
00:31:29,888 --> 00:31:34,642
<i>One of my last gigs was to photograph
this "Day in the Navy" event</i>

454
00:31:34,726 --> 00:31:36,936
<i>to hype young kids to join the Navy.</i>

455
00:31:37,145 --> 00:31:40,273
<i>We got a tour below deck,
they fired the five-inch guns.</i>

456
00:31:40,356 --> 00:31:42,692
The submarine came by and fired a torpedo.

457
00:31:42,775 --> 00:31:47,405
They were firing at it with twin .50s.
They asked us how we wanted our eggs,

458
00:31:47,488 --> 00:31:49,240
you know, I mean, it worked for me.

459
00:31:49,324 --> 00:31:51,910
I enlisted in the Navy within a week.

460
00:31:52,744 --> 00:31:56,289
I flew to Tachikawa in Japan,
started studying the language.

461
00:31:56,372 --> 00:31:57,624
I had a Chinese buddy.

462
00:31:57,707 --> 00:32:01,461
The calligraphy expert taught me
how to write with a brush,

463
00:32:01,544 --> 00:32:03,212
<i>and I was in a photo lab.</i>

464
00:32:03,796 --> 00:32:06,674
<i>We had every kind of photographic
equipment known to man,</i>

465
00:32:06,799 --> 00:32:09,969
and so I started shooting movies
and I thought,

466
00:32:10,053 --> 00:32:12,430
"God, what a fascinating
career this must be."

467
00:32:13,765 --> 00:32:17,477
<i>After I got out of the Navy,
I started bloodying my knuckles</i>

468
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:18,978
<i>on the doors of Hollywood.</i>

469
00:32:19,062 --> 00:32:22,023
<i>And Joe Westheimer somehow
got a hold of my résumé,</i>

470
00:32:22,148 --> 00:32:25,318
<i>and I was with Joe for four years
and I was the crew.</i>

471
00:32:25,443 --> 00:32:30,365
<i>I was the operator, the assistant,
the grip gaffer, lab run, swept up.</i>

472
00:32:30,698 --> 00:32:34,369
I did everything. I did
the hand lettering for title shows.

473
00:32:34,494 --> 00:32:41,376
I actually designed the <i>Star Trek</i> alphabet
that they still use. That... You know.

474
00:32:45,129 --> 00:32:47,465
I never got a nickel extra for that,
but...

475
00:32:48,549 --> 00:32:52,345
<i>My hair started growing and then
I became a rock 'n roll photographer.</i>

476
00:32:58,643 --> 00:33:00,895
<i>And I decided,
"I'm going to get myself a guitar,"</i>

477
00:33:00,979 --> 00:33:03,272
because I played the ukulele
since I was a kid

478
00:33:03,356 --> 00:33:06,651
and I took guitar lessons
and accordion lessons at one point.

479
00:33:07,193 --> 00:33:10,530
<i>So I bought this guitar,
I had a Sam Ash amplifier</i>

480
00:33:10,613 --> 00:33:13,825
<i>that hummed like, it was really loud,
and I thought...</i>

481
00:33:14,742 --> 00:33:17,620
<i>I can make a portable
guitar amp for my guitar.</i>

482
00:33:18,788 --> 00:33:20,039
<i>It sounded great.</i>

483
00:33:20,581 --> 00:33:24,669
<i>This little Pignose was like a big hit
amongst the famous guitarists.</i>

484
00:33:26,379 --> 00:33:27,755
<i>And we got it to everyone.</i>

485
00:33:28,798 --> 00:33:32,552
<i>I mean Eric Clapton,
George Harrison, Keith Richards.</i>

486
00:33:33,094 --> 00:33:34,345
Frank Zappa loved them.

487
00:33:34,429 --> 00:33:36,764
Plug it in here.
Turn on the giant amplifier.

488
00:33:39,976 --> 00:33:43,730
<i>The first year, I think we built
more than 15,000 Pignoses.</i>

489
00:33:44,063 --> 00:33:47,734
Anyway, about that time,
I decided to leave LA

490
00:33:47,817 --> 00:33:51,696
and went back to San Francisco,
drove cable cars for a year.

491
00:33:54,115 --> 00:33:56,826
<i>You know, I had a bunch
of more life experience</i>

492
00:33:56,909 --> 00:33:58,786
<i>than a lot of these other people did.</i>

493
00:34:08,671 --> 00:34:12,133
<i>When I first came on to</i> Star Wars,
<i>didn't know any of the people.</i>

494
00:34:12,216 --> 00:34:15,178
I didn't even know the jobs
because it was done by a factory

495
00:34:15,261 --> 00:34:17,847
with all these departments,
like five departments,

496
00:34:17,930 --> 00:34:20,433
<i>in different areas
of this big, empty building.</i>

497
00:34:21,184 --> 00:34:23,936
<i>The world I came from was,
you used equipment</i>

498
00:34:24,062 --> 00:34:26,606
<i>that literally was built
40 and 50 years earlier,</i>

499
00:34:26,856 --> 00:34:29,358
<i>and there was no money
for anything any different.</i>

500
00:34:29,692 --> 00:34:32,945
Nobody was going to put any money
into reinvent the wheel.

501
00:34:33,154 --> 00:34:34,572
We already have a wheel.

502
00:34:34,655 --> 00:34:40,912
But these guys had this confidence
and had no connection to the past.

503
00:34:41,579 --> 00:34:44,373
<i>They were prepared to do anything
to make this work,</i>

504
00:34:44,457 --> 00:34:48,086
including building equipment,
and they would just say, "We're doing it."

505
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:53,341
We were building an entire system
from the beginning to the end.

506
00:34:53,508 --> 00:34:56,928
<i>Cameras were being built at the same time
the miniatures were being built.</i>

507
00:34:57,011 --> 00:35:00,431
<i>At the same time, the stage technology
was going to be built.</i>

508
00:35:01,390 --> 00:35:04,519
It all had to come together
to make the first piece of film.

509
00:35:05,561 --> 00:35:08,481
<i>You couldn't buy that stuff
off the shelf, you know.</i>

510
00:35:08,564 --> 00:35:10,942
<i>Every gear and every welded piece</i>

511
00:35:11,025 --> 00:35:13,361
had to be made for these cameras that were

512
00:35:13,444 --> 00:35:15,738
absolutely earth-shattering
in what they could do.

513
00:35:15,822 --> 00:35:18,449
I was there when the
original camera was brought in

514
00:35:18,533 --> 00:35:22,078
<i>and they didn't have the boom
to move the camera up or down yet.</i>

515
00:35:22,161 --> 00:35:23,746
<i>You know, it seemed like some of it</i>

516
00:35:23,830 --> 00:35:26,582
<i>they were trying to figure out
as they were going along,</i>

517
00:35:26,666 --> 00:35:28,960
<i>I don't know if they really
decided they needed a boom</i>

518
00:35:29,043 --> 00:35:32,004
until they got the camera first set up
and it was on the pedestal.

519
00:35:32,088 --> 00:35:35,258
And they said, "Well, it might be nice
to have a boom arm also."

520
00:35:36,300 --> 00:35:40,054
<i>We were up against the wall
in a lot of cases in terms of coming up</i>

521
00:35:40,138 --> 00:35:43,474
<i>with something that was going to work
that hadn't been done before.</i>

522
00:35:44,016 --> 00:35:46,060
<i>And we think that this
is going to work this way.</i>

523
00:35:46,227 --> 00:35:48,896
And then about two-thirds
of the way through, you say,

524
00:35:48,980 --> 00:35:53,109
"Jeez, if I'd only thought of this,
we could have done it this way."

525
00:35:55,486 --> 00:35:59,240
<i>We were sort of flying by the seat
of our pants in a lot of situations.</i>

526
00:35:59,740 --> 00:36:03,077
But it's okay if you make mistakes
and it's okay if you fail.

527
00:36:03,786 --> 00:36:07,832
The next time you do it,
maybe you won't make the same mistake.

528
00:36:09,458 --> 00:36:10,918
<i>At the beginning,</i>

529
00:36:11,002 --> 00:36:14,297
one of the guys I saw that really grabbed
my eye was Joe Johnston.

530
00:36:15,882 --> 00:36:17,133
<i>And Joe was an artist.</i>

531
00:36:18,467 --> 00:36:22,138
I thought.
But then I saw him building a model.

532
00:36:22,930 --> 00:36:26,434
<i>And then the next time I'd see him,
he was like painting something or other.</i>

533
00:36:26,559 --> 00:36:28,978
<i>Or I'd see him over here
and he was doing a storyboard.</i>

534
00:36:30,730 --> 00:36:32,648
And he was really multi-skilled.

535
00:36:34,984 --> 00:36:37,820
<i>At the same time that I started
doing the storyboards,</i>

536
00:36:38,112 --> 00:36:42,533
we knew that we had to change the design
on Colin Cantwell's ships.

537
00:36:44,076 --> 00:36:50,208
<i>He had designed a Y-wing,
and the X-wing and the TIE fighters,</i>

538
00:36:50,291 --> 00:36:54,045
but they needed to
fall into these worlds of,

539
00:36:54,128 --> 00:36:58,049
the Empire stuff looks like this,
and the Rebel stuff looks like this.

540
00:37:01,260 --> 00:37:06,307
<i>George always saw the Rebel fleet
as essentially hotrods.</i>

541
00:37:06,641 --> 00:37:10,311
<i>These guys had acquired this stuff used
and it was beat up</i>

542
00:37:10,394 --> 00:37:13,648
<i>and they'd patched together
and supercharged the engines.</i>

543
00:37:13,731 --> 00:37:15,608
<i>And they were basically little hotrods.</i>

544
00:37:16,317 --> 00:37:19,195
And the Empire stuff
is right off the factory floor.

545
00:37:21,113 --> 00:37:25,284
So we can outrun
the Imperial ships

546
00:37:25,368 --> 00:37:27,078
because we've hot-rodded ours.

547
00:37:28,204 --> 00:37:31,457
<i>And so I started sort of changing
the designs around a little bit.</i>

548
00:37:32,625 --> 00:37:37,088
<i>And that sort of led from,
"I'm doing storyboards over here,"</i>

549
00:37:37,922 --> 00:37:40,091
<i>to "And now I'm going
to take all this stuff</i>

550
00:37:40,174 --> 00:37:43,469
<i>"to my other drawing table
and start changing these designs."</i>

551
00:37:46,222 --> 00:37:50,184
I don't remember if it was because
something needed to be done

552
00:37:50,268 --> 00:37:54,105
and there wasn't anybody there to do it,
but one day, George said,

553
00:37:54,772 --> 00:37:56,899
<i>"You know, we need
a new ship for Han Solo,"</i>

554
00:37:57,108 --> 00:37:58,401
"and we need it fast."

555
00:38:00,027 --> 00:38:03,990
Space: 1999 <i>came out and they had a ship</i>

556
00:38:04,532 --> 00:38:10,079
<i>that was roughly the same shape
as the original Han Solo ship.</i>

557
00:38:11,539 --> 00:38:13,457
<i>George didn't want to copy anybody.</i>

558
00:38:13,582 --> 00:38:16,502
<i>He didn't want anything on TV
that looked like one of his ships.</i>

559
00:38:16,585 --> 00:38:18,504
<i>So we were not going to use that ship.</i>

560
00:38:20,381 --> 00:38:22,842
He says, "We can use that as
the blockade runner."

561
00:38:22,925 --> 00:38:25,594
"But Han Solo needs his own ship."

562
00:38:27,346 --> 00:38:31,225
<i>I went home and I had this mental block</i>

563
00:38:31,642 --> 00:38:34,353
because George had sent me off
to design a new ship.

564
00:38:34,437 --> 00:38:38,983
They wanted it right away,
but the original ship was nearly finished.

565
00:38:39,650 --> 00:38:42,320
<i>Grant McCune had already
finished the cockpit,</i>

566
00:38:42,945 --> 00:38:45,489
<i>and he had finished the radar dish.</i>

567
00:38:45,906 --> 00:38:48,951
<i>"So he said, " Do me a favor
and use this radar dish,</i>

568
00:38:49,952 --> 00:38:51,078
<i>"and use the cockpit."</i>

569
00:38:51,996 --> 00:38:53,664
<i>I said, "Okay, I can do that."</i>

570
00:38:54,332 --> 00:38:57,418
So I'm sitting there,
I'm looking around the room at stuff,

571
00:38:57,543 --> 00:39:01,088
you know, trying to find shapes that,
"Maybe that could be cool."

572
00:39:01,172 --> 00:39:06,302
And I look over in the kitchen area
and there's this stack of dirty dishes

573
00:39:07,094 --> 00:39:10,014
and I'm thinking,
"What if you took this dish"

574
00:39:10,097 --> 00:39:13,100
"and put another one on top of it
like this. That's cool."

575
00:39:13,184 --> 00:39:14,560
Well, it's a flying saucer.

576
00:39:16,645 --> 00:39:20,649
<i>But you can give it direction
by putting an engine on the back,</i>

577
00:39:21,692 --> 00:39:25,363
<i>you know, somehow,
and putting something in the front</i>

578
00:39:25,446 --> 00:39:27,156
<i>that gives it sort of a direction.</i>

579
00:39:28,783 --> 00:39:30,618
But I had this cockpit I had to use,

580
00:39:30,743 --> 00:39:33,704
<i>so I put the cockpit in
all different positions,</i>

581
00:39:33,788 --> 00:39:37,792
<i>on top, and underneath, then out front.</i>

582
00:39:38,542 --> 00:39:43,047
I said, "You know, if I'm driving a car,
I'm going to be sitting on one side",

583
00:39:43,130 --> 00:39:45,591
<i>"so I'm going to put the cockpit
out on one side."</i>

584
00:39:50,012 --> 00:39:52,598
But I don't want it to look
like an American car,

585
00:39:52,932 --> 00:39:55,101
so I put the cockpit
over on the right side.

586
00:39:55,184 --> 00:39:58,396
<i>It will make it a right-hand-drive thing.</i>

587
00:39:58,479 --> 00:40:01,941
<i>Then I put the radar dish on the
opposite side to balance the cockpit.</i>

588
00:40:02,566 --> 00:40:06,112
<i>I did about six sketches,
and I brought them to George</i>

589
00:40:06,195 --> 00:40:09,073
<i>and I knew right away
before I even put them on the table,</i>

590
00:40:09,156 --> 00:40:12,827
he's going to like the one where
it's eccentric and off to the side and

591
00:40:13,285 --> 00:40:17,123
something that you know
he hadn't seen before, which he did.

592
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:23,045
Its nickname was the "Pork Burger."

593
00:40:24,088 --> 00:40:25,840
<i>Because it looked like a hamburger.</i>

594
00:40:27,383 --> 00:40:29,718
<i>By the time I came back
with those drawings,</i>

595
00:40:29,844 --> 00:40:31,971
and George said,
"Yeah, start building it,"

596
00:40:32,346 --> 00:40:33,431
it was underway.

597
00:40:35,224 --> 00:40:40,312
<i>So instead of designing it on paper,
I hung out in the model shop.</i>

598
00:40:40,938 --> 00:40:43,607
<i>We just... We did it practically
instead of on paper.</i>

599
00:40:45,526 --> 00:40:47,403
<i>George wanted a used universe.</i>

600
00:40:48,154 --> 00:40:50,948
You know, he didn't want that
shiny Flash Gordon look.

601
00:40:52,533 --> 00:40:56,996
You weren't supposed to think of it like
an incredibly massive piece of aluminum,

602
00:40:57,121 --> 00:40:59,748
<i>that was somehow floated in
and put together.</i>

603
00:41:00,666 --> 00:41:02,710
This had to be put together and riveted.

604
00:41:04,086 --> 00:41:05,713
<i>Everything had to have a reason.</i>

605
00:41:05,796 --> 00:41:09,008
<i>So even if you looked at it close,
if there was a box,</i>

606
00:41:09,133 --> 00:41:11,635
<i>it had to have tubes
that went to a plan um box</i>

607
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:14,805
<i>that then went to something else
and had electrical wires</i>

608
00:41:14,889 --> 00:41:16,891
<i>that then connected into something else.</i>

609
00:41:17,099 --> 00:41:19,560
<i>It had to have some kind of
mechanical connection.</i>

610
00:41:20,769 --> 00:41:24,064
We adopted the phrase
"boilerplate technology."

611
00:41:24,231 --> 00:41:28,569
The model builders were working
off sketches for a lot of it.

612
00:41:28,819 --> 00:41:31,947
<i>But for some of the minute detail,
they were just finding parts</i>

613
00:41:32,031 --> 00:41:36,035
<i>from model kits that looked like, "This
is a mechanical thing, this'll look good."</i>

614
00:41:36,118 --> 00:41:37,495
<i>We called this kit bashing.</i>

615
00:41:37,828 --> 00:41:41,373
<i>And we would buy German tanks,
airplanes, guns,</i>

616
00:41:41,540 --> 00:41:45,294
World War II equipment, just to provide
an incredible amount of good parts.

617
00:41:45,377 --> 00:41:48,631
<i>We were limited somewhat
by the model kits that we could get,</i>

618
00:41:48,714 --> 00:41:53,636
because if we had to build 10 X-wings,
we had to find 10 of those kits.

619
00:41:54,303 --> 00:41:56,680
<i>So we'd buy these kits by the pound.</i>

620
00:41:58,682 --> 00:42:00,768
<i>I was working on the Sandcrawler,</i>

621
00:42:01,977 --> 00:42:05,606
and the treads on the Sandcrawler...
There's about 280 treads.

622
00:42:05,689 --> 00:42:07,274
<i>And I said to Bob Shepherd,</i>

623
00:42:07,358 --> 00:42:10,319
<i>"Oh, my God, if I had a little injection
molding machine,"</i>

624
00:42:10,402 --> 00:42:11,862
<i>"I could do these in no time."</i>

625
00:42:11,946 --> 00:42:15,115
He said, "Well, how much would a machine
like that cost?"

626
00:42:15,491 --> 00:42:17,785
I said, "I can get one for about
$1,500, $1,800."

627
00:42:17,868 --> 00:42:22,248
He said, "Oh, my God, $1,500, $1,800?
Go get it. Get the truck and go get it."

628
00:42:22,331 --> 00:42:27,044
All of a sudden, the light went on like,
"Oh, my God, $1,500 is a pee in the pot"

629
00:42:27,127 --> 00:42:31,465
"compared to this multi-million dollar
movie they were making in England"

630
00:42:32,007 --> 00:42:34,218
<i>"that has to be out by 1977."</i>

631
00:42:44,562 --> 00:42:46,105
I was just getting over there.

632
00:43:03,289 --> 00:43:04,290
Right-o.

633
00:43:07,543 --> 00:43:08,961
And action!

634
00:43:11,422 --> 00:43:13,799
Didn't lock. Didn't lock.
Doesn't lock, does it?

635
00:43:22,308 --> 00:43:23,892
We'll get there somewhat quick.

636
00:43:25,144 --> 00:43:28,606
<i>George was still in England,
but we weren't producing film yet.</i>

637
00:43:29,231 --> 00:43:31,734
Designing and building
everything from scratch

638
00:43:31,817 --> 00:43:36,655
<i>was much harder and more time-consuming
than could have been anticipated.</i>

639
00:43:37,698 --> 00:43:40,576
<i>Jon Erland and I
were originally hired for two months,</i>

640
00:43:40,659 --> 00:43:46,123
<i>but the industrial processes
that we knew were incredibly valuable.</i>

641
00:43:46,832 --> 00:43:49,835
I noticed that the way that
they were making the spaceships

642
00:43:49,918 --> 00:43:51,420
<i>is that they would find a part</i>

643
00:43:51,503 --> 00:43:54,465
<i>and then they would mix five-minute epoxy,
put it on the back side,</i>

644
00:43:54,548 --> 00:43:57,217
<i>and then they'd put masking tape
and hold it in place.</i>

645
00:43:57,343 --> 00:43:58,969
<i>And then they'd go to the next part</i>

646
00:43:59,053 --> 00:44:01,764
and, you know, masking tape
and five-minute epoxy.

647
00:44:01,847 --> 00:44:04,725
<i>You couldn't buy superglue
in hardware stores.</i>

648
00:44:05,100 --> 00:44:06,644
It was called Eastman 910.

649
00:44:06,852 --> 00:44:09,980
<i>But Jon Erland and I
could buy things industrially</i>

650
00:44:10,064 --> 00:44:12,066
<i>that regular human beings couldn't get.</i>

651
00:44:12,399 --> 00:44:16,362
So I said, "All of you other guys,
the five other model-makers",

652
00:44:16,445 --> 00:44:19,365
"I want you to stop and watch
what I am doing here for a minute."

653
00:44:19,448 --> 00:44:21,950
I held one quarter of a pencil

654
00:44:22,451 --> 00:44:25,371
on the edge of the table,
I put a little drop of superglue

655
00:44:25,454 --> 00:44:30,668
and I moved my hand and the pencil
remained cantilevered out over the table.

656
00:44:30,959 --> 00:44:34,421
And they were all like,
"Oh, my God, how did you do that?"

657
00:44:38,217 --> 00:44:42,805
<i>Well, after that, no one ever mentioned
that we were only hired for two months.</i>

658
00:44:44,723 --> 00:44:48,394
<i>Everybody had a broad range
of skills that overlapped.</i>

659
00:44:48,477 --> 00:44:50,562
<i>So the guys who were building the models</i>

660
00:44:50,646 --> 00:44:53,982
<i>knew what the guy who was going to
photograph it was going to need.</i>

661
00:44:54,066 --> 00:44:57,277
<i>So where I was going to mount it,
whether it would cast a shadow,</i>

662
00:44:57,361 --> 00:44:59,822
<i>what are the reflective
qualities of the surfaces,</i>

663
00:45:00,030 --> 00:45:02,324
and that amalgam, whatever it is,

664
00:45:02,449 --> 00:45:06,662
that synthesis is greater
than the sum of its parts.

665
00:45:08,831 --> 00:45:10,374
<i>We were a family.</i>

666
00:45:10,457 --> 00:45:13,502
I'd wake up in the morning,
I was ready to go.

667
00:45:13,585 --> 00:45:16,880
I mean, I enjoyed it so much
that I'd just stay there until

668
00:45:16,964 --> 00:45:19,133
9:00.10:00, 11:00 at night, you know.

669
00:45:19,216 --> 00:45:23,345
People lived there.
I mean, we were there 18 hours a day.

670
00:45:23,429 --> 00:45:25,264
<i>Most of us were all in our 20s.</i>

671
00:45:25,389 --> 00:45:27,641
<i>Very few had children
or other commitments.</i>

672
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:30,477
They let us do what we wanted to do.

673
00:45:30,978 --> 00:45:34,398
<i>You could come in at noon
and work till midnight if you wanted to.</i>

674
00:45:34,898 --> 00:45:37,151
<i>And it was like 100 degrees plus.</i>

675
00:45:37,234 --> 00:45:40,028
It was a tin building, right,
with no air conditioning.

676
00:45:40,446 --> 00:45:44,491
There was a military Air Force
surplus store across the street,

677
00:45:44,825 --> 00:45:47,286
<i>and one of the guys came back
with a shipping case</i>

678
00:45:47,369 --> 00:45:49,496
<i>so we would fill it up with cold water</i>

679
00:45:49,580 --> 00:45:51,665
<i>and then everybody would dunk in it</i>

680
00:45:52,082 --> 00:45:53,542
<i>and then go back in to work.</i>

681
00:45:59,882 --> 00:46:05,929
<i>My dad had bought an aircraft
escape chute at a surplus place.</i>

682
00:46:06,430 --> 00:46:07,931
We used it as a slip and slide.

683
00:46:08,015 --> 00:46:10,095
You just push the button and it...

684
00:46:16,315 --> 00:46:18,692
What else are you going
to do with it, right?

685
00:46:18,776 --> 00:46:20,652
You can't use it to

686
00:46:21,779 --> 00:46:23,197
escape your airplane.

687
00:46:24,990 --> 00:46:26,825
<i>I would go there at night,</i>

688
00:46:26,909 --> 00:46:32,331
so I didn't get to participate
in lunch hours in the hot tub,

689
00:46:32,414 --> 00:46:33,457
so...

690
00:46:34,875 --> 00:46:39,880
<i>I was still working at Disney</i>
<i>when I was moonlighting on</i> Star Wars.

691
00:46:41,131 --> 00:46:46,428
Going from Disney Studios during the day

692
00:46:47,429 --> 00:46:51,099
<i>over to this rather unkempt,</i>

693
00:46:51,183 --> 00:46:55,103
<i>dusty warehouse,</i>

694
00:46:56,230 --> 00:46:59,191
was literally night and day.

695
00:47:01,819 --> 00:47:07,157
<i>I grew up being surrounded
by filmmakers and creative people.</i>

696
00:47:08,700 --> 00:47:11,745
<i>My father was a matte painter at Disney.</i>

697
00:47:12,204 --> 00:47:14,039
Disney was Disney.

698
00:47:14,540 --> 00:47:15,916
It was iconic.

699
00:47:17,709 --> 00:47:19,211
<i>I was enchanted.</i>

700
00:47:20,754 --> 00:47:22,798
<i>My father was one of the chosen ones.</i>

701
00:47:28,345 --> 00:47:33,433
<i>For years, I was known
because I was the son of Peter Ellenshaw.</i>

702
00:47:36,645 --> 00:47:40,482
<i>I didn't want to follow
in my father's footsteps,</i>

703
00:47:41,942 --> 00:47:43,235
<i>fill his shoes.</i>

704
00:47:47,197 --> 00:47:48,907
Who could possibly do that?

705
00:47:49,992 --> 00:47:54,413
I took one course in freehand drawing
and I got a C.

706
00:47:54,955 --> 00:48:00,502
<i>"But my father said, " I know
you're not that interested in doing it,</i>

707
00:48:00,919 --> 00:48:06,466
<i>"but the Disney Matte Department is having
a really difficult time hiring people."</i>

708
00:48:07,092 --> 00:48:08,969
And he said, "Give it six months."

709
00:48:11,430 --> 00:48:14,516
<i>So now I'm working at Disney,</i>

710
00:48:15,100 --> 00:48:19,313
and after about six years, I got a call

711
00:48:19,605 --> 00:48:23,233
kind of out of the blue, from Jim Nelson,

712
00:48:23,692 --> 00:48:27,988
<i>one of the producers on a film</i>
<i>called the</i> Star Wars.

713
00:48:29,573 --> 00:48:30,616
He was clever.

714
00:48:31,116 --> 00:48:35,203
He brought over
Ralph McQuarrie's sketches.

715
00:48:36,204 --> 00:48:37,915
<i>They were intimidating,</i>

716
00:48:39,166 --> 00:48:42,753
<i>but at the same time inspiring.</i>

717
00:48:47,507 --> 00:48:48,717
<i>That's all it took.</i>

718
00:48:51,136 --> 00:48:55,641
At Disney, I was one of the
youngest people. I was a kid.

719
00:48:55,724 --> 00:48:58,143
<i>At ILM, I was an old guy.</i>

720
00:48:59,478 --> 00:49:05,484
I almost expected people to come
and ask me what it was like before sound.

721
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,737
<i>They'd never seen a matte painting.</i>

722
00:49:09,821 --> 00:49:14,952
<i>A matte painting
is the painted piece of scenery</i>

723
00:49:15,035 --> 00:49:18,288
<i>that goes together with</i>

724
00:49:18,372 --> 00:49:22,167
actors on a location, on a set.

725
00:49:22,292 --> 00:49:24,836
You wouldn't see me get rid of it
anyway, would you?

726
00:49:24,962 --> 00:49:30,008
<i>In</i> Star <i>Wars, the shot with Obi-Wan Kenobi</i>

727
00:49:30,175 --> 00:49:34,304
<i>turning off the tractor beam,
that was a matte shot.</i>

728
00:49:35,681 --> 00:49:41,019
<i>Alec Guinness was standing six feet
off the stage floor,</i>

729
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:45,857
but I, in my matte painting,
replaced the stage floor

730
00:49:46,191 --> 00:49:49,486
with a shaft that goes down to infinity,

731
00:49:50,070 --> 00:49:53,073
<i>which creates a certain amount of tension.</i>

732
00:49:55,242 --> 00:49:56,952
In fact, a lot of tension.

733
00:49:58,161 --> 00:50:01,832
<i>Here's this old guy
who's dressed like a monk</i>

734
00:50:01,915 --> 00:50:08,088
going around something that goes way down
and he could fall off.

735
00:50:08,171 --> 00:50:12,509
Well, why didn't they put the switch
over next to the bridge?

736
00:50:12,592 --> 00:50:14,886
It doesn't...

737
00:50:14,970 --> 00:50:16,138
But you're loving it.

738
00:50:16,221 --> 00:50:18,432
You're just going,
"What's he going to do? Oh!"

739
00:50:18,849 --> 00:50:22,310
So to get that product,
you've got to put this,

740
00:50:23,395 --> 00:50:28,775
<i>together with this,
onto one piece of film.</i>

741
00:50:32,029 --> 00:50:33,655
<i>You seen that new BT-16?</i>

742
00:50:33,739 --> 00:50:36,324
<i>Yeah, some of the other guys
were telling me about it.</i>

743
00:50:36,408 --> 00:50:38,285
<i>They say it's quite a thing to see.</i>

744
00:50:40,912 --> 00:50:42,789
<i>I think we took a wrong turn.</i>

745
00:50:42,873 --> 00:50:44,624
<i>They're coming through!</i>

746
00:50:44,708 --> 00:50:46,185
<i>316, report to control.</i>

747
00:50:46,209 --> 00:50:47,461
<i>This is not gonna work.</i>

748
00:50:47,586 --> 00:50:50,964
<i>- Why didn't you say so before?</i>
<i>- I did say so before.</i>

749
00:50:53,383 --> 00:50:56,720
<i>Hey, Luke. May the Force be with you.</i>

750
00:51:02,476 --> 00:51:06,521
<i>I was set up
on the second floor.</i>

751
00:51:06,897 --> 00:51:10,108
Being on the second floor is not good

752
00:51:10,275 --> 00:51:13,445
because people slam doors and it vibrates.

753
00:51:14,613 --> 00:51:18,450
Eventually, John Dykstra or Richard Edlund
came up with the idea,

754
00:51:18,867 --> 00:51:21,495
"Okay, we'll put a red light"

755
00:51:21,661 --> 00:51:25,791
"that you'll turn on when you're shooting
so people don't come in the door."

756
00:51:26,875 --> 00:51:29,461
Nobody paid attention to the red light.

757
00:51:32,964 --> 00:51:35,759
<i>After probably six months,</i>

758
00:51:35,842 --> 00:51:39,304
<i>we'd gotten the first
of our prototypes done,</i>

759
00:51:39,387 --> 00:51:43,183
but we weren't producing
a single piece of finished film.

760
00:51:43,809 --> 00:51:46,812
We built this violin,
and now had to learn how to play it.

761
00:51:50,232 --> 00:51:52,567
You know, the equipment
wasn't just all coming together,

762
00:51:52,651 --> 00:51:54,653
and George was coming back from England.

763
00:51:55,028 --> 00:51:57,155
And so there was this pressure to get done

764
00:51:57,239 --> 00:51:59,491
<i>what we could done
to get some pieces of film.</i>

765
00:52:01,535 --> 00:52:06,248
<i>I think Grant came up with the idea
that we could do the escape pod</i>

766
00:52:06,331 --> 00:52:09,584
<i>falling out of the bay
on the princess's ship.</i>

767
00:52:10,168 --> 00:52:13,255
<i>And one of the guns
on the surface of the Death Star.</i>

768
00:52:13,338 --> 00:52:16,007
Because neither one of them
were motion control shots.

769
00:52:16,091 --> 00:52:17,759
They weren't using the equipment.

770
00:52:17,926 --> 00:52:20,262
<i>Jon Erland and I built this bay
with solenoids,</i>

771
00:52:20,345 --> 00:52:25,308
<i>so the pod was set in that and then
the camera was put up on a forklift,</i>

772
00:52:25,392 --> 00:52:28,603
<i>and then we had black velvet
stretched out like a big net.</i>

773
00:52:28,937 --> 00:52:31,857
I put mica dust
in all the little solenoids.

774
00:52:32,315 --> 00:52:36,069
<i>So when the solenoids pull back,
it's as if bolts are blowing it out,</i>

775
00:52:36,153 --> 00:52:38,446
<i>and then it creates
all these little sparkles.</i>

776
00:52:38,738 --> 00:52:41,408
<i>If you look really closely,
you don't see any stars.</i>

777
00:52:45,203 --> 00:52:49,833
So we did that shot, and then we did the
Death Star gun that you know...

778
00:52:55,088 --> 00:52:58,884
But I know George probably had
hopes of a lot more than that.

779
00:53:02,554 --> 00:53:04,681
Okay, here we are, running the camera.

780
00:53:06,892 --> 00:53:08,977
This whole business is one big test.

781
00:53:11,521 --> 00:53:17,194
<i>Special effects in general
is one nonstop continuous test,</i>

782
00:53:18,528 --> 00:53:22,199
<i>because you always have
to rely on some other trick</i>

783
00:53:22,282 --> 00:53:26,328
<i>that you pull out of your sleeve
to solve some ridiculous problems,</i>

784
00:53:26,411 --> 00:53:28,914
<i>and you just test it till you get it.</i>

785
00:53:28,997 --> 00:53:31,291
<i>With traditional visual
effects photography,</i>

786
00:53:31,374 --> 00:53:34,085
<i>the subject would be moving
and the camera follows it.</i>

787
00:53:35,754 --> 00:53:37,839
In our world, the camera's moving.

788
00:53:43,345 --> 00:53:47,224
<i>This is because we needed to light
the model with a static light source,</i>

789
00:53:47,307 --> 00:53:48,725
<i>which was supposed to be the sun.</i>

790
00:53:48,808 --> 00:53:52,312
So we wanted the light source
and the model relative to one another

791
00:53:52,395 --> 00:53:53,605
to stay in one place.

792
00:53:53,813 --> 00:53:55,857
The model rotating,
the shadows would change.

793
00:53:55,941 --> 00:53:58,360
<i>The model panning,
the shadows would change.</i>

794
00:53:58,443 --> 00:54:00,654
<i>But if we had moved
the model towards camera,</i>

795
00:54:00,737 --> 00:54:02,614
<i>the light would have had to go on with it,</i>

796
00:54:02,697 --> 00:54:04,425
<i>otherwise, the light would
change on the model.</i>

797
00:54:04,449 --> 00:54:05,659
<i>So we moved the camera.</i>

798
00:54:07,702 --> 00:54:10,580
<i>We put the chosen model on a device</i>

799
00:54:10,664 --> 00:54:13,625
which is also controlled
by the motion control system

800
00:54:13,708 --> 00:54:17,128
<i>so the model can slide back and forth,
go up and down, or rotate.</i>

801
00:54:18,088 --> 00:54:19,673
<i>Then you had to figure out</i>

802
00:54:19,756 --> 00:54:24,052
<i>what kind of camera move
results in the proper subject move.</i>

803
00:54:25,637 --> 00:54:27,597
Invariably the producer comes and says,

804
00:54:27,681 --> 00:54:30,100
"I'd like something
like I've never seen before."

805
00:54:30,350 --> 00:54:32,727
<i>We're always faced with a problem
of trying to figure out</i>

806
00:54:32,811 --> 00:54:35,689
<i>how to get a camera someplace
where it hasn't been before,</i>

807
00:54:35,772 --> 00:54:37,732
<i>or give you a different point of view</i>

808
00:54:37,816 --> 00:54:39,734
<i>than you've ever had before
in that same place.</i>

809
00:54:39,818 --> 00:54:42,654
<i>The thing that they buy
when they come for your talent</i>

810
00:54:42,737 --> 00:54:46,032
<i>is your ingenuity, your ability
to give what you say you can give,</i>

811
00:54:46,116 --> 00:54:50,245
- especially when they don't understand it.
- They hope you do... basically.

812
00:55:24,571 --> 00:55:27,741
I was not happy.

813
00:56:09,616 --> 00:56:13,411
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