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 <i>Eastman 910 adhesive, now available at local stores.</i>