He has a pretty unusual style, especially then. He had some pretty clear ideas and communicated them very clearly how he wanted to shoot things. It was that more than it was me, and I was very lucky to become part of that project and part of that world. Really he wanted to make a deal with Digital Domain and he wanted his picture to be done there. And was happy to take me on almost based on that. Mark Stetson: Well, Luc was very impressed with my credentials, especially Blade Runner. What do you remember about those early days of meeting Luc and going through the script, and what his view and your view was on how some of these sequences would be done? But just sort of embedding myself with the film crew was a great experience, a great experience. I didn’t know what to make of the script, didn’t know whether to read it as a comedy or a drama, and had plenty of questions about that. And let him bless me for the job.Īnd it was all pretty wild to start. I knew nothing about Luc Besson really and my first job was to read the script, get on a plane, fly to London and meet him. I was actually kind of shocked when they handed me that project. And I of course had tons to learn, but it’s a good place to start. At least that was my foundational confidence, shall we say, my confidence in that sense. So that all led to it not being an unusual transition to go into overall visual effects supervision. And oftentimes I was the first person doing a breakdown on a film: what was going to be miniature, what was going to be matte painting, what was gonna be comp, what elements we needed, stuff like that.Īnd so I had plenty of support in that regard but oftentimes I was the first person to seriously look at a project. And so what I found is – I stayed with that for ten or fifteen years – was I really ended up fronting visual effects projects in the sense that model construction needed such a lead time that I really needed to sort of figure out the scope of the work. And running the model shop for Doug Trumbull was a huge deal in my world and in the visual effects world at the time. Mark Stetson: I sort of came up quickly through the ranks in miniature effects and I think Blade Runner was my third or fourth picture. Could you give me a quick background of what you felt like your area of expertise was? Prior to that you’d worked on things like Blade Runner and Hudsucker Proxy and Waterworld. It was Digital Domain 1.0 back then, and they really gave me a great team. And I was very supported by Digital Domain. I mean, it was sort of standard tent pole-ish at the time and I was confident that I could do that, but it was my first one and there was a ton I had to learn, especially about digital visual effects. Mark Stetson: I wasn’t afraid of the size of it. Then I soldered the little contact disc onto the middle.This was your first visual effects supervisor role – how daunting was that for you? First I stuck some copper tape onto the inside of the 'hatch', from one side to the center. That electronic gizmo I mentioned earlier had another useful part - a little metal disc with a sprung protrusion, which sits under the battery and keeps pressure on it. In the end I gave up and decided to 'MacGuyver' something together. Try as I might I could not find a button tiny enough. Checking the film I noticed that the LED does stand quite proud from the main body. The four 'legs' in the corner were much shorter by now. After that I rubbed it over a sheet of wet & dry paper until the base was flat and I had reduced the height by as much as I could. I knew that this might be vulnerable to damage (and I also knew that once it was inside the multipass I'd never be able to get at it again) so once I had soldered on two wires, I covered the base of the LED in epoxy to seal it.
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