[Music intro]
>>CHARLIE CHIODO: Hi everybody.
You're here in the shop of the Chiodo Brothers. I'm Charlie Chiodo.
>>ED CHIODO: I'm Edward Chiodo.
>>STEPHEN CHIODO: I'm Stephen Chiodo. How are you?
>>ED: And you may know us from some of our special effects work
from Critters, Elf,
Killer Klowns from Outer Space,
Dinner for Schmucks,
all of that,
Team America: World Police.
>>CHARLIE: Oh, yeah, we did that.
>>STEPHEN: What's cool is after doing stop motion and makeup effects
and animatronics puppets, now we're doing these live attractions at
at the Zoo.
And it's really great to see our creatures come alive and actually interact with an audience.
It's really
a lot of fun.
>>ED: Yeah, the Zoo came to us and they wanted to do
something, they asked us was it possible to make a dinosaur character that can interact
with kids. We said, 'Absolutely.'
>>CHARLIE: We've always been fascinated with dinosaurs and we're thrilled to get
anything
any project that has dinosaurs involved. We've worked with Sid and Marty Croft on the Revival
of the Land of the Lost.
We designed all the little dinosaurs.
We did stop motion, composting when digital composting was in its early stages.
It was a great show and working with Sid and Marty was terrific.
But we had the opportunity now with the
ever growing interest in dinosaurs.
When I was a kid
when we were kids
there were nine dinosaurs.
You could count them on your hands.
Now, I don't know how many species there are.
They've got feathers now, sounds like a Vegas show to me.
I like my T-Rex
scaly and scary.
But--
>>STEPHEN: But when they came to us
As the Zoo
they wanted a living dinosaur, but they also wanted a character.
So you can go out there and create, let's say, a neutral looking,
not like Thunder Lizard,
which is kind of
like an alligator, not much personality.
But we bring character to it. So they wanted a female
herbivore and Charlie came up with the--
>>CHARLIE: This is our little Parasaurolophus,
and again,
the colors were chosen
by the sponsors of the Zoo
and they wanted it green...
and I tried different colored bellies
and they kind of liked the pinkish
belly.
She's, again,
Bambi's mother type,
a mother.
Whether she'll trot out a little baby
sometime in the near future
that remains to be seen.
>>ED: Yeah, even scale-wise though she's an adolescent.
She's nowhere near what a full size one would be.
>>CHARLIE: Yeah.
>>STEPHEN: We worked with our product supervisor, DBH,
and we've designed this perfectly balanced dinosaur.
The performer sits inside, although you see his visible legs.
The creature is balanced right on the guy--
between the tail and the head
and actually it weighs about 75 pounds and it's really, uh--
a walk in the park.
>>CHARLIE: Seventy-five pounds is a good weight.
We're trying to improve that.
If we can get down to 50, that's great;
a 50 pound backpack is a
basic backpack if you're going hiking or something like that.
Seventy-five is a little sturdy, but
it seems Stephen's able to
manipulate it very well.
>>ED: Yeah, the thing is the Zoo wanted something that could
definitely interact with the kids
on a one-to-one basis.
Because they bring out live animals all the time,
but they don't do what you want to do when you want them to do it, so
what could we do? Basically create a character, a puppet, a large puppet.
The idea is we design this character,
it's all built around a lightweight harness,
aluminum under-structure,
foam construction,
muscle structure
with a
pretty sophisticated skin put over it.
>>CHARLIE: What's interesting it's actually
a giant puppet;
a guy in a suit. You would have a six foot, seven foot tall creature; we've seen all that.
This is a 10 foot tall
creature. She's almost 20 feet long. Duncan is,
what, is he 16 feet or 20 feet long?
>>ED: Duncan is 15 feet long and 7 feet tall.
>>CHARLIE: Yeah, they're giant puppets
and they come to life with a
mechanical articulation and eye blinks and stuff.
We even have a voice box that actually
simulates
a human voice and makes it sound like a dinosaur growl.
We couldn't make them talk like Scooby Doo. We say we don't want to do that.
He'll say things like 'Oh, hi kids.'
>>STEPHEN: They do it anyway.
>>ED: They do that.
It's funny actually, they use it, they come out in kind of full
dinosaur mode with the roaring, but then if they sense the kids are a little scared or
taken aback they
kind of go into Scooby Doo mode
to kind of take the edge off of it.
>>CHARLIE: Well it's real interesting too, the first time we saw the performance
there was
maybe a three or four year old in a stroller.
When Duncan came out
the little kid was strapped in and he was going ...
trying to get out
and no one was paying to attention to him,
it was horrifying.
But then we said, no he's friendly, he's friendly.
And I think seeing the human legs there
sort of gives the kids some comfort because it's just all of a sudden,
what looks like frighteningly real.
Imagine when you're three feet tall seeing a 15 foot dinosaur coming at you,
they say, 'Oh,
it's fake. It's nice.
This is make-believe.'
>>ED: Then that's the beauty of having a live performer there. He can really gauge
his performance.
It's truly interactive.
He can get down onto the kid's level.
>>STEPHEN: And I think he's turned into a big dog, so it kind of walks around like
this big friendly golden retriever,
brr, brr, brrr, brr, like this and
I think the kids really get a kick out of it.
>>ED: Yeah, so now we've got Lily,
that's going to be joining Duncan up at the Zoo.
>>CHARLIE: You know what;
we've been
working in films
going on 30 years now,
primarily movie and television.
Props and creatures were made from cut to cut.
If you needed an arm
we'd make an arm for the shot,
we make a face; make a head explode.
>>STEPHEN: Make puppets for specific gags.
>>ED: That's a big difference in a feature film,
everything is really kind of shot specific and what the director's vision is,
so you build something for a specific angle for a specific usage.
The live
thing it's a 360 degree prop that lives and breathes in that world.
>>CHARLIE: There's a lot of considerations that you have to give that
you're performing in front of an audience.
It's up-close stuff.
It's like up-close magic. You can't get away with that stuff.
We're not 30 feet away on a stage
and we're not --
the camera, you can cheat a bunch of stuff.
>>STEPHEN: Yeah, there's no cheating with this.
With all those challenges, or the best part is that you're working with a live audience there
you're not just doing a two second cut, or a three second cut, or just rolling a series,
of just reactions, reactions, reactions. You're doing a performance.
You have an opportunity to get a rapport with the audience and actually get some kind of
feedback from them.
As a performer and also the creator it's a blast.
>>ED: Yeah, and it's funny actually, the difference between the two.
In a movie you're expecting it to be absolutely real so that's something to
strive for in terms of the detail,
the paint job,
everything, all the materials that go into it, the finishing techniques.
In a live venue,
especially in a theme park or a zoo that's
for younger kids,
there's that suspension of disbelief, they want to believe,
so the legs of our characters totally disappear. Nobody
ever mentions, 'I can see the legs.' All they talk about is they see the dinosaur.
>>STEPHEN: Well, one little kid did though and it kind of ticked me off.
He kept on pointing at the legs. If I had the T-Rex I was going to bite his head off.
>>CHARLIE: It's one of those little know-it-all kids.
>>ED: There's always one.
>>CHARLIE: But I think it's --
The consideration that you have--
that you don't have in doing stuff in motion pictures is durability.
We build a prop that lasts through the duration of a shoot;
five weeks, six weeks, sometimes just one day for a commercial, two days for a commercial.
In terms of this, this is a long
range thing.
We have to make sure that it's not going to break down;
that's its going to be good for possibly years of performance.
>>ED: Yes, these characters on average perform four times a day, seven days a week,
365 days a year.
>>STEPHEN: Well it's interesting in the 90s, a lot of the work we do as special effects
artists and stop motion and some practical
animatronics has kind of gone to the wayside because of
the new shiny toy, CG.
But now
it's kind of--
I think it's running in cycles. I think people are kind of tired
of the consistency
of the imagery delivered by CG.
So I think there's a new generation of kids who just love the old 80s movies with rubber.
>>ED: It's funny,
the kids are coming up
in the business, today growing up,
their introduction is to CG imagery, so that's what they're doing. Now when they see
a stop motion movie like ParaNorman
or Coraline,
or Nightmare Before Christmas,
then-- what is that.
Without articulating they sense something
is unusual about it, that it's real.
Now, again,
the stop motion of practical stuff,
the things that we do, the puppetry,
that's the new thing to these kids.
>>STEPHEN: Yes, it's new-- they've discovered it.
It's their discovery now.
>>CHARLIE: We're old school. We were raised on that.
There's something about the hand crafting
that we like.
There's something about being on set operating Critters and having rattlesnakes crawling
around underneath you,
but there's something neat about being on set and watching the T-Rex come down live
>>CHARLIE: and the kids are reacting to that
>>ED: The audiences see it,
again, without being able to articulate it, they know when something's real.
I mean... A puppet there like that T-Rex
coming down through the top of that car,
those kids were screaming because they could've been killed,
really.
>>CHARLIE: No, it's interesting.
>>ED: Yes and for us it's a natural transition. How do you
preserve that
real time,
real life experience? It's theme parks,
it's the amusement parks,
it's zoos,
museums,
offering this sort of live experience for them where the kids could actually interact
face-to-face.
Part of what we've done
out of the USJ
experience was that they wanted something tactile like guests could actually go up and
touch
and sense that they were touching a living, breathing creature.
>>STEPHEN: This has been around since the dawn of man.
These kind of
theatrical experiences will be here forever.
I think the film techniques,
it's just a way for some people to make money. I don't think it really delivers the kind
of experience that's going to be
withstanding,
long standing.
>>CHARLIE: Well, they're trying to get
the audience to immerse themselves in a motion picture by bringing the images off the screen.
Well, in a live performance
the people are immersed in the experience,
you can't deny it.
>>ED: It's even gone one step further than that.
Typically
we've all seen the walk-around at Disneyland; Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Pluto,
all those guys and
it's a photo op,
they go there, take a picture.
But now
we're starting to tell stories with these characters.
We're upping the entertainment value of that live experience.
It's not going to see a full character
running around to have your picture taken with him now.
Now they're telling stories, interactive things.
>>STEPHEN: Yeah, like at Universal City, Japan,
the story of those dinosaurs being in the park was that they escaped from the park--
from the ride
and so they had to get them back in the pen.
So, there was this kind of funny little storyline of the baby running around and the mom kind
of going after it,
trying to corral the baby back into the barn.
>>CHARLIE: And the audience, I mean, the crowd,
had to help
the park
get the dinosaurs back in their pen.
>>ED: Yeah, so in addition to the full size dinosaurs,
Santa Barbara wanted a--
Dean Noble wanted something that they could actually take out to schools
and some of their other outreach programs,
so we designed this baby triceratops.
>>CHARLIE: Well, she's just a--
she's the simplest kind of puppet,
a hand puppet,
like a sock that you put in;
you put your hand in,
and she has remote control eyes.
>>STEPHEN: So, now you'll be able to have the kids walk right up to her
and touch her.
She's got kind of a realistic leathery type skin.
>>ED: It's just a play on the old puppeteering trick, Stephen's arm
is inside the puppet operating. It's a hand puppet with radio controlled eyes.
But actually
in playing in the Zoo he's actually --
the performer will wear a costume
where it'll have a fake arm coming down,
holding the triceratops underneath its belly,
and then while the performer's arm goes inside to operate it.
>>CHARLIE: The kids love this, so
on our first outing
the kids were running over to her saying, 'Mummy, mummy, look a real dinosaur, look,
look.'
>>STEPHEN: It's a lot of fun making these kind of things.
>>ED: Okay,
so Stephen actually is supporting a --
a backpack assembly while he wears over his shoulders and on his hips
that supports the entire structure,
and then there's a
mechanism inside the cockpit right here that allows him to
do all the head movement;
crane the neck
up and down,
move the head left and right,
it can rotate.
The eyes blink.
There's a
little computer controller in there that's programmed to have like a random
eyes look.
One of the challenges with any of these live attractions, and
if it were a motion picture effect we would use foam latex or some other
short term material, but
this is a character that performs four or five times a day, seven days a week
for years,
so we needed to develop something that was, uh,
would last
and be lightweight,
so we developed a special
silicone spandex solution.
It's kind of a proprietary thing we developed here.
That creates a very flexible
lifelike,
not only looking, but
tactile; it actually feels
like a real skin texture.
>>STEPHEN: And it's very durable.
I think we have Duncan working for almost three years now.
It hasn't faded.
It hasn't ripped or torn.
It's a very, very versatile and
durable fabric.
>>ED: Like Charlie said,
it's colorfast and UB protected so it doesn't fade.
Duncan's been playing for two years now,
just over two years
and he looks like the day he walked out of the shop.
>>STEPHEN: Can I walk a little further forward?
>>ED: You can go forward.
>>STEPHEN: Okay.
It's pretty light. I mean,
y'know, it's perfectly balanced on my hips,
not even my shoulders,
and that's DBH did a great job in designing a really elegant interior. I feel like I'm
in a little piper cub cockpit.
And it's very easy to operate.
A lot of college kids, maybe high school seniors will be operating it at the Zoo, so it's gotta
be really
easy.
>>ED: Yeah, part of our criteria is that we actually thought the firefighters,
when they carry their packs, and what's the maximum
weight that they carry on their packs, and they
they carry 80 pounds.
So that was always our upward number;
that it can't weigh more than 80 pounds.
>>CHARLIE: What we tried to do is we tried to get an experienced puppeteer or a suit
performer in the suit,
take some video
so we can use that as a training
tool for the young people that are working the suit up at the Zoo.
>>ED: What you're seeing here is
this is an unpainted dinosaur.
The head has just got some base colors on it, but that's the next step for it.
You've caught us just we're near
the very end of the process here. So, the next couple of days
it's just going to be some final seaming,
some final stitching,
a fair amount of that,
and then painted,
so it'll look like a living dinosaur.
>>CHARLIE: Magic has always been in the movies.
Now we're bringing the magic
to the live venues.
And the magic I think is the key word.
It's what
people want to see.
>>ED: For us, here at Chiodo Bros., it's always been about the characters anyway,
and we bring the characters to life in the best way
possible,
and in this instance it's--
in this case it's a hand puppet, and in that case,
it's a giant walk-around puppet.
>>STEPHEN: Yeah, I think the audience might perceive that it's not absolutely real, but
the fact that it's emoting
and getting reaction,
that's magic.
That there's this
believability in it that makes them kind of go with it. So--
We've done it in motion pictures and now we think it's a great opportunity to work with
Santa Barbara Zoo
because now
we're bringing these live fantasy characters to these kids
and it's real.
It must be a wonderful moment to see. Like you were saying, a
15 foot tall creature standing there in front of you.
It must be fantastic.
Magic.
>>ED: Yeah, for the Zoo, it's able to bring people in to get that
one-on-one experience that they just don't--
that they're not getting other places.
The Zoo, again, is a little safe haven for this
interactive experience.
>>STEPHEN: Yeah and the magic comes from,
you've got a real elephant, you've got a real lion,
real alligator,
now you've got a dinosaur.
Well, because of its association with the rest of the Zoo, it's just as real;
so that's magic.
>>CHARLIE: Well what was great about the Santa Barbara Zoo
and Dean Noble,
they get it. They came to us
with an idea
that was exactly in line with what we should be doing,
bringing it to live audiences. And we were pleased and thankful
to the Santa Barbara Zoo
and Dean
and all his supervisors
and the people involved with the Zoo
for giving us this opportunity to do this.
>>STEPHEN: Any of you guys out there have any kind of creative force to have a vision
of something you want to create, I say just go do it.
There'll be a lot of people telling you not to,
a lot of reasons why you shouldn't,
but if you believe in something, if you believe in a vision or have a passion,
I say just do it
and you'll be having a lot of fun in the future.
>>ED: Yeah, we have a lot of young people come to us,
they show us their portfolios, their sculptures, their artwork, their paintings and stuff
and we tell them, 'If this is your passion,
just do it.
If you want to paint,
paint every day.
If you want to sculpt,
sculpt every day.
If you want to draw,
draw every day.'
Charlie sketches, there's not a piece of paper that is safe around him.
His hands are always moving.
He does it all the time.
>>CHARLIE: (inaudible) I don't have a pencil...
You know what I'd say,
y'know, do you what you love.
And what you want to do
is share that love
with as many people,
and what you'll find is
a lot of people love the same thing that you do.
So, create your love
and show it to us.
I want to see it.
>>EDWARD: Give us some love.
[Laughs] [Music]
>>STEPHEN CHIODO: Hey, we're the Chiodo Brothers and I'm glad you guys had a chance
to take a
sneak peak at our Lily from Santa Barbara Zoo.
I'm Stephen Chiodo with the Chiodo Brothers saying 'Bye'.
>>ED: Ed Chiodo.
>>CHARLIE: I'm Charlie Chiodo and thanks for joining us.
>>ED: Hey, and make sure you get out to the Santa Barbara Zoo to see our dinosaurs.
>>STEPHEN: With the whole family.
>>CHARLIE: Yeah, there's always something cooking at the Santa Barbara Zoo.
Don't miss it.
[Music]