hey Adam you know one of the very first videos in fact maybe the first video
that we shot together was showing your zf1
project
and now four years later I think it's about time to revisit the status level
there's been a lot of requests as to what the heck is going on with that
project and this is not what's going on with it this is what we were talking
about that on that original bill so just to give a little history I was obsessed
with this EF one from the moment the movie came out in 98 I'm not incorrect
and then I befriended the wonderful model maker Sean Morgan via the replica
prop form in 1999 he and I started doing research on this
my friend of mine got me one of the pods I used it to scale and sometime in the
early 2000s for a couple of years I spent a tremendous amount of time doing
some really detailed 3d drawings in sketchup of all programs it's not
necessarily ideal for such fiddling mechanical work and yet I brute forced
it and did all these 3d drawings of the entire assembly and sort of pressed
forward with this thing right up until you interviewed me about it four years
ago with the hopes of one day finishing it right and it really is an assembly as
a prop of course this is organized receive one from Fifth Element they made
multiple versions of this yes working firing ones some for the net one for
just the the missiles one for a flamethrower one for the cold thing yeah
and when one that fired actual ammunition or fired blank rounds and the
one that fired blank runs you could actually see I think down here the
curved magazine of an ak-47 chassis right that is visible as like a
continuity error in the film for when they wanted to fire it right so as a
prop the prop makers they built this with the design in mind with lots of
real-world parts yes put in well so before we get to that I want to point
out yes oh sorry you're going to talk about the
wrong right that's one of the first things I was able to personally identify
was that the rocket was this st's rocket called bullpup that is still being
produced and also I recognized while there was the front of a little butane
lighter that front end of the torch that I had at the time was visible
on the model so I use those two things as scale to try and get the thing right
and again I spent more than 10 years on it and then a guy named Marcel rouille
one of the RPF guys got access to a real one and made measurements now here's the
thing mine my measurements are all close yeah but they're not exact no and as
soon as I found out there was an exact one I ordered a set of parts from Marcel
and eventually put together this now this is these are castings I made for my
personal kits in order to be able to put this together some of these are Marcel's
parts some of them are my parts most of them are Marcel except for the pod stuff
the pod stuff I did and scale-wise it looks a little bigger it is actually
it's incredibly close there are so many ways like the barrels a little bigger
the parts are all a little bit well sometimes they're larger sometimes
they're smaller right it shows deeply the scale problems one
has when using just screenshots from VHS as a reference yeah and scaling from one
piece that butane had yeah all the way to a big problem it's crazy and I mean I
the research that I went to I don't remember if we talked about this in the
first video was all the way towards in the German edition of the DVD of the
fifth element there's a behind the scenes shot of one of these taken apart
as effects guys are working on it and this was like really important for
understanding the structure so I own a copy of defunct element in my DVD
collection but this is all by way of teasing the audience clip so that we can
finally show the completed the finished the glorious zf1 Boop we turn it on all
the lights work we have the yellow button we have the red rocket LED we've
got the red button we've got the screen in the back with blinking lights we've
got the targeting computer up there we even have the glowing lights that are
sticking down visible some of the shots pointing down above
these little things here every aspect that I could see on the real gun is
actually extent here oh my god can you walk us through a little bit of
application so you some real-world parts right this st's rocket right have that
butane head but a frame inside here that you can make that's all machine this is
all so much of this is custom it's actually astounding Matt Monson was the
RPF guy who figured out that this back part was actually modified pieces of a
Star Trek Enterprise model or Voyager Voyager that is what it's a Voyager
model yes item of the Star Trek Voyager and
there's also I think some Voyager parts here I think that's also part of that
the the central framework of which there's a pair of aluminum plates is
totally custom potentially water cut back then each of these parts is custom
machined I always thought that this was some kind of industrial thing but I
never was able to find it hmm there are some actual brass brass pieces
in here from from air equipment they used some of this to fire actual
practical effects through like this the fog and this this this brass rod right
here that was to light the flame thrower that was to actually make the Paul make
it shoot flame so the effects team built effectively one purpose built for each
of the things the thing is demonstrating its its abilities so when he fires the
net gun they had one which I believe props tour now owns right
with net gun right in there they had one with the flame 4 they had one I mean
it's a tremendous amount of work and so this is it I mean we've talked nepali
guess about you you've mentioned that when you finish a prop it lives next to
your bedside and you get to admire it and this is in a state where it can live
by your bedside it is no exception I will tell you that I did finish it a
few weeks ago and it did live on my bedside table for about a week it's I am
so relieved and gratified to finally see it you just
we'll be the actual number of how long I've been working on this young 17 years
that's that's ridiculous this is um I think just as old as my
kids and we've seen you over the past four years from time to time in between
projects oh the liner you've yep added that yep
yeah all right leave it some little bits and pieces the gun itself the original
prop had a story but your replica has a story this is the f1 she's done awesome
thank you so much Adam and thank you guys for following us along this journey
for Adams ef-1 project of course many more projects thanks for your patience
bye
you