grayson duskwalker that's a terrific username grayson dustbooker wants to
know what are your thoughts on the marriage of practical props
sets and digital props and sets can the two exist or will digital become the ruler of all
i don't think that digital will become the ruler of all i don't think that it is
i'm just i'm going to speak on behalf of the directors i know who love doing practical effects
like john favreau peter jackson guillermo del toro
these guys love practical effects they grew up on them they ate breathed and slept them and they got
into film so that they could dress up with their friends and have these incredible adventures and
i think for all those guys an entire film that's all green screen is like missing the point of why
they became filmmakers in the first place so for that reason i think there may end up being plenty
of films that are all green screen um sky captain in the world of tomorrow as a deep cut example but
what favreau is doing with the mandalorian and what his team is doing with integrating digital
effects and practical shooting using the volume using the unreal engine and the ilm software that
they're developing for that that is all a way of of doing exactly what you're talking about of
integrating the practical and the cg so that everyone gets what they want the reason practical
effects have gone away is because once you can do it in cg it's way less expensive to do it that way
overall uh and film producers are always trying to get things done for less that's their job
um you know i was on set on pacific rim for one of the shots of the kaiju punching through the
building and guillermo guillermo told me at the film at the shoot he's like i wish i could do
more of these but i can't afford it you know that that's super expensive so i think that
favreau is not just creating a toy box for himself to make mandalorian i think he's creating a toy
box for the next generation of filmmakers and i think he's probably thinking of it like that um
which is super exciting to me because i i love the idea that you could go to best buy and buy
a a a a television big enough to fill the screen of your camera your camera and put
something on it and start to film in your own volume that's that's that could be happening
soon there could be off-the-shelf sulfur for doing that by the end of 21 who knows um
let's see uh i've uh evan vk second question from them uh could i be specific about what
i worked on at ilm like oh oh oh oh sorry i answered that one already um there was a second
question someone wanted to know about something that i built that didn't make it into the film
uh and i do have an answer for that on ai a significant portion a significant sequence of
ai takes place in a submerged amusement park uh and it's where uh the boy played by haley
osmond meets the angel that guides him on his journey um because she's there underwater uh and
as part of this sequence we were building underwater funiculars and
i think i don't think there was a ferris wheel but like under we were doing all of these practical
objects for the underwater shooting and it was really really fun and at a certain point
i can't remember who was the art director on that show
i really can't anyway the art director came to me and said dennis wants a carousel
just build one just just do it so i got to design and build
a four foot diameter carousel all out of laser cut plywood and acrylic
the sculpting department turned out some horses and some animals for me the mold department made
a whole bunch i had uh oh god i had like spiral twisted poles and then the painting department
did the most unbelievable weathering of it to look like it was caked in barnacles and underwater ah
it was such a beautiful prop and if you go to ilm to the letterman complex today you can see
it it's actually on display in the hallway there at the letterman complex but at a certain point
spielberg wanted more flowing uh seaweed on the props and the stuff that they were filming
in the underwater dry for wet motion control stage and dennis muran said uh
i can do more seaweed but we're gonna have to lose some things in order to be able to afford
more seaweed in cg and my carousel was one of the objects that went by the wayside so sadly it will
never be seen in the film but it still exists and i took pictures of it last time i was there um
the online animator has a really interesting question and i appreciate this
um when working at ilm did you ever grow bored or felt that your work was becoming monotonous
i'd like to get a job someday where the work you're doing is always something new yeah um yeah
yeah certainly the work could get monotonous uh benani is part of what being able to tolerate a
high degree of monotony is absolutely what separates an excellent model maker from a
mediocre one but that's not the kind of monotony i think you were asking me about um there was a
specific point in i think probably around 2001 where i'd been in ilm now three and a half years
i'd worked on a few pictures i'd like gotten to do a whole bunch of stuff i'd always wanted to do
i had to build models for people who i revered uh on films that i liked i got to go to the movies
and see those models on screen and i like to imagine that one of the things that made me
good at my job when i was doing it for a living is that i like to always think about what the
big picture is so i want to know i wanted always to know the biggest possible picture
and when i would be working with someone who's as brilliant as doug chang and he
would see that i could take in the big picture and solve problems that before he even saw them
art directors like him and peter rubin uh they gave me more carte blanche
to do the things that i you know at one point on the on the newton rune shuttle doug was like
um look i this needs an inside to the loading bay just do whatever you want in there i'd
already spent a few weeks making stuff and he saw me do what i'm doing what i was doing and
understood that i understood the aesthetic and let me go um so i wanted to know the big picture and
if i was still at ilm today i think what i would have done is the same path my buddy dave fogler
did which is to end up becoming an effects director i think that's the kind of track i i
would have looked towards following if i had stuck around at ilm if mythbusters had never shown up
um but the fact is somewhere around 2000 in late 2001 early 2002 i was definitely feeling like
what else is there like is there a bigger thing that i could work on a bigger picture um linda
wolkovic who ran the model shop at ilm when i was working there still a great friend of mine and
i think is was the longest serving producer on mythbusters yeah i'm pretty sure that's
exactly the case linda tells me that we went out to lunch in early 02 or late01 and i was
expressing this like i'm just like i like this i love this i love all of everybody here and
i love the work and i love the culture but i just feel like i want a little something more
she said like what and i said i don't know hosting my own tv show and then i probably
forgot about that until you know until she told it to me probably 10 years later
i mean i worked at ilm for another two years after thinking that um but that's also kind of
how do i say this that's also sort of the way i approach my future even now
um i think about what it could be like and then i think about what i can do to get it
to be like a way that i want it to be like so i was thinking to myself i feel like i want to see
and operate on a bigger picture scale well here at ilm that probably means becoming an effects
director or an art director i was never going to become an art director i can't draw that well um
and when people ask me about work advice i'm always advising people and i'll advise you now
instead of thinking about what you want to do think about how you want it to feel to be at work
and obviously we all want it to feel awesome all the time i'm not talking about that i'm like how
satisfied do you want to be with your work how much control do you want over the work that you're
going to do um what kind of relationship do you want with your bosses how much do you want to make
um all of those are questions that i ask myself all the time
about employment and again even now looking into the future
i think in those kind of terms what do i want it to feel like what do i want it to be like
um and i like to imagine that that's you know brought me uh brought me to where i am