hey everybody its Adam from tested and
of course you know that Star Wars The
Force awakens Episode seven has just
come out but what you might not know is
that they brought in the original
creature master of the first three Star
Wars films phil tippett
to replicate the de jorrick hollow chest
sequence for the new Star Wars film I am
in Phil's studio right now they are just
about to start animating this sequence
so cool and we're going to talk to him
about it so Phil it's it's three eight
years later and the hollow chest the
dejar ecologist is set up in front of
you can you talk about the process by
which they brought you back into Star
Wars to do this well we got a call from
Kathy Kennedy saying that they wanted to
restore the the original chess set from
Star Wars and the problem was that the
characters that we had made you know
close to 40 years ago we're in a
horrible state of disintegration we had
given the original characters to gorge
on a little plaque and he had it in his
office for the whole time but they were
made out of a rubber that disintegrates
over time turns into like graham
crackers what we did was went to the
archive and used photogrammetry to
reconstruct the the characters got them
into the computer and did like an
archeological reconstruction of what the
characters looked like in the computer
and spit those out and those got 3d
printed and then molds were made and
these aren't made of the same materials
these are not made of foam latex anymore
that is correct the other they're all
made out of the silicone that holds up
because they're soft yeah they're very
bushy cool I know last I know they won't
riles unzip here okay what was the
process by which you you built an
animated these figures for the original
Star Wars George saw this particular
character that I made when I was in my
early 20s a stop-motion character and
that gave him the idea he was initially
going to do the chess set with people in
masks but Michael Crichton had just come
out with Westworld did some holograms
with people
do something different and said what if
we did it with stop-motion so John Berg
and I were hired and we turned around
all these other characters in a matter
of a couple of weeks and at the very
impact they were having a wrap party at
ILM at the time it was everything was
push right to the very end and what was
well what were they made out of the
original a figure this character over
here was a foam latex creature that was
cast from a mold and the rest were just
fabricated using sculpey different
materials urethane foam covered with
latex or put together really quickly in
a matter of a couple of weeks but the
reconstruction process took a lot longer
took a lot longer when you originally
animate it did you did you get a script
from George about what to do or do you
go and get to freeform it we set them up
and George went this one go here and
this one should go here and this one
does this and the sky does that and we
like okay okay so Chuck give me you guys
had the job to animate this for the new
movie can you describe a little bit
about the process how you guys how you
guys actually shoot them living oh yeah
one plant one frame at a time at a time
it will take forever yeah Gibby was on
these two guys all right and I did all
that all the rest of them now when
you're doing that you have charts of
every little piece of them that can move
right their eyes their hands their legs
oh not really
we sort of work out a dance between us
mm-hmm because we danced on James the
Giant Peach a long time ago which is
similar similar armature and character
each person was on each side of the
peach okay so I was just sort of
following along so every second this is
on screen you guys have made 24
individual movements for every single
character right for one second of film
for one second of film okay talk to me
about these guys well these were these
are called surface gauges it's a
machinist it's a machinist tool this
technology was incorporated by Willis
O'Brien I think as early as 1925 for the
lost world and definitely used in King
Kong in 1933 and there are there are
frames in King Kong and mightyjoyoung
where you can see these things popping
in and out oh yeah they didn't bother to
just cut
ak or anything they just kept going on
they'll ever see them but there used to
like locate a point in space when you're
animating so once you've shot a frame
you come in with this to register where
a piece of the character is exactly and
then you know by just positioning it
incrementally where you are in space and
it's not much
and then you once you've made your move
I'll pull it out take a frame and then
you put it back in and adjust the
character again so there was a there was
a lot of talk there's been a lot of talk
and JJ has been very a great advocate of
bringing back some of the old-school
techniques from Star Wars and Phil
you've gone all the way from original
latex animated armored figures to the
most modern CG having seen this this
this whole arc of technology how does it
feel to go back to the old school way of
doing it well luckily I didn't have to
do it oh yeah these guys you know are a
couple of the best stop-motion animators
in the world so it was great to be able
have the opportunity to hand it over
okay so can you talk a little bit about
how you guys keep global track of all
this stuff as it goes I just take one I
just take one character at a time you
know like I in my head I figure out what
what these guys are doing and pretty
much all of these guys are just watching
every animator has their own particular
way of doing things and we're all
totally different from each other oh
really
yeah so some people use charts very
specifically in our very well I think
Gibby used a dummy sheet to lay out some
of the very basic key poses that you
wanted to go for so you have a map this
is like my frame 40 I want to be here by
frame 70 on here yeah it's the only
thing that keeps me organized I have to
work out everything on paper first so I
spent a lot of time doing that and I'm
act it out and I time it with a
stopwatch to make sure that counting
down the Sheep at the appropriate speed
so they hit my marks but that trick and
when I actually come to the table after
every frame it looks kind of silly but I
always try to come at the table the same
way so I try take a frame I actually
positioned my body to then approach the
table are you using the same muscle yeah
so it's all muscle memories
so when I get to the puppet I'm kind of
already situated to know where my hands
are and then I use my hands to just hold
it for a minute and then I start to make
the move because I use my fingers in
space to kind of write look in case I go
and I go too far it's like I somehow it
can remember how to get myself back
without having to go back to the frame
Grover and check it yeah
lame grabber which is the ability to
look at the last frame and the current
frame isn't something you had back then
no no no you had a 35-millimeter camera
and you didn't know what you shot until
you saw dailies the next day we call
dailies to mylanta moment you never knew
what you were going to get but you know
once you get past the initial once you
know what you're doing what the
intention of the scene is and you've
rehearsed it yourself and use a
stopwatch or made like whatever notes
you need once you dive into it it's it's
pretty much an improvisation you know
and you allow yourself to at least have
an intention and a starting point but
then anything can happen you can start
getting into it and go oh wow what if it
and it's it's like being an actor and
being able to be free with having you
know a more spontaneous idea rather than
being locked - yeah and also the puppet
will tell you where to go sometimes -
because it will move in specifically
like this one's a ball-and-socket and if
if you lock it up and you can't move it
anymore you got to come up with a
different direction
I see and so that throws everything off
a little bit and so that's why I always
say it's a dance because you're always
playing off of each other
it's fascinating to think of
improvisation on such a long yeah it's
very slow yeah very slow so can you talk
a little bit about the lighting of this
uh well it was an engineer with Chris
Morley and we got Dennis Muren to come
in as a day player to come back and help
reconstruct what he did way back in the
day so I was yeah he jumped at the
chance
that's nice we're talking about is hunk
from 30 years ago as like moved a little
bit further than
where he was he was on the ground but
now he's as squished as you can possibly
get him and he's just got his hand on
the club and he raises up as green his
like air I'm moving in to get him and he
goes whoop and aims and then there's a
cut and then for the second shot it's
just the el Kabong yeah we left mr. big
doing so the scenario that you guys set
up it has a lineage to the original
hollow chest from Star Wars
does it mm-hmm certainly yeah and the
original one that we did this character
comes jumping in and hops in and then
this character reaches forward and picks
him up and throws him down right
so we elected to pick up where we left
off and have this guy on the ground and
this guy coming back to do another
attack and we just swapped out the who
wins this time oh yeah this was the
winner 40 years ago this guy is the
winner today yeah I saw that I guess
that's the game plan and we'll spend a
little time just kind of thinking about
how each of these come back to life
or you know we could give them something
to do like what if they what what
they're doing is they're turning and
looking at these guys it might be a
place to start from at least mentally if
for 30 years they've slowly and it just
settled so when the button comes back on
there's like and then they kind of okay
Oh certainly you check the guys looks
exactly like it's a little something
that it's not a big action but it'll
little place to start coming towards and
as they come on there could have been an
intention that was left from the old
movie that wasn't explicit where I mean
look some dummy I'm just saying it's
great to get all these ideas but then
you just kind of throw a deadline you
know you're building a history you let
go whatever you have to let go of it
when you start but at least if you have
a history you can start from someplace
instead of just the universe at large
well guys bill thank you so much for
taking me on a load or go down memory
lane and also the discover some thanks
guys