obviously a show like the expanse has a ton of special effects in it and these
days when we think of special effects we often think of things like people
dressed in green doing things in green screen with CG stuff around them but you
should know within the industry that is called visual effects that's the digital
half the physical side is called special effects and here a timber Belle's shop
Acme effects is where all that happens for the expanse his team here could do a
little bit of everything for mold making - welding - woodworking - machining from
the macro to the micro and he's about to give me a tour
so Tim this is this is your domain and this is all this practical special
effects yes absolutely yet Oh like hand props gags rigs talk to me about what
happens here well this is kind of the genesis of the practical effects that we
do that eventually end up on camera down on set so you know we'll break down a
script and find out exactly what physical effects we need to do and then
I'll come down here and you know hang out with the guys and start designing
stuff and and start building we do some tests videotape tests make sure the
directors happy with everything and then take it all to set and and everything
change and everything changes yeah the batteries die and yeah how much time do
you get to prep an episode are you guys always behind the 8-ball or you kind of
sometimes have times at the beginning of the season the beginning of the season
you know we've usually got about two months startup time to really get stuff
going but but as the blocks kind of progress and it's down to like usually
about two weeks from the beginning of the design to actually shooting it
what's tight tight and yeah how much when you like try to problem solve
problem solve something in advance how much does the solution come out like
onset by the seat of your pants
sometimes yeah depending on the complexity of the gag a lot of times you
know they change camera direction or the director just has an idea on the moment
and they have to kind of go with the flow but most of it is
as planned out as we can and and shown to them ahead of time so they they know
exactly what's gonna happen there's no surprises so yeah so mostly it's it's
it's finalized here yeah there's always that that last minute exactly exactly in
in my experience a special effects shop like this it has to handle a little bit
of everything so what kind of processes are like the regular things you work
with here it's everything from plumbing to electronics to you know to
metalworking and then pyrotechnics you know then we
do rain and snow is kind of gets all the elements plus it's you know it's all the
elements that we that we imagine right all right so it's everything from A to Z
really will you give me a tour around what you guys are working on yeah this
is the this is my shop is acne effects mmm
we're one of the biggest effects shops I think in Toronto I like to say that
whether or not it's true but we're very proud of the space we have here it's I
walked in and smelled burnt steel and felt right at home yeah so this clearly
your machine shop I love the machine tools I love the
precision this is a funny thing about your job right like sometimes it's super
high precision and sometimes it's like big dumb things very dumb hole right
exactly yeah yeah the lathe over here was one of the first oh man it was one
of the first pieces of equipment that we got when we opened 20 years ago and we
got it from machinist that was next door to us who had sadly passed away um and
his wife offered these items to us and this actually came out of a war a
munitions factory in Texas and it's it built planes in World War 2 oh yeah I
want to see some of the stuff you guys are working on right now some of the
rigs you guys there's something for the no that's actually we took that apart
this was a we're working on these things we got a bunch of little chairs real
chairs as we had to make a kind of a mechanized and an autonomous robot for
the season and so we figured we'd start with these because they can handle a lot
of weight right they got great torque they're electric motors so they're
really quiet this was kind of the how we started tested the theory put a lot of
weight on it and then we we built it into a different machine
my very first robot was using the chassis of an electric wheelchair it's
just a very great starting place Jana I abused dozens of the behaviors yeah
they're really robust and then we just got some servo controls to make it go so
here we are in the metal shop metal fabricating shop guys are working on a
couple of different projects right now you're sealing the ends of the steel how
come well we're reproducing a table in a room that's gonna collapse so instead of
using the actual you know the set piece so you've got a table that already
exists yeah and you've got to make a breakaway one exactly yeah so the top of
it will be tempered glass with a steel base basically will hold it all together
with a cable yeah and a quick release you know quick release goes table of
some pyro yeah we've got some pyrotechnics inside the tempered glass
that'll blow the glass and the whole thing will fall to the ground you use
pyro to detonate the glass yeah yeah I mean I know that like sometimes it's a
little sharp point knockers yeah yeah is that what they called it yes yeah we
kind of got away from those what I like to do is when we have the glass made
yeah I have it made with a half-inch hole kind of somewhere on the you know
on the table right and then into that half-inch hole we put a little piece of
pyrotechnics and back it up with a little lead because you can hit a piece
of tempered glass with a hammer and yes you know it's it's they're very strong
when you hit them laughs early but the edge of the glass is really weak right
and okay so you put pyro in a hole and it's sending it to ever exactly yeah so
all that energy when detonated goes against the side of the glass and
that'll pretty much guarantee that the glass is gonna pop and it all falls down
how many how many how many iterations are you preparing for we generally do
two takes of the really big stuff yeah I know it's a TV so we don't have a lot of
time right or money so yeah generally two is what we go for um I'm also kind
of grooving on on these guys I that's yeah ice yeah they're really
solid just for for welding setups and stuff I have these little red arrows but
I'm kind of tired of them in there too weak this is gorgeous
oh yeah what it does is there's a magnet inside the handle here and when you when
you turn that it pushes the magnet down to the table and like that's cool it's
it's very solid hold on I'm taking a picture I'm gonna
have to get some of these this is one of my favorite parts about tours like this
is learning about tools I don't know about and then going and getting those -
yeah are these like some type of pyro rig well these are the legs oh these are
the legs of the table table and that's the centerpiece yeah nope they'll kind
of be held up like this with the cross braces and then the glass on top of that
and and held together with just a cable and then a quick-release yeah that will
pop with pyrotechnics the same time the glass goes so it all crumbles away at
once you know I know that like people probably ask you all the time like
what's it like to make stuff and then just blow it up but I'm curious about
the fact that like somebody designed this table yeah and they put like all of
this idea and engineering into it and then you're walking through their exact
footsteps for the opposite reason to break it back down that's great it's at
the end of the day it feels good when when when stuff actually falls apart and
blows up in the right way in the right way yeah that's fabulous it's very
satisfying what is this beautiful thing so in the
show we do a lot of zero-g we float a lot of people you were on my
teeter-totter I think at the end of season two I was you're kind of floating
in space there yeah so one of the one of the gags coming up is when people get
shot in zero-g and they're mag booted they kind of float around like this oh
because you can't fall down you just pay so someone comes up to get them out of
the room they kick their feet out so it releases the mag boost and they've got
to go like you know get them up all horizontal and they're gonna carry them
away so we're building a rig for the end of the teeter-totter where the actor can
be on that rig and the the other actor can kick his feet out and he can slowly
put them back to flat and then the teeter totter will pull him out the door
and they can float him out the door that's super gruesome yeah
yeah so there is you know he's just been show the actor will be kind of strapped
to this thing it'll be strapped this is on for this is upside down right now
he's working on the slider yeah but basically he'll be able to slowly tilt
them up and so the machine takes all the weight yeah so the actor it's like it's
nothing it's it's totally zero-g and then will this thing get painted green
yes yes sadly this beautiful aluminum will become green screen so after doing
I mean you've probably done dozens and dozens of dozens of different zero-g
Briggs yes so now do you watch a movie like ad astra being like hmm what did
they do for that shot yeah yeah I have to buy the DVDs watch the behind the
scenes to see how they do I go yeah we have a rig like that yeah so it's
exciting to see how how other people do it right and you know sometimes I can
you know learn from that from that rig that they made maybe incorporate it into
one of the ones that so that we use for the show like I love those iterations of
institutional knowledge yes it's really clean yeah so here's what we called the
green room for some reason at our old shop the floor was painted green okay it
was the prop building area the name just kind of stuck so this is prop building
area it's a little cleaner a little quieter been out in the other machine
room you know and it's all painting and mold-making and any special props that
we build and breakaway stuff right now we're working on another thing that we
do on this show a lot is when when when Bobby's in her power armor right a lot
of strength and if she's climbing around the outside of ship if she's she
sometimes tears open panels oh right right so what we'll use what we have
here is the zero temple luminol oh yeah it's really flexible but it keeps its
shape mm-hmm so we'll build like a wall panel out of this stuff yeah and then
just have a bit of foam on the inside of it so it looks like a steel panel you've
actually got a panel over here I can show you oh wow that's a fully dressed
piece yeah and it's got some rigid foam in the inside yeah so the inside is foam
what this was actually it was a one the characters had her special implants
and she activated which makes her really strong
yes she threw a guy into these doors yeah and he act and they stunt guy yeah
we went flying into the doors and they hit the doors and wow it really buckles
in Wow but it looks like metal yeah it totally
does yeah but you can dress it up to be to be a you know weak enough to someone
to smash into it I was sued you must make dozens of these
four we do make a little yes we have rolls rolls and rolls of that says zero
temp stuff it works really well I will tell you that this is the very self same
stuff that when I was 15 my dad and I made me a suit of armor that's all pop
riveted together and I I took it to class and passed out of heat exhaustion
no doubt armored bites are real saying yeah I mean no but they happen on
Bobby's armor too yeah well it's not bad the suit is made
it looks rigid right it's polyuria it's actually a polyuria it's although it's
quite flexible I am is this some like some art set oh this is this is
something we're not allowed to reveal no actually this was the pro to molecule
creature um when it was I think it was the end of season 2 yeah or on in season
two it was digging into the floor yeah try and get it at that sample so what we
did is we had our blue screen actor right he had the blue screen suit on
with these and we actually had floor panels made of this product so he was
actually digging into in tearing big gouges oh wow in the metal but you know
it was just really thin aluminum so he was actually using these scraping away
the panel digging it up and then bending the panel up out of the way so he get
down into the house has been really fun it was fine it was a lot of fun to build
and you know again I look great on camera
and once the CG guys came in and put the proto maliki their creature overtop of
it right and it looked it really sold it oh that's great this must have been a
fun day when you were first started like he was yeah
reading I was reading the script when I was first breaking it down I was like
you know how are we gonna make this metal appear
to tear away yeah and it's all a CG creature and then you know you lay in
bed at night trying to sleep and you can the gears are working I'm like we'll
just you know get our zero temple in them and make some Klaus applause yeah
yeah this actually could be quite useful yeah and dangerous very dangerous these
are from the show rain rain rain okay oh great yeah I was set in the 16th century
or whatever I appreciate that you've got ready access to torches just right on
the shop yeah yeah we've got cases of them actually the food of storage with
cases of these things so you know it's it's either hanging on the wall and the
dungeon or whatever but you know having any sort of fuel in there is a it
doesn't last very long and be you know it's it's your burning of terracing or
whatever so these easily come apart and inside this is a reservoir oh we can
fill with propane so did you make your own propane tanks yeah we had a builder
here Sam économique who's sadly no longer with us is one of our most
brilliant builders and he hand-built all of these Wow just there they're not only
incredible pross but they're works of art yeah and I can also see he's got
safety valves in here and everything so it's yeah certifiable one Wow yes oh yes
fill up with propane and then you can see there's the little little ya know
Athenian torch and this is that's amazing yeah it's the same thing you buy
at the hardware store except it looks like and it'll burn all day long and not
leaves it's about 40 minutes right yeah I mean not a little they can dial the
size up there I love that and he hand hammered all this all this work here and
all the the brass work and and everything are you so are you excited
about season five oh yeah I know you've just started about a month to go yeah
how's it how's it going it's going really well we've got a lot
of really big physical gags coming up yeah visual effects on this show
brilliant but they love physical effects they love harm right yeah yeah they love
a lot of in-camera stuff they can build upon all right you know
they do lots of rig removal for me which is great in the old days there was no
rig removal and he had to do it all you know it was all hidden but they take
what I've done and make it just so much better yeah yeah so we're really excited
about a lot of stuff that's coming up in the next season Tim thank you so much
for a tour of your beautiful shop thank you very much appreciated