um what is one islam brandon green what is one ilm project that you didn't get the
opportunity to work on but wish you had so many so many um the big spaceships always thrill me
the mothership from e.t is one of the most beautiful models you have ever seen the mothership
from close encounters which i've also seen up close those two are just they're jaw-droppingly
gorgeous uh i would have loved to have worked on one of those but truthfully the the biggest answer
the millennium falcon i wish i'd worked on the millennium falcon steve donsky wants to know how
he got hired to work at ilm i think i told you the twins say hi my twins say hi back um paxton sparks
was ilm your dream job or did you feel like it was a stepping stone if it was your dream job
what made it that um yeah no it totally was my dream job it was actually i think the joke i made
my friends my friends after i'd been working at ilm for a few weeks my friends noticed that
whenever i was talking about work i would say tomorrow i get to and then i would tell them
what i would be working on i get to instead of i have to i get to and at a certain point someone
was like man it's like your wish fulfillment card has all the items crossed off on it and that was
exactly how it felt and i think that that's the shift that happened that i was just talking about
was it it was my dream job for a long time and then there was a point in which i was like maybe
i'd like a little bit more maybe there's a little bit more to be gotten out of a job than this
yeah and that's that process of thinking so no it was my dream job when i got it and it
ended up being a stepping stone but everything's a stepping stone nothing is the end and of itself
also someone else asked here if ilm was a a a salary gig or freelance all freelance there are
if there's a thousand people working on a film like five of them are salaried
it's it's almost all freelance i'm exaggerating the numbers but
it is almost all freelance work so it's like um you know my employment history has like probably
300 items on it because of all the all the freelance um were there any makers that
significantly influenced your design approaches once at ilm how did your design approaches change
it's hard for me to say how they changed but every maker i encountered changed my design approach
everyone um because you got to i mean you know we're in each other's pockets for
eight or nine sometimes 10 or 12 hours a day for months on end and really getting
to witness something like ira keeler using a two inch craftsman plane to make a perfect citroen
out of ash watching that happen is astounding but more than that it inculcates me with some of the
understanding about how such a thing happens so that becomes an arrow in your quiver um watching
how fast john goodson can make something out of styrene is still like a magic show uh
the the watching dave fogler and mark siegel sculpt rocks with the opinel knife
using the blade's own topography to achieve what felt like natural forms um that's in fact what
the whole process was at ilm was constantly being inculcated with new ideas and new ways
of executing things and having that i also like to imagine that that's kind of what it's like to work
at any place where everyone is really sharing the load and sharing the work because the same is true
here it tested i mean i think that we all kind of watch each other go and do what we're doing
and we work with each other but also it's delightful watching what someone else will do
left to their own devices i i you've witnessed it in the last year watching how much the edits
on our videos have changed because the shooting style has changed um i like to imagine that like
the right kind of workplace to me is one in which everyone feels a real sense of ownership over the
final product and a real sense of contribution towards that final product that's that's always
engendered my favorite places to work okay we have time for one more is there one in the no okay um
we have time for one more let's see i answered that one that one um
tommy stevens wants to know uh would 3d printing have been a game changer for ilm model making had
to become prevalent while you were there um yes yeah 3d printing has been a game changer
for every practical prop manufacturer there is uh completely it has become a really important
process doug harlocker when i interviewed him on the set of alien covenant said that they had four
or six printers just going 24 hours a day to keep up the volume of what they needed to execute um
a place like ilm was or sorry ilm specifically but no a place like island because whether workshop is
exactly the same way is very process agnostic um you will have people who like the way that they do
things and do things in a preferred way but when a better way comes along everyone jumps on board
when a better faster easier way to execute something shows up everyone wants a piece
of that so there's no preciousness of like no we don't do 3d printing which is why i think some of
the gatekeeping on 3d printing and cosplay which i hope is now a thing of the past is so ridiculous
um because it's not about the process it's about the execution it's about that final product
um so i believe ilm was an early adopter of the laser cutter which is probably one of the
earliest forms of rapid prototyping process um and the laser cutter is a tool i didn't even know
existed until i worked at ilm and learning to use the laser cutter uh from fon davis and from
don bees and from the other folks there changed my life it changed my life it took seriously so
yeah it would have been a game changer uh and each new process cnc routing uh cnc plasma cutting
all of those would have been uh brought in uh as it was we use laser cutting all the time
we also use cnc all the time brian dewey uh in particular was like he was like a
the composer he could make those machines sing and do all sorts of stuff um dewey was one of those
engineers who like everything he built worked the first time which is super annoying to witness
it's just absolutely exhausting nothing i build ever works the first time um
i now want to get on a zoom with all my old buddies at ilm because it was an incredible
and incredible group and i i've mentioned a lot of my model making friends i i apologize uh uh uh uh
lauren vogt melanie wayne waylas peggy raster lauren hillman the painters the painters i
learned so much from them over the years that i worked there i spent so many days in that spray
booth with a mask on chatting shooting [ __ ] talking gossip uh it was a magical time and i
am really grateful uh at the very end of my tenure at ilm the last gig i worked on was terminator 3
under peter rubin the art director's uh careful eye i fond davis and i built uh the
particle accelerator you see through the window uh uh in in t3 and i'm really proud of that set
and i still love all of those folks i i saw a lot of them uh i've seen a fair few of them on zoom
and uh in in some uh socially distance gatherings during covet and it's been lovely uh i will
forever be grateful for my tenure at ilm and super grateful for your awesome questions about it thank
you for letting me walk down memory lane um i think this is me signing off happy holidays happy
christmas i wish nothing but health productivity and satisfaction to you and everyone you love
uh in this new coming year and i can't wait to get back to hugging people that i love
stay safe stay frosty and i'll see you guys next time bye