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[00:00:00] Amy Beth Christenson: -this has got to be an urban legend, but somebody at one point said you take two animals that aren't related and add a potato.

[00:00:10] Intro

[00:00:10] Rob Bredow: Welcome to the Lighter Darker podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. Happy New Year! This is our first episode of 2025. This is episode 10. 10 of 20 episodes planned for our first season, and we release every other Tuesday. And today. I'm excited to introduce our guest co-host, Amy Beth Christenson. Amy has been drawing ships and creatures since she was a kid. She cites seeing Star Wars, of course, as inspiring her on her creative journey. and then she joined Lucasfilm, actually specifically LucasArts in the year 2000. So, well now, 25 years ago or so. She worked on eight Star Wars game titles during her first 11 years with LucasArts including Star Wars, The Force Unleashed video games, in case you're a fan of any of these. Uh, she moved over to Lucasfilm Animation. where she worked on several shows, including some Emmy award winning series, Star Wars The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and she even served as art director for Star Wars Resistance. And then she joined the ILM Art Department, where Amy was the lead character designer on Transformers One very recently, and was a concept artist on Wicked. So welcome to the show, Amy.

[00:01:27] Amy Beth Christenson: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You have no idea. Well, you'll, you'll find out. I'm just gonna talk lot. that.

[00:01:32] Rob Bredow: I love it. And as usual, my co host Todd Vaziri

[00:01:36] Todd Vaziri: Hi, I'm Todd Vaziri, Compositing Supervisor and Artist at ILM.

[00:01:40] Rob Bredow: and our producer, Jenny Ely.

[00:01:42] Jenny Ely: Hello, Jenny Ely, production manager at ILM.

[00:01:46] Rob Bredow: And I'm Rob Bredow. I'm the chief creative officer at ILM and SVP of creative innovation at Lucasfilm. And we all get to work together in the visual effects, animation, and immersive entertainment spaces. we're going to kick off today's show with, like usual, some questions from the mailbag. Thank you for sending these in. Jenny, you want to get us started?

[00:02:06] Questions from the Mailbag

[00:02:06] Jenny Ely: Yes, our first question is from Ernie Soffronoff. Do you miss out by making the movies? You get to have a hand in creating iconic pieces of art, but do you think about how you don't get the same thrill as those of us in the audience get?

[00:02:21] Rob Bredow: Oh man. What do you think guys?

[00:02:24] Todd Vaziri: yeah, I mean, I think a little, some of this may be inspired by, a term that I coined a while back, the full media blackout, it's for a piece of media, a piece of art, movie, TV show, whatever, that you as a viewer. you know you're gonna watch it and to do your best to go in with as fresh eyes as possible.

So avoid watching trailers, avoid watching commercials, avoid reading any articles. Try not to absorb everything you can about this movie before you go see it. Um, usually it is either like a franchise or based on something that you love or a filmmaker or an actor that you really love which sparks it and it's like, you know, you're going to watch it.

And for me, I tried this for the first time for the Phantom Menace before I was at ILM, that was the first time I ever attempted it. And it was very difficult because I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a little bit of a PR push for that movie.

[00:03:15] Rob Bredow: Did that mean you had to avoid Pepsi for like six months? Like how far did you take this Todd?

[00:03:20] Todd Vaziri: Basically, any poster, any lit up screen, it was unavoidable. The local news, anything.

[00:03:27] Jenny Ely: No Taco Bell, Pizza Hut where they had the cups.

[00:03:30] Todd Vaziri: We're gonna name all the product tie-ins now. but when I, when I actually sat down, and I saw, you know, Darth Maul for the first time or his double bladed light saber for the first. It made a big difference and I've been implementing it from time to time over the years. I think this question touches on that, like as a creator as an author, a co author of these movies. Is there a sense of loss that we can't experience? And I would say absolutely positively not because there are so many great movies out there and filmmakers and chances to be delighted and amazed and touched that the little tiny corner that we get to help create for these types of movies and shows and things like that is a small price to pay. to not go into, say, Skeleton Crew with fresh eyes. I'm one of the creators of Skeleton Crew. I mean, that is a joy and a privilege and a unique chance as a creative person to contribute. Just a tiny little, you know, Skeleton Crew accounts for a small part of the artistic TV landscape. And I can enjoy almost everything else. With fresh eyes, but for something like this, it is a privilege to be a part of the creative process. Um, I don't miss that at all because I get to experience it through so many other great movies and shows throughout the year.

[00:04:56] Rob Bredow: Amy, did you want to jump in there?

[00:04:58] Amy Beth Christenson: Well, I'm if you guys can't tell or don't know already. I'm a huge nerd about everything on the face of the planet. So getting to work on these IPs that I've been obsessed with since a child. It doesn't ever wear off. So I'm working on it and I'm excited and like really specifically I think Transformers One I would see some reels for the first time that I hadn't seen or a storyboard and I would watch it. At my desk, I would stand up and I would like fist punch, like high five the air because I was like, that was so cool. But, you know, you do get to see the iterations of it and you get to see it develop and it never gets old. And then you're never really even seeing the final product until you're sitting in the theater with everybody else.

Like you see pieces of it, you see bits of it, you know, you just kind of see little, little chunks of it evolve, but you're really, watching it for the first time in the theater with everybody else. and so I don't think there's any diminishing returns at all. Like having worked on something for a long time and then seeing it at the end.

[00:05:54] Rob Bredow: It almost makes it better. I mean, I remember I had just landed at ILM, got invited into a screening room by Roger Guyette and Janet Lewin to take a look at some of the trailer pieces that were coming together for the first trailer for episode seven, that amazing Falcon shot where the Falcon goes upside down and almost scrapes the top the ship on the sand. And they were just looking at these shots, seeing if there were any other creative ideas that could be implemented, just getting brainstormed, not just for me. Of course, there were like 25 of the best supervisors andartists in the world in this room. And I, I was just like pinching myself that I was even there, but I hadn't seen the whole trailer, right?

I'd seen different pieces and different shots. And I remember we had a company meeting two or three weeks later. And, they showed the “Chewy we're home” moment, and like the premier theater, which is this beautiful theater we have here in our San Francisco office, which is packed with people standing in the back after the trailer played, you look around and like, everyone's kind of like wiping the tear out of the corner of their eyes.

And these are the people who made every piece of that trailer, but seeing it all together with a beautiful sound in a community of people on a big screen, there's nothing like it. So I still get chills.

[00:07:00] Amy Beth Christenson: With the Chewy We're Home, I wasn't even, it wasn't even just a little tear. I was like ugly crying in the theater when they showed that. I was sobbing out loud. It was so good.

[00:07:10] Rob Bredow: I was like, I cannot believe I get to work here with these people. It was such a good moment. Yeah, it's been fun. Well, Jenny, how about the question from Ian?

[00:07:20] Jenny Ely: Yeah, that was a really good one. I enjoyed that conversation. Okay, from Ian Thompson, I'd love to hear a discussion about the evolution of alien and creature design over the years.

[00:07:31] Rob Bredow: This is a quick topic. Amy, do you want to give your dissertation?

[00:07:37] Amy Beth Christenson: This is like 50 more podcasts.

[00:07:39] Rob Bredow: That's right.

[00:07:41] Amy Beth Christenson: on the concept art side. It's just really fun that we talk about it as an art department on the whole. And it's really fun to hear everybody's take. Cause you've got, you know, I'm in the room with like Aaron McBride and like, you know, Christian Alzmann will come by and we talk about these things, like how we've approached it over time.

And I don't even know if this might even be an urban legend, but I do think it's really true and I like to go back to, original IP, like the original version of something. So with Star Wars, I always go back to, you know, episodes four, five and six and what the production design notes were for that and everything like that. So it's really, it's, this has got to be an urban legend, but somebody at one point said to get a Star Wars alien, you take two animals that aren't related and add a potato. And whether or not that's true, it's just a really good way of approaching it from a design standpoint, because you're not just merging two things.

You kind of have to get it. It's not just marrying two animals together. It's like, it kind of needs that extra element, whether or not it's a potato. I don't know, but you know, it makes for a good headspace when you're designing them. And so I always kind of think about that story and think about, okay, what's the extra little bit I'm going to put on this, maybe not a potato, but I'm going to put a little bit of extra something on it just to make it accurate and true to Star Wars.

[00:08:56] Todd Vaziri: potatoes.

[00:08:56] Amy Beth Christenson: Um, that doesn't really account for evolution, but so,

[00:08:59] Rob Bredow: Well, I mean, as you think, if you've worked in games and animation and then, and now features, and we've worked across really broad parts of the industry, has it over your career, has it really changed in terms of the freedom you have? Because certainly the first time Pirates was available, the first time we were able to do things, that really changed. the way a character appeared on screen in a live action film, it freed up filmmakers to come up with new ideas. Have you noticed any significant changes in your designs over the last 20, 25 years?

[00:09:29] Amy Beth Christenson: I think it is absolutely a lot more open. there's a lot more freedom. Like you said, in particular for me, I am kind of a stickler for sticking to old rules. So I always start there. and I think that probably like 80-90 percent of my process is like, I'm going to pretend that they had to make this and put this into the 1977 version. And it had to be made that way as well. Because I feel like that's kind of giving it the more old fashioned fan perspective. You know, to a design, but then I'll take that and then I'll kind of evolve it. I know other people feel differently about it. I think that there's no wrong answer at all. but that's just sort of like, from my perspective, just being kind of like an old fan, kind of old school, just really want to like stick to getting things to feel like it did when I was a kid to me, um, it's kind of important when I'm designing things, so.

[00:10:18] Todd Vaziri: I mean, like, no matter what the, the tools that are used to create creatures, there are certain guidelines and rules that we always try to follow, like the, the classic silhouette, like, you know, it, you must be able to determine what the, a little bit about the character through the silhouette and be able to identify the character as opposed to other characters or other, uh, alien creatures. I'm obsessed with that era. pre 1990. Where, a creature, let's say a humanoid type creature would either have to be, accomplished with a person in a suit or a puppet or some stop motion, something like that, then and we get into the nineties when there's these important movies where there was a hybrid approach for certain close ups.

We're absolutely going to build. an animatronic that actors can touch and do close ups in, but then the wide shots are gonna be digital. So there had to be that hybrid approach and then beyond, say, 2000 or late nineties when it's like, oh, we can go all digital. We can do a person in a suit with prosthetic makeup, but then we can create negative spaces and computer graphics. I mean, I find that evolution fascinating because it does give. a lot more freedom to the creature designers to create things that were, like, literally impossible in the pre digital days, and yet still rely on, filming on set with a person in a suit, knowing there's going to be a hybrid, computer graphics approach, where you can take away parts of the body, or go all CG, but have it be completely performance based on the day with the motion picture camera. That's what I love that there's now so many more possibilities, with all the advanced tools and, and techniques that we have.

[00:11:59] Rob Bredow: Yeah, I love that too. That was one of the design goals when we were doing L3-37, like the directors wanted, Chris and Phil wanted to make it super clear to the audience that that couldn't be a person, but then it was going to be performed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the suit every day she was on set, improvising.

It wasn't just her voice, it was her motions and everything about her character that she brought to life. And to get somebody like that performing that character, I mean, it just completely elevates the character in the film. But of course, you see it with your eyes, you're like, well, there's no way a person can be in there, because look, the proportions are just impossible. But that was sort of the magic trick that I love that we got to lean into.

[00:12:34] Todd Vaziri: Yeah, great example

[00:12:35] Rob Bredow: Jenny, how about our last question?

[00:12:37] Jenny Ely: Okay, our last question is from Stephen Cope. How common are painted mattes in filming these days? With blue screens and stagecraft, does anyone make mattes anymore or has that just gone away?

[00:12:50] Todd Vaziri: absolutely. Positively not. It has not gone away. What we're talking about are basically rotoscoped or painted foreground mattes. When a character, an actor is in front of, is it going to be placed in front of? Some computer graphics, some matte painting elements behind them, they need to be traced frame by frame. if there's no blue screen back there, they need to be rotoscoped. And so that's frame by frame, rotoscoping. Sometimes with paintwork, but usually with splines. so that's one way that we still use painted mattes. The rotoscope matters all the time. Even when performers are against a blue screen, sometimes it's super reliable to get rotoscope mattes for those blue screens. It seems redundant, but, if the blue screen is not evenly lit, if the actor has too much blue spill on them, or any combination of anything that could be happening, that You know, for hard surfaces, get that roto spline, get that roto matte. It's going to make the shot better. In the StageCraft point of view, we're still layering things between the foreground and the background. Even if there's a beautiful Stagecraft, animated background back there. that still is required, for creatures or fixes or changes or, twinning we were still rotoscoping all the time.

[00:14:12] Rob Bredow: And I also wonder if Stephen is thinking about like painted backings that sometimes were used in films and those are actually still leveraged today. And in fact, the tech for printing, painted backings that are way more flexible to light than ever before. It just gets better every year. So for example, on the acolyte, which we just shot, what was that 18 months ago? when you are on Corellia and you're looking at all those windows, those are all painted backings. Uh, they were designed digitally and then output. Huge on giant printed sheets that are seamlessly stitched together and installed very carefully and stretched across these bars on the set As far away from the set as we can get so it has the illusion of having some distance there There are some limitations Of course You can't animate anything on there The perspective cues have to be hidden in such a way that it feels plausible from the camera Otherwise, we'll fix those in post if they're not if you notice in the Acolyte when you're on Corellia In the background, there's ships flying on there.

Those were all added in post and some subtle color corrections were done in post. But in general, what you see there is what we saw on the day and what the actors saw, and that was not led screens. That was just a backing that was lit. And then the cool thing is on that particular painting, there was a day version and a night version.

So, by providing a matte, an extra pass to the printers, they were actually able to determine the transparency. of the printing process. So if you backlight it, you can light up all the windows on that painting. So you can kind of get two versions of the painting just by lighting it differently on the set and how much backlight you poured through the actual painting.

So, um, we did some of this on Willow. We've done this on a lot of different films. It's still a technique that was invented more than a hundred years ago. Shooting into a painting to take you to a wild location. and it still works very well today, as long as you understand the constraints and design within those.

[00:15:56] Amy Beth Christenson: A lot of my job on Wicked specifically was they had practically built and filmed the front porch of the mansion and the front yard, but they needed to extend it. So part of my job was to do a concept and to do paintings of the rest of the house and the rest of the yard that could be used on all the different shots.

So that's sort of like another take on that. Another version of that old school doing the big paintings on the shower doors.

[00:16:23] Rob Bredow: Yes.

[00:16:24] Amy Beth Christenson: backgrounds, yeah.

[00:16:25] Rob Bredow: That's great.

[00:16:26] Jenny Ely: I was gonna ask, I, I thought it was gonna be one of those things that I think is real, and then Todd bursts my bubble and tells me it's a myth about the shower doors, because I've always heard that the matte paintings that were done on glass were shower doors, because it was the easiest way to get glass, and that a lot of them didn't survive, because they always just painted over them for the next movie. But you answered it, because you said shower doors in your statement, so it's not a myth. So Todd didn't burst my bubble today.

[00:16:49] Amy Beth Christenson: Well, Nak said they were shower doors, so I'm going to get mad at somebody if it's not true, because I'd heard that as well. And then we have a bunch of them hanging out in the art department now. And I mean, they definitely look like shower doors. I heard it was, the cheaper and easier thing to get is just to buy shower doors at like Home Depot instead of buying these big things of glass.

[00:17:07] Rob Bredow: Big, expensive sheets of glass, and then having to frame them with something. Because they already came framed with an aluminum frame. So it was just like perfect to grab a shower door. But then can you believe it? That for as much as we would pay for those shower doors today. Can you believe how many of those were just washed off with paint thinner so they could use them again, like amazing matte paintings.

And we're fortunate to have a bunch of them. I mean, one of my favorites is a Jurassic Park matte painting on glass. That is the moment after the car crash, when the kids wake up in the morning and the Brontosaurus comes over and sneezes on them. That painting for a while, that was in my office.

That painting was up on the wall. And I remember the first time I got to ILM and saw that painting, I'm like. It has nothing, it's just trees and a sunrise. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's Jurassic Park, isn't it? Isn't that that scene in Jurassic Park? And I walked over to the edge and saw that it was Jurassic Park.

I'm like, I know what scene that is, but it's just so evocative. That paint and it's beautiful. And it's loose, which is incredible to look at those old glass paintings and see the artistry that went into them.

[00:18:06] Todd Vaziri: I think the shower door thing is a little bit of a myth and it's not literally shower doors. Now I will be happy to follow up with, uh, like Craig Barron or something. 'cause I think they refer to them as shower doors, but I don't think they are. So, I just, I will follow up on this.

[00:18:23] Jenny Ely: Amy, this is what Todd does. I

I think something exciting is real and then Todd tells me that it's not.

[00:18:28] Amy Beth Christenson: don't tell me, don't tell me, if they're not shower doors.

[00:18:31] Jenny Ely: We don't want to know.

[00:18:32] Todd Vaziri: We can refer to them as shower

[00:18:33] Amy Beth Christenson: lie. I want to live my lie a little bit more.

[00:18:35] Rob Bredow: We're going to perpetuate the myth whether they are or not. In the meantime, Todd will do a little research. We'll answer on a future podcast. Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, to a future episode of Lighter Darker, where Todd will ruin Amy's childhood.

[00:18:47] Todd Vaziri: Again, yet again.

[00:18:48] Jenny Ely: We're gonna call it, we're gonna call it Shower Door Gate

[00:18:51] Amy Beth Christenson: This is great.

[00:18:51] Rejection Letters

[00:18:51] Rob Bredow: Well, that takes us to our nice uplifting feature we've planned for today called Rejection Letters. And Amy has kindly volunteered just to share a little bit about her getting started story and some of the setbacks that anyone has as they're getting started in any new industry. So, Amy, did you, uh, think of something that could help serve as a story that could inform somebody getting started in the industry that they might be able to relate to your own experiences?

[00:19:14] Amy Beth Christenson: I didn't really have a hard time coming up with this because I think it was, it was, it was a big deal for me. When I was in college, I wanted to give a little bit of background and feel free to edit this if you want, but, just a little bit of background about myself. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, it's a really tiny farm town. You know, I did take art class in high school, but it wasn't that advanced. And being obsessed with Star Wars and collecting everything about Star Wars, uh, that's actually what got me into art, was we had a Starlog magazine, and it went into what Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnson do, and I was like, oh, I didn't even realize you could do that for a job. That's gonna be my job. That's the only thing I want to do now. I just want to be Ralph McQuarrie. so, you know, and my parents, you know, were like, oh, art school. Okay. You know, that was a bit of a fight. So I went to art school and then I showed up and everybody else had taken advanced classes, you know, in high school and had, you know, mentorships and had gone to art camps.

They were way better than I was. Uh, so I had a lot of digging up to do. so, but I really buckled down and I tried really hard and about three years in, I was, you know, I was getting there. I was kind of one of the better artists in my class. And we had a really great relationship with everybody in my class. We all kind of had friendly competitions. We really pushed each other. It was really great. All this led up to the fact that I'd had to work really hard in art school to be recognized, in my skill set and everything. But then when it came time for companies to come recruit, you know, around my senior year or last year, by that time I transferred to Ringling College of Art and Design, which had a really great recruiting department. Every major company went there to recruit. I was turning in my portfolio and I knew I was like up there, but I wasn't getting any interviews. None of the companies, they post up the list of people that the companies wanted to interview. I was never on any list and I was kind of freaking out. I was like, okay, um, end of the year. I've only got a couple months before I'm just looking, staring down the barrel, moving back to Kansas, working on the farm. I've got to do something. I got to figure out what's wrong, or what I can change about myself, my portfolio. And I was, I kind of sat down and I was looking around and I was like, well, in the 1990s, everybody wanted to be a traditional 2d Disney animator. We all had the same portfolio. It was who could, who had the best gestures and life drawing and life painting. and it was very traditional like that. Nobody had anything that was sort of, you know, stand out. It was more like who could draw the best. And I was like, well, okay, I need to get noticed A, because I'm not standing out. so I did little things to my portfolio to start to be different. So like I'd have my gesture pages and in between those, I did these silly little drawings of like the grim Reaper doing ridiculous things. So you get this, all these gesture drawings, but then every once in a while, you get these like, you know, little characters doing something really stupid.

[00:22:02] Rob Bredow: What's an example of a grim reaper, uh, snuck into your portfolio

[00:22:06] Amy Beth Christenson: doing hopscotch and trying to hold up his, you know, robes or something.

Um,

[00:22:13] Rob Bredow: I can see

[00:22:14] Amy Beth Christenson: then,

[00:22:14] Rob Bredow: getting noticed.

[00:22:16] Amy Beth Christenson: And then, you know, little things like that, like, okay, that's like the best life painting. I have, it's really good. Uh, oh, but Hey, like there's a window in the background. Why don't I just paint in Godzilla in the background or something? You know what I mean? Like it's like, I try to do these little things. and I had a storyboarding class. So I did some storyboards of like Indiana Jones breaking into like this, Nazi infested, palace, you know, ruins castle. And then at the end, it's a PEZ dispenser. That he's getting like little dumb things like they're like kind of like little moments, but like it worked and I even went the extra mile of for my resume instead of having a resume actually made a little action figure of myself and I printed out, uh, it was blister packaged and I printed out the background and like the, old like transformers and G. I. Joe's in the eighties had stats on the back. So I had stats like, how bad do I want this job? Like a hundred percent, that type of thing. You know, I did what I could. So it was a little bit of that. And then also there were a lot of 3D companies coming up like Pixar, a lot of video game companies.

I had taken a 3D class and I was like, well, all right, I want to be a 2D artist, but they're 3D companies. I'm just gonna put in a little bit of 3d. I'm going to spend my weekend, building something in 3d, putting it as a page, but after that, I got interviews every single time. Like for the rest of the year, every company interviewed me. Most of them gave me a job offer. and it really worked out. And the thing that worked out the best was, LucasArts came. And, you know, I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, a huge video game player, like ridiculous. and they're like, they gave me the job offer, but they gave me the job offer for an entry level 3d modeler saying, we know we want you to be a concept artist. We don't have any openings for concept artists, but we'll try to get you into concept art as much as possible, but we could really use you now for this. And I was like, heck yes. No questions asked like Star Wars, video games, dreams come true. So that's kind of how I got my foot in the door, for that.

but I think it's really relevant today, actually, as far as like, you know, now we have like the internet, which we didn't have, but it's totally using computers, but you know, you've got, art station and you've got all these really great artists and stuff like that. So I think it is sort of a little bit like showing yourself, like showing your personality is really important and like standing out. That way is like, you know, find a way to stand out, but find a way to stand out in a way that speaks to your personality and who you are. because I think people could see my like dorky sense of humor and then like, kind of like, Oh, she seems like she might be kind of fun to talk to. I don't know if that was the case or not, but I think whatever I did worked and I'm really thankful for that.

[00:24:51] Rob Bredow: That's amazing. So right out

[00:24:52] Todd Vaziri:

[00:24:52] Rob Bredow: of Ringling was straight to LucasArts for you. And you started as a modeler, even though you wanted to do concept art, they knew you had the portfolio for it. They just didn't have the position, but you were just fixated on, okay, great. This is going to be my foot in the door. And then it probably, I'm just guessing it wasn't too long before you were doing drawings at LucasArts.

[00:25:10] Amy Beth Christenson: Yeah, it was like straight away. I couldn't believe it because part of me was like, okay, I got my foot in the door. I really like what I'm doing. I'm really interested in knowing more about 3d modeling. I do like doing it. This would be okay if I was doing it for the rest, but yeah, I think it was just a couple months and they're like, hey, we've got this little vehicle. You want to take a crack at it? I'm like, Yeah. and everybody. That's the thing I love about working here is, you know, I've been in Lucasarts and Lucasfilm animation and ILM, but you're always working with the best people. best at what they do and just best people, you know, so I've, it's been amazing for me just to kind of like to learn things as much as I can soak it up from everybody, like, Hey, what are you doing?

How did you do that? and that everybody was totally willing to like, give you the chance and to help you with something. If you want to learn how to do something, like you're going to learn from the best and it's amazing. It's just a really amazing experience. I, yeah, you guys are going to have a hard time getting rid of me basically.

So there you go.

[00:26:03] Rob Bredow: That's, that's what I hope. so, last episode, Dean Cundey was talking about, you know, he's a world famous cinematographer, talking about his start as a makeup artist, because that was the job that was available on the show, and that was his foot in the door. And actually, I wanted to ask more questions about how many shows he worked on as a makeup artist before he got his first break as a cinematographer, because of course he's this world famous, amazing cinematographer, um, who got his foot in the door doing the thing that he was like, he basically said Of course, I'll do any job you need. Do you need a PA? I'll do anything to get on the set, to work my way into the business, which is a variation on your story there, Amy. It's very exciting to hear your version of that.

[00:26:40] Todd Vaziri: One thing about your portfolio that stuck out to me that you may have unconsciously telegraphed is that with the changes you made was that you. were also completely capable of storytelling that you were not just going to create a piece that lives just completely out of context, adding those storyboards, adding those pieces of art that told its own story within a single frame or a couple of panels. I think that's also important uh, and attractive to, an employer that is looking for someone who is not just going to be part of the assembly line, somebody who could bring more to the table than just, their drawing skills, their color skills, their technique, having more to offer in the context of we're telling a bigger story here and if you can understand that and you can illustrate that in your portfolio that can make you even more attractive.

[00:27:32] Amy Beth Christenson: Absolutely. I think especially nowadays, you're always looking for how somebody is going to solve a problem. It's more interesting to know how somebody is going to approach a problem, visual problem or solve a visual problem. And I also feel really strongly. Just piggybacking off what you said, I also feel like no matter what I'm designing and no matter what I'm doing. I am part of a story that's being told. so, you know, we do costume design. You really want to, like, capture a lot of that character making really specific decisions about what you're going to dress them in. That says a lot. And Star Wars, honestly, like the old 1977 Star Wars, those costume designs made a really big impact on how to tell a story with character costumes because you have no problem looking at a character and knowing if they're good or bad in Star Wars. You know, Straight out the gate. And that's really important. And it's actually kind of hard to do, especially if you're getting into really complicated costumes. So I totally agree with that. It's, you always have to approach everything, a set, a vehicle, everything needs to tell a story. and to be able to work that in is really important.

[00:28:30] Rob Bredow: Now you're looking at portfolios, bringing people into the art department, mentoring people who aren't as experienced as you. Is that something you look for in portfolios now, both that storytelling and a little bit of their personality?

[00:28:42] Amy Beth Christenson: Um, personally, what I like to look at the most is early iterations. I want to know how somebody's, head works, how the brain works when they're solving a visual problem, but also so much of what we do this is a really hard hurdle I think for people to get over at least it was for me the idea of dailies the idea of somebody like Dave Filoni coming and standing behind your desk and Saying I like that and that can you just change it right now? And you're having to draw with them watching you showing all of your work. That's in progress. That's not final at all To, you know, supervisors and directors and sometimes a really big team of people in a theater. It feels like it's the end of the world. And you're going to be so embarrassed that you're never going to be able to show up to work again. But it's really like, nobody thinks that you like you show up, we all have to do it. We all have to get over that mental hump. And so I think for people coming in, it's really important for me to see that they're not ashamed to show stuff in progress, early sketches. and I can tell a lot about somebody about how willing they are to take a broad stroke of, how many different ways can you solve this problem?

It's not just changing a belt or a shoelace or the color of the hair. You know, it's, you got that first couple of passes has to be, Hey, this is a huge range that I gave you that still fits the description of a character or a ship. But completely different silhouettes, completely different takes, that I appreciate a lot more.

so that's what I focus on when I'm looking at a portfolio.

[00:30:10] Shaping Characters for Tomorrow

[00:30:10] Rob Bredow: Oh, that's such great advice. That's a perfect transition too to our main topic, which we're going to talk about design and how you design these stories for the parts that we get to weigh in on. And you've already started really describing your process, which is when somebody gives you a brief, you're going to give them some variations that are going to be the extremes within that brief. I think especially, A lot of the things we work on, you know, most recently for you it was Transformers, but a lot of Star Wars and other things, there's an established canon that you're working within that you want to respect and honor, but you also want to do something a little bit new. So I'm curious how you kind of balance that out as you get, as you launch on something new, a new character, a new ship, a new design.

[00:30:50] Amy Beth Christenson: It is a lot of conversation early on, with directors and production designers to kind of talk about what has come before, especially if you're working on a franchise, there's a long history, there's a huge fan base. You know, it kind of helps to be part of that fan base, but, going over like everything that came before really talking through what we consider this would be successful in this version. This would be unsuccessful in this version. kind of went ahead in this direction, but then it's like that. Okay. I'm gonna go back to the potato. If we're going to use the potato, um, You start by finding your potato, right? So for Transformers, it was, you know, we evaluated everything. We knew everything was to be really heavily based on the G1 1980s version cartoons, which was great for me. but you know, trying to find that new style and what really, really helped is looking at the production design notes and Gerald DeJesus had, he was the art director. had already put together a lot of these deconstructed elements for, they were deconstructed logos of the Autobot and Decepticon symbols. And he married that with Art Deco and was coming up with panel work for the buildings. And I was like, I saw that and I was like, okay, I get it I'm going to use that for the characters because now I have, I sort of have a pattern to follow, not literally follow, but, you know, the proportions and the line work that they were using, like, the art deco, you know, geometric shapes of like sticking with simple spheres and angles and lines and how there you get the big shapes and then you get the smaller shapes and you're kind of repeating these, elements over and over again at smaller and smaller details so that things look really smooth and simple from far away. But when you get up close, there's a lot going on.

[00:32:32] Rob Bredow: So that was literally in the textures that the production designer had pulled when he was pulling those Art Deco references. And you could actually see those kinds of, it's almost like a fractal level of detail, which was simple at a distance, but more detailed when you got in close.

[00:32:44] Amy Beth Christenson: Exactly. And that was really important for them. with that style of the show, there was a lot to kind of soak up and consider, but I think there's a version of that on every single show where you're going back to the original, you're going back to kind of established visual rules and art rules, per franchise and figuring out this stuff.

then you kind of start to add in. Your own little formulas as you go, you find those little elements like that. We were also looking at J. C. Leyendecker a lot because of the way he draws faces. Josh Cooley coming from Pixar was really big on the faces looking very human and being able to emote really well. So we're, you know, kind of playing around with like the panel breakup and, and kind of ended up going with that, that more smooth, you know, metal skin kind of a look. But going to J. C. Leyendecker, he draws his figures very mechanically, very angular, very planar. so I use that a lot with the faces and other things too, like, I wanted to make sure that they felt like a complete character.

I actually kind of ended up designing a helmet and then making sure that the face fit in that getting a negative space in the helmet and making sure the faces would fit in so that you kind of get these again, repeating shapes. And then I would take whatever that negative space was for the face and use it elsewhere on the bodies. Little things like that, I think just sort of helped like getting that reference, looking at it, kind of dissecting it on a philosophical level almost, or a psychological level, to kind of find these things that were working and I could use, I could change as basically using the same formula, but I was like, you know, mixing and matching, taking out parts and putting in new parts per character, So they all kind of felt like a whole, but each one stood out as an individual as well.

[00:34:26] Rob Bredow: I love the fact that you're combining the, like you called it the potato on the Star Wars side. Um, but it's really the thing that is, unseen or that is giving it a little twist on the mix between two things or on the things you would traditionally think of the original toys or that kind of thing. But then trying to figure out what that, what the style is that's holistic over the entire film, that's going to be applicable to your character design or anything you are designing, that figuring out what that thing is to mix in. So it feels like it's designed into a theme instead of just like, what's an interesting idea? That's such a, that's such a great way of thinking about it.

[00:35:00] Todd Vaziri: what you mentioned about when you're working within an established design language for a series of movies or a TV show or whatever. There's always something as innocuous as, like, On The Force Awakens, when we had so many discussions about laser blasts.

How are we going to do the laser blasts? Are we going to do them differently than the prequels or the original trilogy? We have different tools, different techniques, but what is the goal of how we're gonna do these blasters? And, between that and Rogue One, we had endless discussions, many arguments about how we were going to approach it.

So the design edict that we kind of stuck with was, uh, let's go with this. This is a fantasy laser blast. But let's lean it more toward photoreal. Okay, well, that, how, how do we do that? And the answer is that these light blasts would be giving off a lot more interactive light, off of the TIE fighters or off of the Falcon than we had seen previously. we wanted it to, basically burn the screen more than the original trilogy and more than the prequels. When on, you know, the, the shape of the blasters, so many are discussion design discussions and arguments about how we're going to build this stuff. if you notice very carefully on The Force Awakens, they actually have a slight teardrop, shape as opposed to in the prequels and the original trilogy, which were basically, cylinders, if you will. one of the, nice thingsThat gave us for Force Awakens is that on any single frame. You always knew which direction the blaster was going and, you know, it gave you a vector, an actual angle. I love trying to come up with how are we going to advance this? How are we going to make it look new and fresh? But never confuse the audience as to this is the thing that we're referring to. This is the thing you've seen before, it has a slightly different spin, or it has a slightly different effect. That stuff is challenging, and you don't want to do it just for newness, you want to say this is actually bringing something new to the table that fits our movie because Force Awakens had a greater emphasis on photo real aspect, the in camera aspect of the filmmaking. Less fantasy, more, like, happening right in front of you kind of a feel. So, it's always, it's always a challenge with these big franchises too, to push things in a new direction, but not too far so that you forget what it actually is.

[00:37:29] Jenny Ely: And who has the final say on that? I mean, I think we're familiar with it when it comes to things like Lucasfilm story. You know, we have our story group and we have the people who kind of keep that knowledge and information. But when it comes to the visual look of something like what a laser blast looks like, or what does a lightsaber look like? who has that final decision? Is it your director? You're a VFX supervisor. Is it someone at Lucasfilm? Like what, who has the final, this is what we're going to do. Does anybody know?

[00:37:54] Rob Bredow: It's actually Todd. It's actually Todd who answers that question.

[00:37:57] Todd Vaziri: It's me. Comes to me, my inbox is full right now of things I got to approve. No, it's, it's different for every movie and, I would argue that we are less beholden to canon than one might think. If it's a cool idea, that's new. You know, we're gonna create, you know, you saw it in The Force Awakens, you see it on every one of the projects that we work on both in and out of Star Wars. You know, it's, it's, a fantasy world.

[00:38:25] Rob Bredow: That's right, what you don't want to do is make a change because you didn't pay enough attention to what you were looking at before. That would be a bad reason, right, to not respect the canon. But when you've fully investigated that, and then like what Todd was just describing in episode seven, said, you know, this is supposed to be the most practical, the most photographic looking Star Wars to date. So what does that mean for each element in that light? It's still the same thing happening in the world. It just gets photographed a little bit differently, with a slightly different style, because of the storytelling purpose there.

And I think that's kind of, what informs hopefully great design, or design that's evolving forward as audience expectations are changing and other movies have done different things and you want to make sure that people don't, you don't want to make it look like you actually made it in 1977. Again, even though I love that movie and I think it's fantastic, but, when you get a chance to do a fresh take and you've got higher quality cameras and higher quality distribution and all these other aspects to the photography that have changed it, you get to, you get to take a fresh look at everything from the characters to the effects.

[00:39:28] Todd Vaziri: And we so frequently refer to the original trilogy almost like a monolith. But you look at these three films, they have very different photographic styles.

They have very different performance styles. They're different movies, each of those three. but at no point in Empire Strikes Back are you confused that you're in the Star Wars universe. You, you always under, we always go back to the iconography and the spirit of what George made in 1977.

[00:39:51] Rob Bredow: As you're designing characters, Amy, that evolve, I mean, literally on Transformers, there are characters that evolve. Transformed in the movie to different forms. And then they also evolved into different versions of themselves, literally in front of your face during the course of the movie, what a great opportunity to have design, paralleling, storytelling, and see that visually illustrated on the screen. is that a fun thing to dive into

[00:40:13] Amy Beth Christenson: Absolutely, it was, I should have been really panicked and stressed out about all of this, but I wasn't, it was just fun. It was a blast to work on this and to work on it with, you know, Jason Scheier and Josh Cooley specifically. but there was so much to figure out that, like you said, you know, you've got the non transforming mining versions, of the main characters and then they get their T-Cogs and then they can transform and in the case of Orion Pax and D16 they evolve into Optimus Prime and Megatron and the other thing about the style of the show, it was a 3d animated show It was but it was stylized in a way that you know had a clean read To know that these things would need to transform on screen was really important really early on. And we actually did design them. I designed them to actually transform without having to like swap models or anything like that. And,

[00:41:05] Rob Bredow: meaning every joint actually worked to get you from the car to the robot.

[00:41:10] Amy Beth Christenson: And the scale didn't change either. So we made sure like, you know, the chest piece on the robot is, the cab on the Cybertronian big rig, without changing scale. So, you know, we need to make sure that all the parts had a place to live,

[00:41:22] Rob Bredow: this is something that 2d cartoon did not have to, encumber itself with, but you

[00:41:27] Amy Beth Christenson: No, just, just an example for the 1980s cartoon, you've got Megatron. Who is bigger than Starscream transforming into a little handgun that Starscream then holds to shoot at the Autobots.

So you can do that. And then I think with the live action, there's so much visual density that you can cover. You can cover up, you know, a lot of what's going on when they're transforming on screen for the live actions. But this has had to be really obvious. So, Josh was a bit skeptical at first, like, can we even do this? I was like, well, the toys, the toys work. Um, Hey, I've got my toys.

[00:41:57] Rob Bredow: You've

[00:41:57] Amy Beth Christenson: here.

[00:41:58] Rob Bredow: toys on the shelf

[00:41:58] Amy Beth Christenson: I have all my toys on a shelf. I still have my toys from the 1980s, but I've also been collecting like the masterpiece Transformers as well over the years as I have money. and so I would bring those out and I was like, no, look, it actually transforms. So that's a place to start. I did have to like it. Figure out new ways of things to transform, but, you know, I kind of had that muscle memory of, you know, you pop out their shoulders, rotate them, pop them back in, knowing how the toys worked. Really helped a lot too, but it was a lot of back and forth. It was a lot of figuring out everything at the same time, because yes, you need to make sure that, the skeleton, the rig, the base of each character, you could use it and scale it up as they evolve. But there was still room for all of these big, mechanical pieces on top. and that, their evolution told a story like for Megatron, for example, like D16 at the beginning, he's friendly and Josh Cooley had the great idea that he and Orion Pax should have even the same silhouette because they're like brothers. You want to think of them as being a package deal.

So, you know, Megatron is all squared shapes all the time. Specifically, we gave him really rounded shapes wherever we could, as a mining robot and really did give him that same silhouette. And then, you know, going from that to, as he's evolving, he's kind of getting angrier and, you know, becoming Megatron, so you do that, thing where you start to use squared off angles when he can transform, and then when he's Megatron, actually changing those squared off angles to really aggressive actual V shaped angles because that's much more aggressive.

You know, we kind of respond to it differently. So he definitely had the biggest evolution out of all of the characters. but you had to figure out, you know, show Josh and Jason, this is sort of like the evolution I have in mind. These are some of the vehicle modes that we have in mind, drawing them out as loose sketches at first.

And then, kind of narrowing it down and then really, really quickly getting into 3d super quickly getting into 3d so that, I wanted to make sure that these scales were right. Everything was correct. And, when Chris Voy came on the project, he's another art director at the ILM Art Department. He and Evan Whitefield joined after I had sort of taken a first pass on a lot of the characters. He started to key frame. the concept art models because he's like, Hey, these things actually do transform. Why don't you just keyframe them and animate them so we could show people how they are, instead of trying to explain it, because I had these really complicated color coded Maya files. I was trying to show people, no, it's actually the same piece. It goes here as a, well, I'm not. I like it, I am a bad animator. I hate how key framing stresses me out, but he did it. So I'm like, well, okay, well, Chris Voy did it. Now I have to do it. So I did, I spent a weekend getting better at keyframing and animating and we took our concept art geo that we'd all blocked out and started actually animating them.

And that was a big thing. and I think it was kind of at that point where like Josh and Jason, we did that for a lot of characters. We're like, this is really working. We like the way everybody's sitting together, living together, all these characters, we can do lineups of everybody and love the scale, love the color choices. Now we can go through and do that detail pass for everybody, for all the characters in their vehicle modes.

And it's not like we didn't have, you know, problems on our model side and our key frame side. So there was a ton, kudos to the whole team, you know, Stephen King and everybody at, Sydney that actually built these models and actually really got them to work because I'm not going to lie, there was some crashing happening

[00:45:27] Rob Bredow: There still were

[00:45:28] Amy Beth Christenson: our, like,

[00:45:28] Rob Bredow: cover up.

[00:45:29] Amy Beth Christenson: It worked, but it was just, most of that was chalked up to just being a bad animator, so don't ask me to animate anything, ever.

[00:45:36] Rob Bredow: for people who aren't living in the weeds, this is, you know, Amy's in the art department, she's in concept design, she was a character designer on the film, but there's a whole team after. her, at ILM, who's gonna model and rig and texture the final characters you see in the movie.

The great news about the way the art department and the visual effects teams and the animation teams work together is that it's lossless, right? They can hand stuff back and forth and iterate back and forth and Amy can draw over or even get into 3D files at any time, which is all fantastic, but the distinction there is, you don't have to worry about, the construction and whether the rig is going to work in 500 shots when you're doing the design, because you're trying to keep it fast and loose and be able to iterate on that quickly in the art department.

And then you can hand something over to the modelers and the riggers and the team after you in animation, who are going to take it and make it hold up for, you know, 2,500 shots in the movie.

[00:46:22] Amy Beth Christenson: I would say for the most part that's true, I am, a little bit, OCD about, I want to make sure that everything I do can work and I'm not causing problems down the line. So what you brought up, it was, as soon as I had a blockout model, Have a meeting with like Rob Coleman and, Stephen King and stuff and be like, can you break this? Tell me what's broken. I'll fix it before the final, you know, cause I really didn't want to have anything that I thought would work without being a professional rigger or animator, I wanted them to kind of break it for me and tell me what was wrong so I could fix it. Because I think at some point too, it's good to know. what happens after concept art, because we're kind of like the first, you know, cog in a big machine. And do you always, like I said, want to make things easier for people down the line and not cause more problems? So I think it's really good to like, learn about it and know about everything that comes after. and at least develop really good working relationships with everybody on the team so that you can have those interactions and do that. Because it's happened before, I think, on multiple occasions, I mean, not here, but like, industry wide, you see something that looks really cool, but there's just no way to build it. you don't want that to happen, because then your thing doesn't show up in the movie, right? So,for me, I really like to know that something, or kind of check my math as best I can.

[00:47:33] Rob Bredow: That's great.

[00:47:34] Amy Beth Christenson: Like going back to third grade math class, whatever.

Just gotta double check this before I turn it in. It's sort of like the mentality that I have when I'm doing designs. Especially if they're really mechanical and industrial.

[00:47:46] Todd Vaziri: I want to emphasize the fluidity between the art department and actual shot production. Like, working with, concept designers. I mean, some, Chris Voy and I have, you know, he's done artwork that I've put directly into shots. I love working with, like Alex Yeager and Yanick Dusseault and Aaron McBride. I mean, literally sometimes they'll paint something, I'll have it in a shot and it'll be in dailies within an hour or so. It's one of the joys of working here and as a compositor, we want to iterate stuff quickly and everybody upstream has like these giant sims and giant renders and they don't have that luxury. However,in the art department, they literally can turn stuff around really quickly, with the silhouette, a design here, a painting here, and we can have it in a shot. And that's just such a joy, to have that kind of relationship.

One thing I wanted to say about the truth to scale on the transforming, the robots into whatever they transform into, I've worked on three of the live action Transformers movies, and when fans hear about that, I would say the most common question I get is, Okay, so when Optimus is in robot form, and then when he's in transforms into truck mode, are, are they, is it all true to scale true to parts and everything? And at least on the live action side it was absolutely positively not. I mean, we, the fact that people are even asking the question shows that we nailed it to a certain extent, and that you have, you feel like there's certain distinctive pieces of Optimus Prime, of Bumblebee, that you can see in the car and see in the robot. But, you know, cheat-a-palooza, where we're just cheating like crazy. In fact, it was really wonderful to see in some of the crazy transformation shots, seeing animation take place where a certain piece of the robot would get occluded by either itself or go off screen. And before we animated the visibility of that piece, you would see it either flying right off screen or just staying frozen in space right back there. And it's almost like it's shedding pieces and stuff like that. the fact that the people even questioned it in the first place, I think we achieved our goal, but at least on the live action side, we were cheating wherever we could.

[00:49:58] Rob Bredow: Cinematic immunity.

[00:49:59] The Martini

[00:49:59] Rob Bredow: Well, this has been really fun. We are already almost at our hour. So I think I need to transition us over to talk about our martinis. The last shot of the day. Todd, do you want to start with your martini?

[00:50:11] Todd Vaziri: Sure, my good happy thing came out of an unfortunate thing. My personal iMac just died a couple weeks ago. Just completely out of the blue, no warning signs. Just dead. And, you know, I was lucky enough to get the new Mac mini. I got it and it's awesome. And the base model is only $599 and it's going to be happy for almost anybody. And if you need to upgrade, storage or memory from there, yeah, you're going to shell out a few bucks. But the base model is an incredible bargain, and my martini. It is a backup, which is so unfun to do for your home computer, but boy, when you need it, it's going to save your whole world, your whole computing world. So, my backup strategy at home is on the Mac. Is to use the built in time machine. I actually go a little bit further. I have another computer that has external drives. I backed up my time machine there. And then in the spirit of belt and suspenders, I use Backblaze, which is an online cloud backup. that will do a copy of all of your data. But if you want to create a bootable. Like an easy to restore version of your entire computer. The time machine works really well. There's other tools on the Mac that allow you to do this. So, when I got my Mac mini, I plugged in that time machine hard drive, plugged it in, hit the migration, and within a couple hours I had my old Mac up and running, no problems at all. It's so unfun to set up a backup schedule for your home computers. But seriously, just do it. Even if it's just Backblaze, you know, on the Mac and on the PC. But on the Mac, Time Machine is a great way to go.

[00:51:59] Rob Bredow: Nice. That's a perfect new year's resolution. Amy, did you bring a martini?

[00:52:06] Amy Beth Christenson: I did. Um, you, well, Rob knows I want to be a Lego master at some point in my life. I'm really far from achieving that goal, but

[00:52:15] Rob Bredow: I

think you're closer than you think. I've seen some of her creations. I think, uh,

[00:52:20] Amy Beth Christenson: I really love to do it. Yeah. my own creations in Lego, my own custom Lego sets and everything. I like to use Bricklink Studio. It's a great program. If anybody checks it out, it has all of the, You know proper lego pieces to choose from the interface is really easy to pick up and learn And you just kind of build something in 3d you pick your colors and then you can go on bricklink.com which is sort of like ebay for just lego bricks around the world and you can find all of these little pieces that you need to order and build your own little creation and that's what I use. it's a little bit of a plug but that's how I kind of get out my creativity. I feel like I, do, everything I do on a daily basis at work is really fulfilling and I feel like I don't need to go home and draw anything but I still need that kind of creative outlet and that's Lego for me, so.

you're doing your, your plans digitally, and then it spits out a parts list for you.

[00:53:13] Amy Beth Christenson: If it's complicated enough, yeah, then I'll use that and build it in 3D and then do the parts list and stuff. And then if you need any inspiration, I really love to watch the Lego Masters TV shows as well. It's like the American one with Will Arnett and Jamie and Amy. But I really like the Australian one, a lot too with the Brick Man. so that's kind of my favorite one. But that's if anybody else is like a Lego maniac out there, that's what I like to use.

[00:53:37] Jenny Ely: Amy, you're like the, you're like the queen of the eighties kids. It's like everything that you loved as a kid and you were like, I'm not going to grow up. I'm just going to do this forever. And, and you did.

[00:53:47] Amy Beth Christenson: I literally never grew up and I'm still listening to 80s music. I have no idea what happened in the 90s. I just skipped everything. I skipped the last three decades entirely. Um, just in the 80s now.

[00:53:57] Jenny Ely: I love it.

[00:53:59] Rob Bredow: Jenny.

[00:54:00] Jenny Ely: Yes, okay, so my martini today is a movie prop replica, which I love prop replicas, and they have to be quality and, you know, screen accurate if possible. The one I have today is probably one of my favorites. It is the Tobin Spirit Guide from Magnoli Props in New Zealand. And Tobin's Spirit I can see your face, Amy.

The Tobin's Spirit Guide, if you don't know, is the book that is referenced by Ray in the first Ghostbusters movie. When they are trying to figure out what's going on in Dana Barrett's apartment, they're like, well, we're gonna check this and this, but he says Tobin's Spirit Guide. So, the people at Magnoli Props, doing the Lord's work, made this actual Tobin's Spirit Guide.

So this is a 500 page reference guide to spirits, monsters, ghosts, anything supernatural. And it's not just the things referenced in the Ghostbusters films, but also has historical references. There's a few Easter eggs in here from other films and literature. I don't want to spoil anything because half of the fun of this thing is looking through it and finding those little Easter eggs that are in there.

It has 12 chapters. They're arranged by geographic locations. There are over 400 entries. Full page illustrations, the author in it is listed as J. H. Tobin, published in 1929 by Reitman and Sons Publishing Company. Yes, it is, it is like a professionally bound book. It's black leather with an embossed cover, gold foiled lettering.

The details, the distressing, the details are incredible. The paper in this thing even looks old. Uh, it's just, it's incredible. It's one of the best movie props I've ever seen and it even came with a business card hidden in it from Ray's occult books which was the bookshop that Ray owns and operates in the second ghostbusters movie.

So, um it's I know It's been the season of Ghostbusters on Lighter Darker. Um, anyway, it's from Magnoli Props there in New Zealand. They have an Online store where they do weapons costumes. You know all kinds of fun character props. They even sell Morley cigarette packs, which if you're an X Files fan, is the brand that the smoking man smokes.

You can buy just cigarette packs from that. So I recommend checking them out. top quality. So highly recommended.

[00:56:16] Rob Bredow: There you go.

[00:56:17] Amy Beth Christenson: There

goes Jenny.

Jenny.

[00:56:18] Jenny Ely: Right.

[00:56:20] Rob Bredow: I'm shocked. I tell you that you have a Ghostbusters thing to end us on, uh, today, Jenny. Shocked, I tell you. Go ahead, Amy.

[00:56:27] Amy Beth Christenson: I was just gonna like, talking about hanging up in the office. I, the thing that was behind my desk at Lucasfilm Animation was one of the Vigo the Carpathian paintings, but it wasn't, it was above my desk, like it was my desk and then it was me and I used to do the pose every single time, like I was at my desk.

It was great. I was such a nerd for that.

[00:56:45] Jenny Ely: I love it. We have a Vigo hanging in our guest bathroom.

[00:56:47] Amy Beth Christenson: Oh, amazing.

Well, that though. Yeah. No pressure

[00:56:50] Jenny Ely: And he is in this book.

[00:56:52] Rob Bredow: No pressure right on. As he should be. I can't believe how fast you found, you said it's a 500 page book and you found that page in like one second.

[00:57:03] Jenny Ely: Oh, I knew where

[00:57:04] Rob Bredow: done, Jenny. You knew right where it was, page 283,

[00:57:07] Todd Vaziri: the book.

[00:57:07] Rob Bredow: of course. Yeah.

[00:57:09] Jenny Ely: Yeah.

[00:57:10] Rob Bredow: Well, my martini for today is a new documentary called Music by John Williams out just in the last couple of months. It is streaming on Disney Plus. It is very, very nice. Of course, you get to hear a lot of amazing John Williams music. but what you probably haven't seen before, at least I hadn't seen before was sessions where he's working with Steven Spielberg, with original recordings of the first time he plays those incredible notes from jaws low on the keyboard. Several moments, really, really nice heartfelt moments where you can see. Between Steven Spielberg and John Williams, their respect, and also like the talent in that room as they're starting to build the score for these things and the love that everybody has for each other in this documentary is just so wonderful. So you get Spielberg, you get Bob Zemeckis, Ron Howard's in it, Kathy Kennedy's in it, Frank Marshall's in it. It's just a kind of joy encapsulated into two hours. So you'll love it. I, I get your money back if you don't love it, but you will, it's going to be fantastic. I promise you you'll enjoy it. It's just, it's just a lot of fun. So I don't know if anybody else has had a chance to see it already, but if you haven't, add to your list, it's a good one.

[00:58:19] Outro

[00:58:19] Rob Bredow: Thank you for listening to the lighter, darker podcast. If you've got a question for the show you want us to cover in a future episode write to us at lighterdarker@ilm.com we love getting your emails. You can also follow us on social media. Our links are going to be in the show notes for all of us here. or you can find them on ILM.com/lighterdarker. We also put the transcripts there and thank you for leaving us a review, especially on an Apple podcast. So if you haven't already done that, take a moment and give us a, give us five stars if you like the show.

We want to thank Industrial Light and Magic for hosting the Lighter Darker Podcast. And the show is produced by Jenny Ely and myself, Rob Bredow. Today's episode has been edited by David Dovell, and we want to thank ILM's PR team, uh, led by Greg Grusby, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make all this happen. So thank you so much for listening to the Lighter Darker Podcast. And until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.