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Bill George: [00:00:00] Sometimes, the simpler solution is definitely the better solution and not only a simpler solution, but the cheaper solution, good filmmakers will take limitations and they'll figure out a way to make them work

Todd Vaziri: Welcome to Lighter Darker, The ILM Podcast.

As you can tell from Todd's amazing intro, uh, we're doing a Halloween episode. Um, and this is the podcast where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. This is our fifth episode and our only Halloween episode planned for the year. , uh, and this is making Jenny very, very happy that we're doing a Halloween episode.

Jenny Ely: Yes!

Rob Bredow: If you've seen any of the trailers, you've seen our backgrounds, you've seen our ridiculous costumes, uh, Jenny has helped us go all out. As you know, we release every other Tuesday and it's great that you've joined us today. You've already met my co host, Todd Vaziri.

Todd Vaziri: Hi I'm Todd Vaziri,compositing supervisor and artist at [00:01:00] ILM.

Rob Bredow: I don't know if they're going to recognize you, Todd, now that you're not using the Dracula voice. And our producer, Jenny Ely.

Jenny Ely: Hi, I'm Jenny Ely. I'm a production manager at ILM, and I'm so excited about this episode today

Rob Bredow: And I'm Rob Bredow. I'm the chief creative officer at ILM and SVP of creative innovation at Lucasfilm. And today's guest co host. We are very excited to welcome, visual effects supervisor, Art director and actually director. He's directed many commercials, Bill George. He's an Academy Award winning visual effects supervisor, 40 years of experience working in visual effects for feature films, for commercials, themed attractions.

He won his Oscar for Innerspace. He's also received Academy, BAFTA and Visual Effects Society Award nominations for his work on a bunch of shows, including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as well as a BAFTA nomination for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He's also worked on a ton of really fun rides that hopefully you've got a chance to go on, including Star Wars Rise of the [00:02:00] Resistance and Pirates of the Caribbean Battle for Sunken Treasure, which is in Shanghai.

Um, he also worked on many years of Star Tours. And I learned when I was looking at this, Bill, you won an Emmy for The Ewok Adventure, which I have to say high on my list of shows that I watched. You can try to rewatch it now. I dare you. It's a fun one. So welcome to the show.

Bill George: Gee, what an introduction. Thank you, Rob. Bringing up the Ewok movie. Not too many people do that

Rob Bredow: it's really, I was amazed to find it on Disney plus, and I got to say it, it brought me right back. I watched it many times as a kid. It's definitely targeted at kids.

Bill George: And, since we're talking about it right now, and I know that we want to get into, you know, your career and expanding and how you move up and how you get jobs and things like that. the Ewok movie. It is what it is. You know, they were great in the sense that they made money. They came back and did a second one.

But for me, it was an amazing project because that was the first time I was on a show from beginning to end from pre production through post [00:03:00] production. And I got to see the entire process, working with actors, working with producers, working directly with the director. It was invaluable, So the project maybe wasn't all that great, but boy, the experience was amazing.

Rob Bredow: I am serious when I say I loved it as a kid. Like I couldn't get enough Star Wars and I watched that. We had a recording and I remember skipping through the commercials to watch it on VHS over and over again. So you made, I don't know how old I was at the time, but he made me very happy.

And you won an Emmy out of it, which is incredible.

Bill George: Well, I was part of a team. Yeah.

Jenny Ely: I have the VHS on my shelf behind me. I should have grabbed it and brought it

Rob Bredow: Definitely.

Bill George: I love you guys

Rob Bredow: You got to get Bill to sign it, got to get Bill to sign your copy

Jenny Ely: Yeah, absolutely

Rob Bredow: Well, let's start with a couple of questions from the mailbag. We got a couple that we picked out that we thought would be fun to answer with Bill. Jenny, do you want to get us to the first question?

Jenny Ely: Yes Let me find my list. I got a little overwhelmed with Halloween and Bill George and

Todd Vaziri: All this Ewok Adventure talk.

Jenny Ely: talking about the [00:04:00] Ewoks. Um, okay. Yes. We have a few great questions today. And our first one comes from Connie Phelps. And Connie says in the previous episode with Beth D’amato, you mentioned color timing. What is it?

Where does the name come from? Why is timing in the name? And who actually does it? Is it ILM or a third party

Rob Bredow: I love this question. Well, I'll answer the basics of it, but then Bill, I would love for you to dive in, especially talking about the origins of the term and the way it was designed, but the color timing is really the finishing step in making a film. And it is, The final process for adjusting the color of all the shots.

So as we're working on individual shots and as the movie is being photographed, it's being done at different times a day. And of course, everyone's working the whole time to keep things as continuous as possible, but not until that final color timing step, a final color adjustment step. Do you actually get to do that shot to shot correction and make things blend as well as possible together.

And in the last, well, 20 plus years [00:05:00] now, that's almost all done digitally. But beforehand, it was done analog with film. And I don't know if you want to walk us through, Bill, a little bit about the origin of the term and how it was done back in the day when it was on film.

Bill George: Well, it was always a big challenge, but also a place where you could sometimes fix mistakes. Uh, it's like you said, if you've been shooting, sometimes shots are done two or three months apart, at different times of the day. Sometimes the cloud will come over. It's an opportunity to go in and make adjustments to contrast and color to try to get them as consistent as possible.

Now, I'm gonna guess the timing was about, you know, how much cyan, how much blue, how much red that it was a very, very exact science. That was incredibly difficult. And I remember the color timing sessions that I went to, we would just give our feedback and then some. Other poor person had to go and actually work the machine to make it kind of pop out and be consistent.

But I was always consistently [00:06:00] impressed by how much better the work looked after it had gone through that process.

Todd Vaziri: Yeah, looking at a work print that hasn't been timed, it's kind of jarring where you feel every edit because it hasn't been color timed yet. And once you see that first color time print, you realize, Oh yeah, I'm just watching the movie. It's not at all distracting and it can make a gigantic difference.

Rob Bredow: Yeah, and if you hear terms like, hey, we need to lose a point to cyan or add a point to red, those are actually exactly the same. Warming something up would be taking a little bit of cyan out or adding red, um, people will refer to the colors, red, green, blue, and whether they're adding points or whether something looks like it's a, it's warm or cool on the day that is all referring to the final color tweaking.

And of course, now with the digital intermediate tools, we can do a whole lot more. Can adjust vignetting, grab a single character. You can pop the foreground versus the background. You can do a lot of sweetening in the digital intermediate process, which is a really powerful creative tool set today.

Bill George: [00:07:00] When I first started at ILM in 1981, I was working on Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. And one of the real crucibles of what we do is dailies and being able to go to dailies and see how things are done, see how they're processed, was so important. And I remember Ken Ralston going, oh, this is too cyan and oh, that's too, you know, magenta and that's too red.

And I remember looking at the screen going, it looks great to me. I have no idea what he's talking about. But over time I started to see it. It's something you have to train yourself to see these little subtleties on a fairly white spaceship. You can really see how it shifts one way or the other.

Rob Bredow: That's so great. In a previous episode, Bill, I talked about seeing the color of the white mouse and Stuart Little and having people react just in the same way and having that same anxiety of like, I'm never going to make it here. Cause I have no idea what they're talking about. And then three months later, watching dailies every day, You learn to see what everybody's referring to.

And now when I go into the DI sessions and I'm like, Oh, it's a little bit warm there, should we tie these two together? The colorist will be like, Oh, you've [00:08:00] done this before. And it's just from being around really good people who have developed those skills. They've developed that eye to be able to see those color differences, which is super fun.

Todd Vaziri: Bill you gave me a flashback to the Star Trek movies that I was able to work on, you know, a white ship, you know, any, uh, discrepancy in the color grade or now color decision list, uh, from shot to shot, you will see it in that white ship called the enterprise. It will, you know, stand out to you big time, but if it's something photographic, even the slightest mismatch, yeah, some of that can get let go, but that white enterprise has to look the same in every single shot.

Bill George: I think it's important to mention that too. Before it was such a roll of the dice back in the old days when it was photochemical because the temperature of the chemicals that you were using, the processing would affect it. And you just never knew what you were going to get. The digital realm is just so much more precise.

And to Todd's point, now, if we were turning over a Star Trek project, we would [00:09:00] also give them a matte. So our final shot. They would have a matte. So if they want to make the background slightly different color without affecting the ship, they have the control to do that. Whereas before it was, it would be this constant back and forth between us and them to really streamline the process.

Rob Bredow: Jenny, can you take us to the second question?

Jenny Ely: Yes. Our second question is also from Connie. Uh, we picked these both because they were both so good. So Connie says, I'd love to hear about last minute changes or tweaks that you've done to a project just in the nick of time. For example, I think I've heard of shots being tweaked the day before I had tickets to see a film.

That's nuts. It must be so stressful. Also, how do you make sure the corrected version reaches the audience all over the world at that point? And have you corrected anything major after the release and then pushed it back into production? I think Todd has some to say here.

Todd Vaziri: Oh yeah. Yeah. So again, as with a lot of these questions, we're going to try to answer them in the different decades because previously, [00:10:00] I mean, I'm just going to start like when I started visual effects, we were still shooting on film and projecting into theaters on film, film prints. and, moving backward from that day that you, uh, you buy your ticket on opening day. Um, those reels of film need to be printed. We needed thousands of prints to be distributed around the country and around the world. And that is a manual process. That is a discernible time period that needs to be made for those prints. And what we would do going even backwards from there is.

What we would call reel deliveries. We would start saying, we're going to deliver reel one of five of the movie. We're going to deliver reel one on this day. And then two weeks later, we're going to deliver reel two. Why do we do that? It gives the distributors time to physically make the reels. Cause we are printing out new negative of our visual effects shots.

They integrate it. They can form it into the master of the movie, then they have to make interpositives and [00:11:00] internegatives, the color timing process. Thousands of prints then need to be made of that reel. Then two weeks later, or a week later, or whatever the time may be, they have to do reel two, and then so on and so on until we finish the movie.

So there was a cut off of, there is no chance that any changes are going to make it into the premiere of this movie. There have been rare cases where the filmmaker or the producers have enough pull where, uh, let's say that certain things needed to be tweaked. And let's say some theaters are going to get version 2 of Reel 3. It was few and far between. But that was film distribution. There was a finite cutoff that needed to happen. So on opening day, I'd say the absolute bare minimum was probably four weeks, maybe, before release. The bare, the shortest time that I remember working on any movies. However, with digital distribution, where now it used to be hard drives get sent to [00:12:00] theaters, and now it's mostly over the internet, so it's not instantaneous, but it's darn well close to instantaneous. There's certain logistics involved with not wanting to change the master of the movie on opening day for thousands of theaters at the click of a button. You don't want to do that. That's way too painful and scary, but, things can be changed pretty darn close to opening day. I'm not even going to give a timeframe. And the thing is about refreshing those masters. Can happen on a regular basis now. And then also we sometimes, since we have the crew and we have the resources and everything, if the filmmakers want to continue working on a certain number of shots, we say, okay, well, we're not, we're going to miss the international delivery for this. We're going to, it's only going to be in the domestic release. Oh, we're going to miss the domestic release for this. It's only going to be on the home video master. Things like that do happen now more frequently because [00:13:00] with digital, it's so much easier to trade files around, but you know, it can get dangerously close to release date.

Rob Bredow: Bill, do you have any stories of last minute deliveries?

Bill George: Well, yes, I have two that are related to The Empire Strikes Back. The first one I was able to see the night before it came out was a press screening. And then the next day I went and stood in line, 70 millimeter print, with a bunch of people and watched it and it was different. And that's the first time, first of all, I've seen a movie one day and then gone and seen it again the next.

But I remember distinctly, uh, when Luke is hanging under cloud city on Bespin, the Millennium Falcon dish rising up. He drops and in the next, the 70 millimeter print, it wasn't the dish was not there. And I think there were other, uh, small differences as well, but that was the one I remember. And the reason for that was because to Todd's point, the 70 millimeter prints back then took so much longer that you [00:14:00] had to basically say, okay, the 70 cut is done, send these off and then continue working on it.

So the one that I had seen the night before was a 35 millimeter print. So these things happen. And the other thing, and this is the crazy story that I love telling people is, after the film came out, George found out that people were a little confused about the location of where Lando was relative to Luke and Leia.

And so the movie was in the theaters and the model shop was building a model. And they shot that shot where they start on the Falcon and then they pan over. They move over to the little bay, the hospital bay. And once that was done, they updated it in the cut. They made a bunch of new end reels and sent those out to the theaters.

Todd Vaziri: Nice.

Rob Bredow: So literally, while the movie was in theaters, and the movies were in theaters for longer, they had enough time to shoot the shot, finish the shot, cut it into the reel, make the copies of reel five or six, send it out, and have reel then substituted onto the end of the film.

Bill George: Yep. [00:15:00] Yep. Crazy.

Todd Vaziri: The other part of Connie's question is how do you make sure that the corrected version reaches the audience. Okay, there's an army of editors who are trying to do their best. There's so much footage coming in and out of the maiden edit bay, then the visual effects edit bay. We have dedicated visual effects editors on the, on the vendor side and on the client side. It's a lot of shots. It's a lot of versions and it's about 99 percent accurate. Sometimes the wrong version does get out there and, you know, that's okay because art sometimes can be messy.

Rob Bredow: The stereo version of The Polar Express is quite a beautiful version of it. And it was released only in IMAX. It was a very early stereo movie. One of the first big ones, I think. And, um, We'd done the whole stereo conversion by rendering the second eye, but one shot in that movie ended up accidentally in mono.

And even when we had our stereo experts cue scene, the final prints, you just missed it because your brain interpolates and fills in [00:16:00] the difference. You're wearing the glasses, it's stereo on all sides. And it was a big shot in the, in the train heist sequence. And you just. Didn't catch it until it was in theaters.

And then we realized, but it was a little too late to fix that. The, uh, a single reel of that work print weighs as much as a VW bug. So it's, they're, they're a little bit logistically heavy to go shipping around when it was on celluloid like that.

Well, that takes us into our first feature. We realize we've talked about this on the ILM blog.

Uh, we've talked about this on social media, but we've never actually talked about the origin of our name, Lighter Darker. The name of the podcast. So we thought we'd do that today. It's kind of perfect timed to our Halloween episode because the Lighter Darker name comes from a poster that was illustrated by Benton Jew for an ILM Halloween party. And I didn't work at ILM at the time, but fortunately we have Bill George with us here, who was, an active participant, let's say in some of those early Halloween parties, Bill, I, you gotta, you gotta share a story or a little [00:17:00] bit of context behind these incredible invites that I've seen or incredible Halloween posters that I've seen.

Bill George: Well, it was a big deal. People really put a lot of effort and energy into it. And they had these huge prizes. Like you would get a new Macintosh if you won first prize. So people really went for it. And of course we were creative people. We were a bit younger back then and had a lot of energy to put into this, but yeah, they were spectacular.

Rob Bredow: I remember some pictures of like one year, one of the winning costumes was the Titanic, but it had like four people in it. And there was a whole scene that could break apart and sink. Like these were, these people might not consider them costumes. They might consider them more art experiences than when you actually see the photographs of them.

Todd Vaziri: More family friendly Burning Man, uh, could have a costume thing.

Rob Bredow: One of my favorite photos that I've seen from the older Halloween parties is someone dressed up almost exactly like George Lucas. I don't know who it was standing next to George Lucas. They both had almost exactly the same plaid [00:18:00] on. So he matched just perfectly like it was like a perfect, perfect mimicry.

And it seemed like George, the real George was entertained by the costume.

Jenny Ely: I see that at Star Wars Celebration a lot. People cosplaying as George Lucas and they'll have like all the George Lucases meet up for a photo

Rob Bredow: So we'll post a link to the original Benton Jew poster on the show notes for this episode. If you'd like to take a look at it, it's really fun. Um, You know, fake scary poster. That's really talking about the way we can over art direct a shot. And it's lighter, darker then underneath it.

It says attack of the nitpickers. Uh, and it has everybody crowding around one poor person who is working at behind a computer monitor, trying to get a shot finished, which is, you know,

Todd Vaziri: Who is handcuffed to his desk. I mean, which is, you know, boy, that's, that's fanciful. That doesn't happen ever in real life.

Rob Bredow: Right. It's a feeling we can relate to even today, even if it's not quite as intense as that.

Todd Vaziri: I remember I got that poster, I think it was at a Siggraph in 1997 and [00:19:00] it is one of my prized possessions. And hopefully by the next episode I will have it framed behind me because I finally found it. And, uh, I can't wait to put it up because I love that thing so much.

Rob Bredow: Well, that takes us to our second feature. We're going to talk about rejection letters. And, we've done this before with guest co hosts. And people always say you learn more from mistakes than successes. But when we get on a podcast, you usually talk about those highlights, you know, those best moments, but this is our chance to talk with Bill about, you know, when one door closes, how another door opens.

And, you know, he's had an amazing successful career and we haven't actually mentioned Bill. Bill has now retired from ILM just recently. So, celebrated 40 plus years of work at the company. But the beginning for most people isn't a super smooth process. So I thought you might have a story to share here, Bill.

Bill George: Well, when I first started in the industry, you would work on a show and it was maybe a year, year and a half if you were lucky. And it was always understood that at the end of that, you wrap up your equipment and [00:20:00] take it home and hope for the next one. Or, at effects facilities, usually they would try to keep work coming in, So maybe you get lucky enough to be asked on to the next show.

For my career, I really didn't have to go out and kind of beat the pavement as it were. It always seems like things came along. And of course, when you're on a job, that's your opportunity to kind of show what you can do, and that you can work with other people because if you can't, there's a lot of really, really smart people.

But if you can't work as a team, if you can't compromise, You're in trouble, but I will say there was one thing that happened. Uh, I had done a lot of work on the Star Trek films, Star Trek two and Star Trek three, which included also doing art direction beyond building models, meeting with, uh, Ralph Winter, the producer kind of establishing a relationship with him.

And I thought for sure that I was going to be asked to, uh, supervise the models for Star Trek four. And I wasn't and it was a crushing blow because I thought like [00:21:00] all the clues were there like it was lined up. Here you go, sir. um, But it went to Jeff Mann instead. And I was very disheartened. And a few months later, Neil Arotis came to me and said, Oh, we had this new project coming in called Innerspace that I'd like you to be a part of.

Which ultimately was an incredible project to work on. It was so different, so much fun working directly with Dennis Muren and a huge success. So that's what it's sometimes you think you want to go a certain way and the fates will take you another and you just have to kind of be the leaf on the wind and go where you go

Rob Bredow: That's amazing. And inner space was your first Oscar win, right? With Dennis and the team.

Bill George: That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Which was so odd. I never in a million years would think that would make it all the way. It's crazy.

Rob Bredow: It's incredible work. And I remember that film. It was so imaginative and kind of. Well, completely impossible, especially for that era of [00:22:00] filmmaking. No one was doing something that it was rare to see something that ambitious. Don't you think?

Bill George: Yeah, definitely. And it was also a time where everybody, it was all hands on deck. That is a result of lots of people with lots of ideas contributing to it and taking chances, taking risks and then, you know, people would come up with crazy ideas and Dennis would go, okay, let's see what it looks like, like what it looks like on the screen.

The next day and dailies is. All that matters.

Rob Bredow: What a great story. Well, that's a perfect transition into our main topic for today, where we want to really focus on how the toolbox has evolved over time. And, for the way back machine, since it's the Halloween episode, we were going to focus on Ghostbusters 2, where you are the model shop supervisor, right, Bill.

Bill George: That's correct

Rob Bredow: uh, that was another Dennis Muren in film. Where you were working for him as a visual effects supervisor and a wide array of visual effects in that movie. And I thought maybe we start, we can explore all the different aspects of the visual effects of that show, but, um,, when I think of that kind of [00:23:00] 80s aesthetic, it is very much, burned into my mind, the roto work and the, like the proton gun effects and Vlad's eyes and those sort of optical effects that feel so classic of the day, and it would be fun to just talk a little bit about that kind of effect.

And then also how much that's changed today and how much more sophisticated it can be, but also how we still mimic some of those original effects that were designed back in the early eighties.

Bill George: You know for us on the second show, we had a really good example of what to follow But of course there's always this pressure to kind of go to the next level and I think that that was you know There we weren't using computer graphics quite yet on that. However, there was a lot of computer control camera work like animation stand stuff that was done like When um the character is walking down the hallway and there's his eyes are tracking on the wall I I think that was all programmed in and light passes were shot and composited.

And it wasn't rotoscoped. It was somehow tracked.

Rob Bredow: When people think about rotoscoping [00:24:00] today, often we're talking about pulling mattes and those kinds of processes, which are all based on the techniques that were done today. But. At that time, this had more in common with traditional animation, right? Working on an animation stand frame by frame kind of hand painted work.

Bill George: Yes. The animators would go in and draw the, you know, there were many, many levels. It's almost like different layers, different elements that you would get out of a computer nowadays for the proton packs, the, you know, there's like a central, peace and then there's the electrical arcs going around the outside and all of those had to be drawn by hand and it takes a certain skill to do that, finding the right people and everybody's is going to look different too.

So you have to also make sure that everybody has at least similar techniques. So it doesn't look like anybody's gone off model.

Jenny Ely: Do you want to give us a quick, like easy definition of what rotoscoping is?

Bill George: Well, I think that the purest definition is just tracing and I don't know where the rotoscope comes from, but [00:25:00] I do know that back then you would put footage. Like, let's say we wanted to take your image and isolate you from it. They had a camera. That was mounted above an animation stand and it would go, it was registered frame by frame.

So you'd just go one frame to the next and go in and draw around the outside. But that took a certain skill too, because if you try and experiment and do that, the edges are going to do this, you just can't get them right. So it's almost like animation where you have to pay attention to the frame before and the frame after and make sure there's a smooth transition between the two.

Otherwise you get this real jitter.

Todd Vaziri: One thing that you remarked about how effects animation when done by rotoscopers or animators, everybody's, you know, okay, let's all do these lightning bolts. Well, every artist's lightning bolt is going to be slightly different. And I've actually noticed that as well. With traditional rotoscoping, when you're rotoing somebody in the foreground, there's, [00:26:00] there's so many different ways to tackle, a rotoscope, either hand drawn or digital with the number of splines and the technique and how many in between frames you want to do. And when it comes to effects animation, that consistency between artists and coordination. And that's why we all look at stuff in dailies to make sure everybody's got the same flavor of lightning bolts or electricity. That's why we do all that, but the same goes for standard foreground rotoscoping where everybody has their own style and it takes a while to get into a rhythm, both with regular rotoscoping and effects animation.

I've done a little bit of digital hand drawn, uh, electricity. And every time I do it, I'm reminded of how painful it is and how difficult it is and how there's a ramp up. You have to get into a rhythm and not just. For your own consistent look or the look that you're trying to go for, but the strength of the branches, how the tributaries go off [00:27:00] and, if this is supposed to be ultra realistic, or if it's supposed to be fanciful, uh, how much flourish to give it. One thing I wanted to say about Ghostbusters 2. We've all worked on a lot of franchises and it's always a challenge to do the same effect over the series of films using new and updated tools, trying to keep that consistency and different people throughout the years. In your case, you know, the original Ghostbusters was done by Boss Film, but ILM did the second film, and those proton packs, they had to feel just like the original. And that's an added layer of pressure for the artists. Like, not only do we have to all be in coordination, but we have to make sure this feels, not necessarily looks, feels like the original movie, which I'm sure must have been a difficult challenge. But yeah, hand drawing is hard.

Bill George: Yes.

Rob Bredow: Bill, when you think back to some of the model shop challenges on that show, I'm really curious to hear how the work was delineated. Cause I, you know, I think about [00:28:00] the ghosts, I think of the other creatures and characters and the effects animation, but there's also a lot of environment work in that film and other models as well.

What were some of the challenges that when you think back, uh, well, that was a, that was a while ago now. Uh, does anything come to mind?

Bill George: Definitely. So yeah, the model shop and the creature shops worked in tandem. Tim Lawrence was the guy who oversaw the creatures, but we, you know, we created a lot of things that helped support them and a good example is what I think is the best sequence in the film, the Statue of Liberty. And so they created the creature.

However, we did all the hard parts. So her helmet and the, torch were model shop pieces and then all the interaction, like the smashing, the police car, which is kind of a fun story that was done by the model shop, for that one, we actually found a little teeny model kit that was in scale with Jim Fye, who was the artist that was inside the rubber suit. And, we lined up the plate car. [00:29:00] To our little wax one. And basically you can kind of see it turns dark as the foot comes over, but Charlie Bailey came up with this great idea. It's so simple. It was a tube inside and he had margarita salt in the tube. And so when the car got smashed, he would just blow into the tube and the margarita salt would come out and look like the smashed windows.

So simple and so effective

Rob Bredow: That's great. So a shot like that, and it was a single, a single take all in one layer in the camera. Was that something that would take. A week or two to plan, or was that many more weeks of a bunch of people to pull off a single shot like that?

Bill George: Well, it was a little bit different back then we, we didn't necessarily, you know, you were given a job, but you weren't given, Oh, this has to be done in four days or whatever. I mean, it was always enforced that we need to be fast, efficient, you know, that's just how you run a business. Right. But we would go in and we try our best. And sometimes we'd look at it in the dailies the next day. And Dennis would say, you know, I just. I [00:30:00] think we're going to have to change the approach or, Oh, you know, we'll make this so much better. And then you go in and you do two or three more takes and then fingers crossed, and then it's approved.

And then you move on. So it's kind of hard to say there was that creative process where Charlie comes up with this idea. It sounds fantastic. He does a little test. We show it to Dennis. He likes it, but until you see it on film, you never really know. And you know, that's one of the wonderful things about Dennis is.

He always was open to those things and there was never you never got in trouble if something didn't work everyone every artist was reinforced, you know, keep trying keep trying because something is going to be great And then we come up with some idea some effect and then it gets used to death

Rob Bredow: That's super fun.

Bill George: Let's see. We also did the Titanic, John Goodson and I built the Titanic for that one shot, which was very fun. I think it was. I don't know It was the library in the film, but it was actually the customs house in New York. We built a large miniature of that, uh, with the whole kind of courtyard out in front.[00:31:00]

To your point, Rob, it was an environmental thing. So that was added into, I believe it was a matte painting or it might've been a location. I'm not sure, but it was at night. So it was fairly forgiving. And then there were all the underground tunnels with the slime. And that was a combination of. Model support, but also the creature people did the slime, which was almost like oil and water.

It was, we use Methocel, but there was an oil structure within it and something we'd used on Innerspace, which is called diamond dust, which is basically a very, very, very fine glitter that goes in makeup like eye shadow, but you can get it in dry form, mix it in things. And when it's in water, especially, it just has this wonderful alive quality.

So we would use that up the wazoo

Todd Vaziri: What did it give you? Did it give you like specularity, like, like foam or,

Bill George: It's, it's like glitter. It looks like a transporter effect. You know, it's

Todd Vaziri: oh, gotcha.

Bill George: Because when you put it in the water, it's suspended, you have to stir it up, but look [00:32:00] at the shots of the slime on the outside of the building, all that movement, that secondary movement in there. It's just the diamond dust.

Rob Bredow: Great That's great.

Now all that slime is backlit, at least down in the canals and everything. So does that mean the model itself had, like a plexi trough for that? So under all be lit and got it.

Bill George: Yes, yes, definitely. So there were certain solid opaque pieces and then there were other ones that were plexiglass so you could backlight it and put some light effects underneath it as well to break up some cucoloris just to give it some variety and then within that there's a couple sequences where out of the slime these tendrils come up and threaten our heroes and those were basically puppets.

They were silicone little puppets that you could control from the side and the little fingers would move around.

Rob Bredow: And then all of this on a tilt table, so you could keep the slime going in a direction, or was that an illusion done with lighting?

Bill George: I think it was done. Gosh, I don't remember it being on an angle because that [00:33:00] would mean that it would always empty itself out. I think that there might've been some sort of current. Set up

Rob Bredow: I see. Okay. Like, basically moving the water, but this this Methocel.

Bill George: Yeah. Yeah, because it wasn't super thick. You could, you know, the methyl cellulose It was a formula. You just mix it with water. It's what they put in milkshakes You can make it super thick or it can be less viscous and more flowy

Todd Vaziri: This, uh, Methocel technique, uh, on plexi, was advanced upon for the incredible, uh, extensive lava sequences from Revenge of the Sith. Many, many years later John Knoll and Roger Guyette and the model shop developed that. And in that particular case, because there were so many passes required for the lava. Uh, it was built tilted so that you can get that consistent flow. Yeah, that was a huge, huge model shop project.

Bill George: I think that was moving slower too.

Todd Vaziri: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Bredow: Creeping forward

Bill George: So [00:34:00] that

Todd Vaziri: As opposed to like rapids, rapids of slime

Bill George: And I think they put crumbled cork on top. So you get that great sense of like a crust on the outside, but the boy, those organic things, you know, just, there's nothing like doing something practical at least back then for sure.

Rob Bredow: There was, I mean, there would have been no way to simulate that. We were before the days where computers could do digital looking things, let alone something analog and organic like that. It just wouldn't have been the right tool for the job in the late eighties.

Well, we can't talk about Ghostbusters without talking about ghosts, um, the ghosts in the show. I mean, from that opening scene in the courtroom boy, a whole number of scenes where they're definitely the star of the show in the Slimer in particular, but all of them actually. And they seem like a combination, at least to my eye, a combination of Work that was done on stage with as much puppeting as possible.

It looked, I think most of it at about human scale, but then a lot of animation, as far as I could tell on an animation stand, in addition to that, right. I'm interested to hear a little bit more about that [00:35:00] breakdown.

Bill George: You know, I think that was a process called pin blocking. Does that sound right? Where you would get the perspective as close as you could being practical on stage. Cause I remember the Scoleri brothers were hung by wires, not just to hold them up, but then the stage hands would have wires so they could spin them

one way or another. And. Yeah, and, you could tell it was under-cranked to get them to move faster. Um, they had animation over the top of them as well, but then I think that went into the pin block, which was essentially like an animation stand. Only it was film, you would photograph the film and you had complete control over where it was in frame.

And it was very smooth. And I think that was a big breakthrough around that time

Just so people have a nice mental image when, when you're talking about animation stand it's as you described a film camera pointed at an animation table. Where they can line up the work in this case, animate, whether it's something hand drawn, or in this case, it's actually photographic elements that they're [00:36:00] now overriding they're doing essentially what we would now think of as a 2d offset, you know, scale, maybe scale, but transforming X and Y, uh, to be able to manipulate those elements that today we take it for granted that that's actually not that hard to do to a layer, but.

Rob Bredow: That was not something that was going to be readily done without the pin blocking technique. And then it would have to expose that frame by frame, either a single element, or where they actually do a layered composite, where they'd be doing an A over B on the animation stand. No, just an element at a time.

Bill George: I just remember it being they would shoot the Scoleri brothers against blue screen. And when they would photograph the pin block, the blue screen would be around them. You had to make sure that they didn't break the edge of frame. Of course, it was shot on VistaVision, but it was hard to go 1 to 1. It was usually to shrink them down. You know, and have, have the move around the frame swing back and forth, track them into something like the attorney that he's dragging across the top of the ceiling. And of course, there were two passes for that. They took the ceiling out so they could hang her by wires and then they [00:37:00] put the ceiling back in.

And I noticed last night, there's not a lot of camera movement in a lot of our effect shots. They're fairly static, which is a big plus as well

Rob Bredow: Yeah, an indicator of the era and probably the budget all these shots done time. we got question in from Cameron Target, that says, you know, with so much innovation taking place during the digital revolution in the early days of ILM, or those kind of middle days of ILM in your experience, so what technologies or techniques, make you feel like the magic is still alive or how does the current visual effects work stack up in terms of innovation compared to the days When you first started Bill at ILM where like every day, it seemed new technique was being invented.

Although in that case, it was more, uh, practical and chemical than it was digital.

Bill George: It's, you know, to me, it's all very much the same. It's being creative and it's solving problems. It's just, things are so much easier now. I think I appreciate how much easier we can [00:38:00] do things and what it allows us to do, like camera movement, that type of thing. of course, you have to be careful that it doesn't just become innovation for innovation effects.

But when it comes down to a good idea, a strong idea is the most important thing to have on any of these projects.

Jenny Ely: I love that question because I think there's, we talked to so many people on this podcast and so many people that work at ILM and they got into this industry because they saw these films that you've touched so many of that they wanted to know how it was done and how it was made. But I think for a lot of people like myself, it was just magic, you know, it was, it was escapism.

And so I think, you know, when we're so close to it on the inside of how it's getting made, we don't really always think about what the, what a child is seeing or what the general audience is seeing. And for me, that was, you know, I'm not a visual effects artist, but it's the reason. That I wanted to get into this industry and work for this company, because that was, when I was a kid, I didn't want to know, you know, how R2D2 was made.

I wanted to be R2D2 and I [00:39:00] didn't want to know how Slimer was shot. I wanted to be Slimer. So I think just knowing that you can still get that magic, whether it was practical or digital, there's still people out there that they only see that side of it and it doesn't matter what the tool is that's bringing it that that's the end game, that's the end result is to suck people in and have them believe that they're in a reality.

Todd Vaziri: One of the things I like to, when I, when it comes to innovation, there's a cynical take, like, Oh boy, things were changing so quickly in the, heydays of ILM, the early days of the model shop and optical, and then the early days of digital things were every year things were changing and, that pace hasn't exactly, continued.

And I would. And I would push back on that on many fronts, not the least of which is the volume and fidelity that is required for today's projects is unfathomable. Compared to even 15, 20 years ago, not to mention the true innovations that we've been doing, stagecraft and so many other techniques.

One thing [00:40:00] that comes to mind is that, I was lucky enough to work on Rise of the Resistance with Bill is can you imagine doing Rise of the Resistance at any other time? I mean, that show is so complicated, the visuals, like trying to imagine. And if anybody has been on Rise of the Resistance , they'll know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, it's hard to describe. You just have to ride it. Just even when we were working on it trying to visualize what is this going to be and Construction happening at the same time as visual effects the same time is that all the animatronics everything happening on top of each other the problem solving that we had to do Uh, not to mention the photo real, not to mention the high quality and everything, but just solving our, our problems with moving viewers on stationary screens and all this business.

It was so invigorating, working on that show, and there would be a particular problem. I think it was just before the [00:41:00] escape pods, launched at the end of it, and we were trying to transition from one thing to another and we're like, how do we do this? How do we do this? And I can't remember if it was David Weitzberg or you or whoever it was, who just came up with this idea of an explosion that covers up the thing that was causing us a problem.

And hey, wait a second, that explo-, wait, these guests are going to be able to see it, but they aren't going to be able to see it. This is cool. This is totally going to work. And you know, the problem solving in order to serve the story in order to finish the project. So this stuff still happens to this day. It doesn't matter what tools there are.

Bill George: It's very true. So I had uh a story about something that Slimer taught me. And that was in the first film, it was a, it was a really crude creature. It was just basically a big, cool sculpture bag that they put on this, this slight girl. And she ran around and jumped up and down so successful, so charming, so wonderful.

Well, when we took Slimer on for the second show, they thought, Oh, we're going to put all the bells and [00:42:00] whistles in it. So they had all these like motors that move the face and the pulled the teeth out and the eyes could bug out and all these things. But you know what? It became very stiff.

It could do all these things and they were impressive. But when it came to performance, just having a big floppy sculpture for some reason worked better. And it just showed me how sometimes. The simpler solution is definitely the better solution and not only a simpler solution, but the cheaper solution,

Bill George: but good filmmakers will take limitations and they'll figure out a way to make them work like with Spielberg and E. T. Spielberg and Bruce in Jaws, you know, figure out a way to present it to the audience that works for what you have

Rob Bredow: and it also leans on the talent of that performer, giving that performer that range of motion they need to bring that character to life. It's interesting how the simplicity and the real time feedback, which is a lesson that it was just as true then as it is now, [00:43:00] uh, when we are doing. Real time feedback for people's, de-aging or face swapping on stage when they can see themselves on a monitor.

And see what they look like at a different age. It changes the way they perform. Sometimes even themselves, they just see themselves at a younger age in a mirror that we set up in a video screen that changes the way they carry themselves. Cause they're like, Oh yeah, at that age, I hold my shoulders this way, or I positioned my back this way.

Or if they're playing a completely different character, a great actor will look at themselves as somebody they're trying to mimic or somebody they're trying to become when they get in the costume and they get in, Even if it's a digital replacement of their face, they can see that and respond to it.

And just as true then as it is now. I think

Another thing I noticed as I was watching the credits for Ghostbusters 2. It was funny. I was thinking I was getting overly nostalgic about, uh, the, the few, the small crew size that came together to create this illusion and how successful it was.

And it was a very ambitious show, but you know, there were only maybe 40, 45 names in the ILM credit, maybe 50. [00:44:00] And I was like, wow, look at the small team that pulled off this show. And then there was this line that says “plus 200 more artists and technicians at Industrial Light & Magic.” And I realized, oh, this was a huge crew.

I was reading into this in a way that was completely inaccurate. These were large teams working in the day on these shows.

Bill George: The way it was back then, in fact, when I first started there in 81, uh, if you worked on Star Trek, Poltergeist, and E. T., you had to pick one of them to get a credit on. You couldn't get credit on all three. And that was unfair for some people.

Rob Bredow: Yeah, but it tends to be a thing even today, getting enough credits for everyone who's on the show. And people. Don't even realize how many people touch these shows today. and just like then that there's people that don't make the credits who put a lot of work into these films. So it's an interesting thing to see that has persisted for 40 years.

Well, that takes us to our martini. Uh, our martini is named after the last shot of a day on set. It's also the last [00:45:00] segment of our show where we each highlight one thing we think would be cool and that people who are interested in visual storytelling think is cool as well. Todd, do you want to get us kicked off with your martini today?

Todd Vaziri: Sure, it's Halloween season. So that means scary movies and I love watching scary movies in October. I wanted to do a two quick movie recommendations because scary movies are not everybody's cup of tea. Some folks just can't handle it. I'm not, I mean, horror movies. People can argue all day about what is a horror movie, you know, the genre, the boundaries of the genre.

I have no interest in having those arguments. I just like to call them scary movies. So, I thought I would recommend two scary movies. One potentially as your first scary movie or a scary movie for kids. And that's gonna probably surprise a lot of people. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Now, Star Trek 2, not only probably the best Star Trek movie, with models made by one William George, it has some genuinely [00:46:00] scary stuff in it. If it was MPAA rated today, it would probably get a PG 13, it got a PG at the time. And, particularly there's some creatures and just, you know, Ricardo Montalban's performance as Khan is creepy in and of itself. But there's particular creatures in the movie that might haunt uh, a movie goer for decades to come. But even outside of that, there are some truly scary moments in the movie. And I think that can be. A good first movie, particularly for kids, they might balk at the dated nature of Star Trek two, but, uh, it's a pretty good guarantee that they're going to get wrapped up by the end of the movie. And maybe even be a little emotional, like every time I see it

And then, For the grownups, I, you know, Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is not exactly a jump scare type of movie, but it is gory. It is Gothic. It is romantic. One thing I really admire about that movie. is that there is not a lazy [00:47:00] shot in that movie. It is, from top to bottom, the costumes, the makeup, the cinematography, the performances, every shot is just oozing, uh, sometimes literally. Um, and it is, again, not everybody's cup of tea. But I adore that movie. It's one of my comfort movies, which is pretty odd. Uh, I know but uh, yeah Bram Stoker's Dracula and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Those are my

Jenny Ely: I love Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's so good. It's on my October rotation. I watch it every Halloween season.

Rob Bredow: Thank you, Todd. Bill George.

Bill George: Um, so the other night my husband and I were watching TV and we watched a couple episodes of our favorite shows. And then he started just scanning and he went into the Academy app and he found this movie and we're both like, what the hell is that? And it was called Sasquatch Sunset. And so

Jenny Ely: I love it already.

Bill George: We were like, is this animated?

What is this thing? And so, you know, it's on the Academy app. So we started [00:48:00] watching it. We watched the whole film now. It's grotesque, it's hilarious, it's bizarre, and we both absolutely loved it. And I think if you're a filmmaker, it's a really important film to watch because there's not a single word of dialogue in it.

It's just grunts and groans. And for me, it allows this time for your, it's almost like a meditation. Like it's going so slow. they'll have these. Closeups of people just watching each other that go on, it seems like a long time. It's never boring, but your mind starts thinking like, what is going on? What is going on?

And I found it very compelling after we were done watching it. I went onto IMDB and the negative reviews are equally as entertaining.

Todd Vaziri: This sounds like my kind of movie.

Bill George: It is, Todd, it is so strange and stupid, and I absolutely loved it

Rob Bredow: Fantastic. Well, we will link to that in the show notes and we'll see if there's an easy [00:49:00] ways for those of you who are not Academy members to get to watch that one, but look for a screening it's probably at least in some limited viewing near you.

Jenny Ely: I'll find it. I'll dig it out.

Rob Bredow: Thank you for highlighting that

Bill George: It's out there. Definitely.

Rob Bredow: and, Jenny.

Jenny Ely: Yeah. So I had a hard time picking my martini for this episode because I love Halloween and I love October. I love everything about it. So I decided to pick. Halloween for my martini. Um, I can't talk about all the scary movies that I love because it would take forever, but I have always loved Halloween.

It's always been my favorite holiday. I love to dress up. I love fun costumes. I got married on Halloween. I had a Halloween themed wedding. But I guess specifically I'll talk about my costume this year, which is sitting behind me.

It is Slimer. My husband built this for me. It is a hybrid of all of the Slimers, but mainly based on Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters animated show. And then a little bit from, I think you were talking about, specifically the one that ILM did that we have [00:50:00] in a case in the building at ILM in San Francisco.

So he modeled it after that. He made it out of foam. It fits me. I can wear it. the eyes light up. I don't know if you can see that, but we were inspired by the Scoleri brothers because of the way that their eyes light up in Ghostbusters 2. And I have a lime green bodysuit with gloves and my face looks out of the mouth there. It's actually a work in progress right now, but it glows in the dark.

Day glows in blacklight. And I love this thing. So I will link pictures to it on my Instagram. I will link to my husband's Instagram. He's a VFX artist, but also just an amazing artist. So, um, yes, I love Halloween. I watch The Burbs every year. Bill George, which I know you also worked on that. That's one of my favorite October movies too. So, uh, yeah, I'm going to be jazzed up all month. Cause I love this.

Rob Bredow: Super fun. Thank you, Jenny. Um, my. Martini for today is going to be Scriptnotes. It's my favorite podcast. [00:51:00] And they are a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And they have, not only been an incredible inspiration to me over the last, about 10 years or so that they've been doing that podcast, I've learned so much about storytelling and about writing from John August and Craig Mazin, who co host, That podcast.

So if you have any interest in the creative process of filmmaking, I highly recommend the podcast and they've certainly provided a huge inspiration for this show. Um, since Todd and I've been talking about doing an ILM podcast for more than five years together, it has been our one constant point of reference as a model of what a show could sound like and how it could be a service to the community.

So hopefully we're achieving, you know, some percentage of what they are achieving in terms of inspiring you. But, um, I recommend if you haven't listened to ScriptNotes, take a listen. If you are looking for a first episode, uh, listen to episode 660. It is about Moneyball and it is a fantastic movie and [00:52:00] a great breakdown of some of the things that make successful.

And as a bonus, ILM gets a mention. It just so happens to be that John August went to London and, Enjoyed seeing ABBA Voyage there, which is work that we did. And he just does a call out to the great work that ILM did on the show. So that was very nice to get a shout out from Scriptnotes unexpectedly.

Thank you for listening to the lighter, darker podcast. If you have a question for the show, or you'd like to suggest a future topic, we would love to hear from you. Email us at lighterdarker@ILM.Com. You can also contact us on social media. If you'd like, all of our links will be in the show notes, or you can find us on ILM.com/lighterdarker. The transcripts are also going to be at that URL. Thank you so much for leaving reviews and feedback on the show. We like hearing from you there. If you haven't already leave us a review, give us a good review. If you can, and share us with your friends who might be interested in the show.

Lots of people are finding the podcast and this is very encouraging for us. We want to thank Industrial Light and Magic [00:53:00] for hosting the Lighter Darker podcast. This 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, led by Greg Grusby, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help make this show happen. So thank you for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast. And until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.