(Science Fiction Filme) First of all, I would like to thank youfor your time doing this Interview. I think you´re work havegot a huge fan base here in Germany. Especially because forfilms like MIB, THE BLOB, BATMAN RETURNS, and theSTAR TREK and STAR WARS-Franchise of course.  A lot ofmovie maniacs know the films you´re involved.  Could youplease tell us what you did before you come into filmbusiness? Why have you chosen the way of being into sfx/ vfx?

 

Harold Weed) As a kid, I was always really into Ray Harryhausen films, Godzilla and Ultraman. Along with any James Bond movie that would come out. I’d watch planet of the apes whenever it came on TV.

 

So I guess fantasy was always interesting to me. And I knew from an early age, maybe 10 years old, I wanted to work in the film industry. That’s really young! I know! But I knew it in my heart that that’s what I wanted to do. Thankfully, my love of fantasy and my desire to be somehow in the film industry actually worked out.

 

SFF.) What was your first film you were working on and howdid you get the job?

 

H.W.) The first film I ever worked on was called Dracula‘s Disciple in 1981. It was a low budget independent film being made in San Francisco by a company named FOOTLOOSE FILMS. The way I found out about it was from posters put on telephone poles asking for people to help them make the movie. They would train you in lighting or camera or whatever skill you wanted as long as you would help them make this movie on the weekends. That was my point of entry where I met people who were professionals and later help me get my first professional gigs where I was earning a living, making film.

 

SFF.) Are there people and artists in your industry that you sayhave been instrumental in pushing visual effects workforward, such as Douglas Trumbull or even the Lydecker brothers?

 

H.W.) Yes, Douglas Trumbull is a standout. His revolutionary work on 2001 space odyssey changed the way visual effect shots for spaceships would be done forever. Gone were the days of spaceships flying on wires across the stage like Buck Roger’s.

 

Also, I would say the work of Dick Smith and Rick Baker Were revolutionary for prosthetic makeup effects. Films like Altered Dtates in American Werewolf in London took  creature transformations to a whole new level. I was part of that puppet monster world for a long while making molds and building things with foam and rubber. Rick and Dick were the heroes of a monster making Historical part of the film industry back in the 80s.

 

SFF) What is your opinion abouteducation to become an expert in sfx/ vfx? Is there anyrequirement or talent you need to have next to enthusiasm?

 

H.W.)  To get into special effects for film and enthusiasm and keen interest are essential. It’s a lot of fun but the bottom line is it’s also a lot of research and a lot of work. Many many hours for seconds on film. I find it very rewarding to create these illusions. I started before there were computers so you had to rely on Your imagination on how to create these shots.

 

Stop motion, animation, combined with rear projection maybe? Hand, animation, combined with puppets perhaps? Before computers you really had to rely on your history comment and knowledge of affects work and dream it up out of nowhere.

 

 

SFF) You've worked on films by many well-known directors. Is it a great difficulty to realize the visions of each director?

 

H.W.) Yes, very much so. A knowledge of film is a kind of shorthand between the visual effects artists and the director. There’s a lot of referencing of films both have seen together to come up with the look and feel of the effect that they’re looking for. So I would highly recommend watching a lot of seminal films that have special effects and reading as much as you can about how those were accomplished.

 

Every movie has its own particular look and feel. In the film industry that’s called “show style“. You want your effects to fit seamlessly right into the rest of the film. You want them to be on “show style“. It’s talked about quite a bit behind the scenes.

 

SFF.)   You were starting your career in the glorious decade ofthe end 70s til 90s. What do you think about that time? Whydo people love this period of movies?

 

H.W.) I think there’s a fascination with handcrafted special effects. It has a tangible quality to it and a certain reality limitation. There was also an appreciation for visual effects back in the 70s that I don’t know we see in audiences these days. Seeing a science fiction film with lots of special effects was rare back in those days. I can’t stress how rare it was. So there was agratitude from audiences that loved science fiction when they saw even an attempt at a big visual effect moment.

 

I remember my mother went and saw Star Wars in 1977 and came home and told me that there was a scene where aliens from all over the galaxy were all at a bar together. It was  Gratitude from audiences that loved science fiction when they saw even an attempt at a big visual effect moment.

 

I remember my mother Joyce Weed went and saw Star Wars in 1977 and came home and told me that there was a scene where aliens from all over the galaxy were all at a bar together. It was a moment in science fiction literature that was described all the time, but she never thought she’d actually see that in a movie. I don’t know that audiences have the same sense of wonder we did back then. But I know they still appreciate good special effects.

 

SFF.) In the world of effects, there are a lot of professions thatare unfortunately not known to the general public.  That isunfortunately the case. Can you please give us a definition ofcertain descriptions of your work?

 

H.W.) I started out making rubber monsters. Meaning sculpting with clay, making plaster molds, using rubber mask materials to make a casting and then painting them. Then putting my arm inside them and performing! It was a really fun time.

 

From there I started working more in miniatures. So, miniature buildings, miniature airplanes, miniature worlds. It’s a whole separate type of work with different materials and a different precision aesthetic.

 

Then I transitioned to doing digital visual effects. So I’m now a digital model supervisor but I had to train myself after work on old computers to figure out how to build models in a computer. A lot of the skills that I had from building Practical models with wood and plaster, actually translated to how I would build my computer graphics models. My brain would figure out the puzzle breaking everything down into pieces and I would use the same logic when I would do the computer work.

 

SFF) In 1983 you were hired by Chris Walas for GREMLINS. Shortly before that you workedon a low budget movie called DRACULAS DISCIPLINE. How did a 19-year-old at the time come to Chris Walas?

 

H.W.) On Dracula’s Disciple I met an artist about the same age as me named Brent Baker. He ended up getting a job at Chris Willis’s shop on Gremlins. Near the end of Gremlins they needed more shop artists to help build extra gremlins for the theater scene where they’re all singing “Hi Ho” to Snow White. So Brent got CWI to talk to me and I took the summer and worked at Chris’s shop. It was so exciting. I didn’t expect things to keep going after that and I thought I would probably go back to college. But things kept rolling and here I am almost 40 years later still working in special effects.

 

SFF) In 1997, after THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, you left “traditional” SFX (whatever you call it) and wentdigital. Why this decision?

 

H.W.) I was working at Industrial Light & Magic, the company that built the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park. It was kind of a magical time where the film world became suddenly obsessed with digital visual effects. I got caught up in that fascination and wondered if I could also do those kinds of effects. There was no formal way to transition from working in the model shop to working on a computer in the computer graphics department so I just stayed late and got permission to mess around on an old computer. Eventually that turned into some formal training at ILM and they hired me as a computer artist. It was really being in the right place at the right time.

 

SFF) You were also involved in the special edition of theSTAR WARS films and also played some of the creatures anddesigned them. How exactly do I have to imagine this work? George Lucas came in and said: “Hey, let's bring in mor monsters? ”

 

H.W.)There were moments in the 1977 Star Wars that were big compromises for George. So when it came time to do some special edition work, he had a laundry list of moments that needed some additional work. I was still at the model shop so I was tasked with sculpting and performing the cat wall, which is a creature he wanted to add to the Cantina. And then later for the Empire strikes back special edition I was the Supervisor of the team that built the Wampa creature, and I was inside the suit doing the performance.  Yes it was hot inside that suit!

 

SFF) Film artists are often asked how it was to work withdirectors/actors and so on. Usually the answers are alwayspositive. But who would you rather not work with again andwhy?

 

H.W.)  I wouldn’t want to spill any tea about working with actors while we’re trying to do special effects with them on set. I’ll be quite honest, we ask allot from actors, who are just people, and sometimes put through a gauntlet of hell. And sometimes they let us know that our make-up or our mechanical contraptions are drivied g them crazy. And there’s some antagonism, but I will tell you, they are just people doing a job. A tough job.

 

I’ve had to remind coworkers that sometimes even they come to the set and they’re not in the best of moods. That they were difficult to work with on certain days. And they’re not inside some kind of mechanical puppet or being hung from the ceiling with skinny little wires. So I give a lot of latitude to anybody who will work with the effects departments to get these weird shots.

 

SFF) In addition to STAR WARS, you have also worked on STAR TREK, including Matte World. I also had theopportunity to interview Michael Pangrazio, the co-founder ofmatte World. What was special about this collaboration? Whatwere the differences to ILM?

 

H.W.)   Myself and model maker John Goodson formed a company to work with Matteworld on a gamut of projects. There are a few 3-D moments where we built miniatures that were filmed on a stage, but the majority of the work was building historical buildings and miniature so they could be photographed and that could be transferred to a glass mat painting. They later became a digital company, but it was very valuable for them to have miniatures photographed that they can then incorporate into their Matt paintings. That was our primary function.

 

SFF) It seems, looking at your filmography, that you can do everything: Sculpting, model making, digital work etc etc. Even considering past times: What do you think is yourpersonal preference? What do you or what did you like doing the most from a creative perspective?

 

H.W.)   Well of all of the types of work I can do what I appreciate the most is being able to contribute creatively. So if I’m sculpting with clay, if I can plus out a design by adding some of my own ideas, I really appreciate that. The same thing goes for make up or for doing digital work. Of course I’ll deliver the vision of the art department and the director, but I love it when all I have is a Napkin sketch. And they’re hoping that I can bring the idea to life.

 

If you’re asking what I like more practical effects or a digital effects? I’d say I’ve reached a peak enjoyment with both. And some lows with both. Like I said before special effects is a lot of work. Work with a capital W. Sometimes it’s great fun and sometimes it’s exhausting.

 

SFF.) You work for both: cinema and television-series. Couldyou please give us an overview of the extent to which theworking methods in these media are different?

 

H.W.)  Back in the 80s and 90s television wasn’t budgeted as big as it is now. So there was a huge golf difference between working on a future film and working on a television show. The money and the schedule were very different between the two.

 

That said, there were challenges that an artist would rise to if the money wasn’t huge or the schedule wasn’t long. There was always a point of pride where you wanted to deliver something that looked good, no matter what. And you would bend the rules and put in the extra time to make sure that was the case. With a TV show it’s all about shortcuts and working without a safety net.

 

With features it’s all about building something that’s going to hold up on a gigantic screen and that will deliver on set with actors who Are Only having a limited time to shoot visual effects. So everything needs to work seamlessly. A different kind of pressure.

 

SFF.) Can you tell me about your work for the television series STAR TREK – THE NEXT GENERATION? Whatexactly were the biggest hurdles here, also with regard to thetime component?

 

H.W.)  I got involved on Star Trek the next generation being part of the crew that built the new enterprise. Bill George and Greg Gene were the key artists and I was an assistant. I learned a lot about building film quality very large scale spaceships on that show. Pattern making and molding and casting and rigging things to be supported by Rods from different points and electrical systems. And I learned it from the best.

 

 I worked on the far point creature from the first episode. Larry Tan had built a kind of transparent melting city that would become this star jellyfish. And I was the creature guy on the crew so I’m the one that made the more organic final result of the creature that we see at the end of the episode. That was a big clay sculpture that was casting fiberglass and lots of lights put in it. They put a lot of Vaseline on the lens to make that creature look OK.

 

SFF) Let's be honest. You've worked on countless great filmslike INNER SPACE, THE FLY, STAR TREK - THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, ENEMY MINE, ARACHNOPHOBIA, TRANSFORMERS or SUPER 8 andyou've only been nominated once for an award. Does that hurt or what counts for you in your cinematic life?

 

H.W.)  The way these big visual effects films work is when it’s time for awards and credit. The visual effects company is interested in promoting someone who will be marketed to get them their next film. So pretty much all of the credit ends up going to one person and they’re the ones that are going to go and try to get the next movie for the company. That’s just the reality of business. Within the company there’s a lot of acknowledgment from coworkers and co-artists. There’s a lot of little awards and congratulations going around inside the company.

 

So I’m not salty about any of that at all. Honestly, I’m just glad I was there to work on these major projects and be a part of the industry in a way that I never imagined I could’ve been.

 

SFF) Which movie would you say you wish you hadn'tworked on? For whatever reason.

 

H.W.)  I wish I could’ve worked on John Carpenters the thing. That came out just before I really got my first job is doing creature effects. And it still holds up as one of the supreme accomplishments of that era.

 

I also wish I could’ve worked on nightmare before Christmas.I interviewed for that movie and did an audition sculpture.  I interviewed for that movie and did an audition sculpture, but it didn’t come together unfortunately. The movie went on to be such an iconic piece of cinema. And it just slipped out of my fingers, unfortunately.

 

SFF.) If you look at one of your works from today's point ofview, what would you do differently with today's means, or isthere perhaps nothing at all?

 

H.W.) For Innerspace, I built this dissolved villain skeleton, but it was only as tall as a G.I. Joe doll. And it fills the frame at the end of the movie. Floating in stomach acid. I had no idea it was going to be that huge on the screen and I wish I had an opportunity to build it much bigger and more detailed.

 

SFF) Is it easier to work with a director who thinks in big, fantastic images or can that be rather counterproductive foryour work?

 

H.W.) I’m always interested in working with a director who has a huge vision. Honestly, that’s the biggest limitation in my field. The key creative’s imagination. Dream big everybody! We’re up to the challenge.

 

SFF) For many decades, handmade, practical special effects in films were an integral part of the fantastic field. Then, at somepoint, CGI took over. Do you think there's a film thatrepresents a kind of end of the line in classic sfx? If so, whichone and why?

 

H.W.) Jurassic Park wasn’t the end of practical special effects, but it sure changed the course of film history. From that point forward all of Hollywood wanted to tap into that technology. Projects were Greenlet just to showcase that kind of work and hopefully get butts in seats to see those films. Films like Dragonheart and twister were both Green lit anticipating that we were going to see something we’ve never seen before. It was kind of a strange time of unjustified CG bloat on the screen.

 

SFF) It can be observed that in today's movies and TV seriesthere is a kind of renaissance of the "good old" special effects. What do you think people associate with these grandiose visual effects? Why are people turning back to them? Is it an overkill of visual impressions?

 

H.W.) Yeah, that’s all very odd to me being in the industry. My philosophy is to use the best tool for the job. How it’s done should be irrelevant. But now we’ve got a behind the scenes culture. People wanna be shown the magic trick from the inside out and they wanna make somejudgment about how the trick was accomplished.

 

I get that there’s a nostalgia.  Judgment about how the trick was accomplished.

 

I get that there’s a nostalgia for puppetry and it’s great to see detailed models of spaceships being photographed on a stage. It pulls on the nostalgia's heart strings.

 

I just look at it as I want to see something that looks amazing. I’m always looking at it from the point of view of the audience. Who’s being told a story. People are very sophisticated these days on how visual effects are made, and the idea is to keep them off balance so they really don’t know what’s going on behind the magic.

 

SFF.) You have worked for over 30 years in the film industry in various positions. Which ones didyou particularly enjoy and/or were there films where you wereunder a lot of pressure?

 

H.W.)  It’s all been an interesting ride, but I will say that my hair went completely white on one film. From stress. And that was Congo. I was in charge of designing a set that was supposed to look like a volcano was erupting and the landscape was collapsing. It really was a huge challenge and I think the final look of the shots was pretty great but at the time I was way out of my depth.

 

SFF) When you worked on a model for a film, for example BATMAN RETURNS what was your approach? Howaccurate were the templates or did you use a lot of kitbashing?

 

H.W.) Everything we worked on for Batman Returns was highly designed. It all had that Tim Burton aesthetic. John Goodson and I would get printouts from a fax machine and we would tape them together and use those as our blueprints. Like for the bat that reflects the bat symbol into Wayne Manor. That was highly designed. We just had to faithfully reproduce everything in 3-D and get that signed off on. I’m over simplifying but really we had a roadmap for that film that was very specific.

 

SFF.) Do you have a project you always wanted to do or arethere something in progress we can enjoy in the future?

 

H.W.) Right now I’m working on a film called Wildwood being made at LAIKA Studios up in Portland Oregon. It’s massive and beautiful and terrifying. I think audiences are really going to enjoy it.

 

SFF.) Like many very good works for little screentime in otherfilms. Doesn't that annoy you when you only ever see thefruits of your labor so briefly?

 

H.W.) How briefly the work we do in special effects is seen, becomes very apparent when an artist needs to cut together shots from films that they worked on to showcase their work. Years and years of work can literally be boiled down to a few minutes. But the cool thing is, it’s a few minutes that everyone remembers the most.

 

SFF.) What do you think of your kind of work in film? Is itjust a technical one or is it art? Do modelling get enoughrecognition nowadays?

 

H.W.) It’s definitely not just a technical job. I’d say 90% of the work is artistic. You’re creating things and presenting them and getting feedback and iterating and changing and working with the director and it’s all just a big creative free-for-all. I love that part about the job. You’re talking to the art director and the cinematographer and the director and Working to make sure everything‘s going to come together.

 

I’d say computer graphics has become reliant on an assembly line process these days. Not what it used to be when Jurassic Park came out and everyone was just figuring things out for the first time. There’s software programs now that can be used to schedule and track every aspect of computer graphics visual effects work. There’s no doubt that the work will get done in a very predictable specific way. Where the secret sauce still lives with the artists, putting their work on the screen and trying to get a big smile.

 

SFF) What is more difficult to design: real existing objects orthose that are imagined?

 

H.W.)  Different artists have different answers for this, but I’m more of a fantasy leaning kind of guy. I don’t ave much creative interest in reproducing something that’s real. I’d much rather be making a crazy looking alien or a cool looking spaceship then re-creating the Chrysler building or figuring out the feathers in an eagle and making that perfect. No thank you. Give me the fantasy stuff every time.

 

SFF.) Imagine you meet an extraterrestrial one day. He wantsto know why you were stuck into movies with just one movieto explain, which will it be and why?

 

H.W.) Tell the alien that I was in Star Wars, the Empire strikes back specifically to make the audience gasp. That was the moment George was looking for when Luke is waking up and sees the creature in the cave. George wanted to convey a moment of “oh no“. I think we got there.

 

SFF.)  I held up with the most important question to the end: What was the most difficult effect/ model you were workingon and why?

 

H.W.) For Fire in the sky, there was a shot where the actor looks up and sees an alien saucer that is kind of starting to glow like an upside down volcano. They wanted the ship to be organically dissolving and revealing shards of light.

 

So John Goodson and I made a big Transparent spaceship shape and covered it in maple syrup. Then took pieces of silk and laid them into the syrup in long fingers. Then I took really, really thin pieces of Styrofoam and painted them black using streaks and tips hairspray. Because that won’t dissolve Styrofoam. And I arrange them on the sticky silk so that it completely Covered The clear saucer shape. Like a bunch of black potato chips all over a big spaceship. And then we put a huge light underneath this shape. The black Styrofoam pieces obscured the light. And then to make the transformation happen we would spray the Styrofoam with acetone while pulling on the Silk strips. So you got kind of this effect of everything kind of dissolving and light starting to come through it was a big big mess but the effect we got looks like something you could only do in computer graphics these days. But we did it with maple syrup and Styrofoam.

 

SFF.) Dear Mr. Weed. I thank you immensely for taking time doing this interview and wish you all the best for your futuremovie making.

 

H.W.)  It was my pleasure and I hope I gave you a a few good examples of my weird profession.