124 - Push the Button - The Curious Career of Jeff Okun - The Filmumentaries Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:36):
Welcome to you, episode one hundred and twenty four of
the Filmingmentaries podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Benning, and as ever,
you're in for about an hour of behind the scenes
stories from the people who helped make the movies we love.
Thanks for tuning into my recent episode with Vicky Sampson,
who gave us a crash course in the world of
sound editing ADR and even stolen returning the Jedi Reels.

(00:58):
I must get back on the podcast because we need
that story for this podcast, and it really felt like
there were so many more stories from Vicky that we
could hear about. Before we jump into this week's chat,
just a reminder that you can support the podcast in
a couple of ways. Head to Filmmentaries dot creator, dash
spring dot com. I'll put it in the show notes.

(01:18):
A bit of a mouthful that one for some nerdy
but stylish merch. I've got irvincursion of T shirts, et sweaters, Filmingmentaries, mugs,
all that good stuff. And if you'd rather support the
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lets you decide whether it's a one off, a monthly thing,

(01:42):
or an annual thing. So yeah, one twelve dollars payment
on Patreon supports the show for an entire year. And
a huge thank you to those of you that already
support the podcast. It really does help keep this going,
trust me, and I really need more of you to
support the podcast to be able to justify the effort
the time that goes into this. Right onto today's guest,

(02:03):
Jeff oaken Now. Jeff has one of those careers that
feels like a film history course in itself. He's been
a visual effects supervisor for decades and came into the
business via Saul Bass, of all people, learning everything from
editing to shooting to compositing before or digital was even
an option. He went on to work on The Last
star Fighter, Stargate, Deep Blue Sea, Blood, Diamond Sphere, and

(02:26):
loads more. And he's got a wicked sense of humor,
very dry sense of humor. He did want to be
a comedian as well. He has an eye for invisible
effects and a habit of sneaking moose and penguins into
his shots. Yes really, as I say in the interview.
There really should be a YouTube video of this. Maybe
after hearing this, you want to go and make that

(02:47):
video yourself. So here's my chat with visual effects legend
Jeff Oaken, and I'll be back at the end for
a bit more jabbering on. So, Jeff, thanks for joining

(03:11):
me today. What inspired you? What was your sort of
early interest in movies visual effects? And then how did
you kind of translate that into something where you thought,
this is how I'm going to break into the industry.
Did it happen like that?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
No, I'm not at all. I'm a completely accidental human being.
I had a very unique upbringing. I guess you know
what I wanted to be. I think everybody knows I
wanted to be a stand up comic since my early ages,
and I wrote out a really great routine on the

(03:44):
pointlessness of God. And my parents were so shocked that
I never did comedy in front of them ever. Again,
they did not like that routine. But what's important to
notice note for me is that my neighborhood, so we
grew up. I grew up on the poor side of

(04:06):
bel Air, which people have a hard time with that,
but we lived in normal houses. We were by the
freeway that hadn't been built yet, you know. But to
my right lived Andrew McLoughlin, who is a great director
who did Gun Smoke and Have Gun Will Travel in
a bunch of Western feature films like The Guns of

(04:27):
navarroon and on the left. I had eventually this composer
named Jeff Alexander who wrote scores for movies, and he
invited me to go down there and watch them score
a movie, which was intensely impressive. But I think, you know,

(04:50):
talk of rambling. So my dad was a dentist, and
he was a dentist to the stars and people that
he dentled on when they had emergencies, they'd always swing
by the house. So we had the likes of Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Lana Truhner Turner, Jean Barry, and

(05:13):
Keenan Wynn, who I know, nobody will know who that
is was my godfather. His dad was Ed Wynd. If
you don't know who that is, you need to look
him up because he is the best comic actor ever.
So we had all these movie star types coming into
the house all the time, and we go down to

(05:34):
Westwood Village and you'd see somebody that I didn't know
who they were, but my mom would go agog over it,
you know, and I tripped over their feet and she
would just be thrilled. And Andy, whose son Josh is
like the first ad and a producer for you know,

(05:57):
Jim Cameron and a bunch of other people. And his sister,
you know, is a producer who does really great films.
So when I was young, I'm talk at five to six,
we had a fence between the two houses and on
a weekend if they were having a pool party, you'd
see John Wayne's head go bobbing across the fence, and

(06:18):
James Arnest and then Richard Boone and various other people.
So I would go over there and John Wayne would
bounce me on his knee and he would say to me,
there ain't a horse that can't be rode, and there
ain't a man who can't be thrown, and then he'd

(06:39):
throw me in the pool. He bounced the off the
sneed at the pool. So I love that. And then
Andys father was Victor McLaughlin who won an Academy Award
for acting. So five years old, I got to hold
an oscar. So given all that I had a split
major in life, if one was money and the other

(07:03):
was trickery. So when comedy failed at home, I took
up magic. And as I got deeper and deeper into magic,
you know, it became like, oh, I'm doing some really
cool stuff here. And my dad had a Super eight camera,
and I would buy Super eight film and use his

(07:24):
camera without him knowing it, you know, and basically I
would do George Maylay's kind of visual effects, you know,
magic cuts and trick double exposure, you know. And then
I would steal my dad's nikon and go take pictures
and do all kinds of crazy stuff. And then I
would build model ships and get the both cameras out

(07:47):
and I would set them on fire and then blow
them up, you know. And then one of my dad's
friends was my dad was a huge golfer, so he
played golf with all these people. Was I can't remember
the guy's name, but he was a stunt man. And
if you go back in the commercial world, he did
Laura Scutter potato chips. It's like very very old. And

(08:10):
he drove the cars in you know, a lot of
the James Bond anyway, and he would teach me stunt tricks,
and so I'd get all my friends together and then
on Roscomer Road at rush hour, it's a shortcut from
the west side end of the valley. It'd be bumper
to bumper traffic, and we'd have a fake fight on

(08:31):
the corner and I'd be in the bushes filming it,
and there'd be we'd use ketchup for blood, and a
number of times people would stop and get out of
their cars to see if the kids were all right.
So all of this tom foolery chicanery made me go, wow,
I bet there's something else out there, And so I

(08:54):
gave up the search for money. Because I don't know
why money was my thing. My kids will tell you
it still is. I don't see it anyway. I think
that's evidence anyway, But what's this. I have a dog
at my feet, so it's hard to explain. But I

(09:16):
ended up going to college, making a deal with my
dad that if I got a degree in business, he
would support me in entertainment until I could earn my
own way. Now I didn't know what kind of entertainment.
I'd been an actor in high school. I just feel
like sung to her in odd couple which changed my

(09:39):
life forever because I became fastidious. But I had a
straight a's in college except for the acting class because
I accidentally turned my back. Well it wasn't accidental. I
purposely turned my back to the audience in a stage
show to get off stage because another actor had worked

(10:01):
so far to the audience there was no way to
exit and not look stupid. So he gave me a
B and ruined by average. And I took a directing
course from the guy who played Major Hofstetter on Hogan's Heroes,
and he and I became reasonable friends. And he would
tell me tales and all the tales of John Wayne

(10:23):
and James Arness and Richard Boone and all the rest
about being on location and the bars and the women,
and the driving through towns and a stagecoach drunk and
all these great things. And I just going, you know,
this is the life for me. So I graduated, and
I got a job with Saw Bass, who's a graphic designer.

(10:48):
Most of you probably don't know who he is either,
but at that time he was the leading graphic designer
in the entire world and invented corporate identity logos and
carpets and walls that pull it all together anyway. And
Saw had done films, He'd done title sequences in many films.

(11:09):
He's the father of the modern title sequence. He'd made
many short films. And I was his gopher, and I
absolutely hated him. I just hated Saw. You know. He
would always like, you know, I'd have to pick him
up because he didn't drive, and bring him into the office.
And he'd go into his office and he go, could
you get a dying man a cup of coffee? And

(11:31):
I'd always bring him his coffee and the things I
put in his coffee, which he knew, but anyway, and so.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Without a match of personalities, then like, he's just not
your kind of person.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
He was a perfectionist, and I was a gopher, And
you know, to my point of view, what's to be
perfect about a gopher. I changed the water bottles, I
get the donuts, I bring him a coffee. I do
whatever they tell me to do. I do the shipping,
I collect the mail whatever. And Saul would go, you know,

(12:09):
coffee is not hot enough. He goes, I don't see
you writing anything down. I need you to be taking notes.
And I go, but I don't need to take notes,
I know what you're telling me to do, and he goes,
he goes, I feel like I'm on quicksand with you
just write it down, and you know, he was very persnicty.
But what happened is because I'm a fan of pushing buttons.

(12:36):
If you have a button, I'll push it, and so
don't let me near the nuclear ones. I got thrown
out of more than one trade show for pushing the
wrong button. But there saw was making industrial films and
there were a lot of buttons to push, and I
met this producer for him named Gary Rockland, and I said, oh,

(12:58):
I really want to, you know, learn whatever it is
you guys are doing. And Gary said, yeah, you could
sit in any time. And you know, I sat in
with the editor and the assistant editor to see what
the heck they were doing. And then they hired another
guy named Larry Starkman who became a good friend of mine.
And Larry let me actually push the buttons and taught
me how to work a moviola and it was I

(13:20):
was in heaven. You cut stuff, you're making magic. It's
really fun kind of magic. And there's this story we're
doing the NBC's fiftieth anniversary television show, which was a
week long event which saw for some reason brought me
to dinner with Orson Wells at Musso and Friks to

(13:42):
talk to him about him doing the voiceover for the sequence.
And let me tell you, you really haven't lived until
Orson Wells calls you up and reams you out. And
for that fact, what was that guy's name? Auto Premager
and Otto was also a famous hothead. And you know,

(14:05):
I get calls every morning from somebody reaming me out
about something, and Saul would tell me stories about it.
But what happened is is that they had a sequence.
It was on soap operas, and they decided to throw
it away, and so I asked Gary, can I Can
I take a crack at it? So I took six weeks,

(14:25):
stayed there all night, I did my job from eight
thirty to six every day, and then grabbed dinner and
then edit. And then at the end of six weeks,
Gary comes in and goes, hey, whatever you did, take
it apart. They've decided they want to have the soap
opera thing. And I said, okay, but do you want
to look at it? So Gary looked at it and
he goes, wait right here, and he runs out of

(14:46):
the room and he comes back with Saul and they
look at it. Saul goes, who did this? And I said,
I did this, and he goes, hang on a minute,
and he got the NBC producer, who I think was
Abby Man that time, Abby Singer, Abbi Man, one of them.
He came in and he goes, hey, it's the first
thing you showed me that's done. This is on air.

(15:08):
And Saul said to me, well, from now on, you're
my editor. And I went, I went great, I go,
I'll hire somebody to do the gopher and he goes, no,
you're still a gopher and you don't get a raise,
but you're my editor. And I said, but Saul, I
don't know anything about it editing. And he goes, I'll
teach you. And so over the course of the next

(15:29):
few years, Saul taught me editing. He's taught me post production, supervision.
He taught me how to record sound, he taught me
how to frame, how to shoot with lenses. He taught me,
you know, with his sensibilities about backgrounds and four grounds
in depth of field. And it was a master education.
And at the end of the time. I ended up

(15:51):
loving this man, not because he gave me the opportunity,
but because he was so specific and difficult to please
that when you play eased them, it was something. And
I've carried that through my whole career. So back to
your original question, and you thought this was going to
be hard. Uh. The way Saul put together shots were

(16:17):
all visual effects. He would shoot something like, you know,
a slow push in and then a slow pan left
to right, right to left to slow pull out, a
slow boom up, and then we'd buypack it together with
something else. And then he found well, it's moving too fast,
forward's going in the wrong direction, or it's this or that.
So I had to go to an optical house, which

(16:40):
I didn't know what that was, and I went to
several optical houses, Mercer, Pacific Title, several others, and everybody said, well,
I would love to do the job. And then I go, okay,
so you know, here's the po from Saw Bass and
they got saw Bass. We're out, We're not doing it,

(17:02):
and pack Title said to me, the reason we don't
do it is because we lose our shirts every time
we do a sol Beast thing. Because he's too finicky
and so putting on my producer hat I came up
with a formula based on old paperwork that I saw
pack title gave me on billions and things, and I said,

(17:24):
what if we take the budget, double it, add a
ten percent contingency, double it and add a fifteen percent
contingency with a ten thousand dollars bonus on top of that,
and they go, we're in. And oddly enough, that's what
the job ended up costing. And we never told Saul

(17:45):
because he would get irate. But we ran through. In
those days, there's things called interpositive and inner negatives, and
you had to make all these things in order to
do composites and stuff. We'd run through those ips interpositives
like crazy, and they're always having to remake them because
there'd be a fleck of dust because we'd done twenty
seven takes because the color was one point off here

(18:07):
or that and this. And through the course of all that,
the gentlemen that worked at the optical printer and the
lineup and the negative cutter in house, they let me
stay and watch what they do and how they do it,
and taught me how to do lineup sheets. And I
was very curious, and it was just fun because there's
more buttons to push. And then what happened, much to

(18:32):
my shock and surprise, is I got a phone call
from somebody a pac title and they said, hey, we
need to know if you would go and go to
this cutting room on this movie. They're in a lot
of trouble and they can't quite figure it out. We
think you can, and I don't know what I'm doing,

(18:52):
and they said just just go have a look. So
I went to the cutting room and I looked at
what the problem was and it was an easy, solid,
you know, fixed it and packed title was Heroes. And
then they started sending me out to all these movies
in trouble, and then my reputation spread and I would
get calls from everybody that, oh, you know this that,

(19:14):
And as I like to say, there's something great about
being a fix it guy, which is if there's nothing wrong,
you're congratulated for fixing something that never was broken. If
there's something wrong and you can fix it, you're congratulated
for fixing something. If there's something wrong and it can't
be fixed, they go, well, thanks for letting us know.

(19:34):
Now we don't have to chase this rabbit. So for
four or five years that's what I did. I was
a fix it guy. And you know, it all sort
of came about because Saul did this commercial for Japan
and it was I forget I think it was one

(19:58):
hundred and four layers and there are no cuts and
pack titles said it couldn't be done. And I came
up with a really simple solution that said it could
be done, and then they did it. And that's what
gave him the confidence to send me out because I
knew how optical printers work, and this work, and that

(20:18):
work in.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
The solution to do one hundred and forty layers.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Then well, the first thing is that don't make eyeps
of everything because you can't afford it. So instead of
using eyeps, we use low content, low contrast positive prints.
And then what we did is we did in a
six head printer, we did two tripacks and we just
you know, the exposures took forever. And then what that

(20:44):
gave us is a way of breaking down the shots
so that you'd have a six layer dissolve you know
that was only two and a half seconds long, and
then another six layer and then another and then you
take those and make eyeps of those, throw them in
and then you could just dissolve pieces. And when something

(21:05):
was broken, you know, or dirt or the color wasn't right,
and one thing, it wasn't a redo of the whole thing.
It was just to redo a couple of seconds. So
we broke it down that way and it worked. And
I wish I could remember the name of the of
the commercials online somewhere, but it's got all the Saws
classic you know stuff bypack. He was a bipack, tripack,

(21:30):
six pack, sepal pack idiot. We had a special mechanism
made for the movie Olo so he could put six
pieces of film in the gate at one time and
wouldn't rip it up so you could see what it is.
And we had a special ballb that you know, saw
would go I need to see it, dude, to be brighter,
and I'd go find somebody. And because of all these

(21:52):
wacky errands, you know, I got to know like everybody.
And one of the highlights is, first off, I'm going
to say something blasphemous. I was not a star wars Man.
It was out for six weeks before I saw it.

(22:12):
I refused to stand in line for anything, and so
I eventually saw it and I thought, well, that's a
It's a lovely thing. I really enjoyed it. It was fun,
you know, and I wasn't smart enough to know why.

(22:33):
But Saul mentored George Lucas when George was at USC.
So one of the things that was great about Saul
is all these big time directors would be dropping by,
so you'd have Richard Books out of Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock,
IRV Kirshner, George Lucas.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
And.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Lieu of others. So I was always I'm like the
Lucy Ricardo, you know, I'm just so impressed that they're there.
You know, it's like, can I get you some coffee?
You know, mister Kershner, Oh call me here? Can I
get you know? So it's gonna bring a dying man,
I get yours. But but so George arranged a tour

(23:24):
of the Valgen facility I l m at the time
that would soon become Apagy And so we went out
there and George showed Saul around and the producer showed
me around. And it was a pretty amazing thing because
not that I knew who any of these people are,
but I've seen photos since like Richard Edlin on his

(23:46):
knees shooting the crawl. The opening crawl, they had this
giant dish starfield with the most control camera that's moving
all over and I'm watching it, you know, they're they're
showing dailies with that have philled dip tippet in them,
and he's animating the chess game. Out in the parking lot.

(24:07):
They have the alley run and they have a ship
tied up to an old red Ford pickup truck and
they're pulling it on a wire and it's blowing up
and it's very unimpressive looking, but you're going wow. And
then on another stage, like I said, I didn't know
at the time, it was Grant mceune and he's walking

(24:28):
around with an X Wing Fighter and a sand you
know machine, and I put Saw back in the car
when we were finished. Oh we saw. George took us
up to the loft, which was this room up top
that had a player piano and an old beat up
couch and a really stained drug and he showed us
the trailer before it came out, and I was blown

(24:53):
away by it. And we're driving home and so goes.
I don't get it. What's the big deal, you know?
And I go, well, have you ever seeing the model
do that move before? So convincingly? Have you ever seen
It's like they could do multi passes with the motion control,
and you know, he has all that. Showed you the
footage of the of the World War two fight cut together,

(25:13):
and then we saw the the X wing fighters you know,
doing that and these guys are hand at me. He's
got it all under one roof. It's an amazing thing.
And so I was like, I don't get it. And
then Saw went to the Academy Awards with George. So
that was exciting for me because they came by in
their tuxedos, and they came by afterwards in their tuxedos,

(25:35):
and I had assumed that George would have an oscar
with him and he didn't. Instead, Yeah, I was so
disappointed that he didn't have the oscar with him. Anyway,
I prepared a little celebratory thing that nobody ever saw
or got to eat. And that's sort of the long
version of how I got individual effects. It's nothing I

(25:58):
ever intended to do, so apparently Saw trained me, or
I have that that kind of mind where I see
the puzzle problems and I figured out ways to put
together and then in my later career, I'm very used
to people, including my own producer, going well, this isn't

(26:18):
going to work, and just going it will work. And
just to share with you, the thing that I hate
the most is that I hate people that say, oh,
I know it's going to work, and I you know,
I knew it. I was never worried and I had
no anxiety or ever when somebody said it wasn't going
to work, I would have a lot of upset stomachs
and the guy it's going to work, it's gonna work.

(26:40):
It's going to work, and ninety nine percent of the
time that it did work, much to everybody's surprise, including mine.
I guess it's a stubborn streak in me, but you know,
it's it's fun. That's the only reason I do this
is it's fun.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, it sounds like like a lot of the other
people that I've spoken to, like Ken Raust and Dennis
Mureen your problem solvers first and foremost. And you know,
you mentioned a couple of times where you were put
in positions where you said I don't know what I'm doing.
Was there ever a point where you thought, I know
what I'm doing or do you always relish that kind
of challenge ahead of you, like that thing that everyone's

(27:16):
saying can't be done well.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
I like what Rob Legato told me one time. He goes,
if I'm in the zone where I'm confident I know
what I'm doing, that I'm not doing it right. So
there's some things where you know what you're doing, but
you can't do it that way because of a DP

(27:39):
or a schedule or money or whatever it is, and
you're forced to do things you know how to do
in different ways. And what that's all about to me
is without having learned the history firsthand of how that
things were done in the photochemical day. And then you know,

(28:02):
in my own way studying in camera stuff like taking
a photograph and sticking it to a piece of glass
and then shooting through it to people far away with
a big depth of fields, so the scales. Like my
friend Larry Starkman who taught me this stuff, he did
a short film on giant hot dogs on the beach
and he showed it to me and I was like,

(28:23):
how did you do that? And he pulled out a
piece of glass with photos of hot dogs on it
because this is how to do it. So and then
you know when Ilem moved up north and Apage was
there because I knew where it was. I used to
hang out there all the time. And just down the
block was Illusion Arts with Sid Dutt and that Bill Taylor,

(28:44):
and you go over there and Sid and Bill would
teach you about hanging miniatures and matte paintings and and
you know, double exposures with this, you know. So it's
like I was lucky to have a very thorough, exciting education.
And that's that's what I for nowadays. Because everybody knows

(29:07):
how to do what we do. It's mostly about controlling
their expectations because they don't know how to do what
they do. You can read an article doesn't mean you
know how to do it, and it doesn't mean they're
telling the truth. One of the issues that I had
with sin Effex magazine is every story read in the

(29:29):
same rhythm, which is I was hired to do this job.
I propose this thing. Everybody loved it. They gave me
all the time I needed. We put it together and
everybody loved it. And when they came to me, I said,
if you're going to do that kind of article. You
don't need me, just write it yourself. I go, I
want to talk about this was on Stargate, I said,

(29:49):
I want to talk about how I got fired twice.
I want to talk about how we couldn't figure this out,
how this accident happened that made this thing work. I
want to talk about the anxiety of running up against
the deadline and we still didn't have the solution. And
you know, those are the interesting things, is how did
you deal with the impossible or what felt impossible at

(30:12):
the time. So when people write these magazine stories today,
they only write about the successes. They don't write about
the failures. And as such, directors and producers and cameramen
all just think they know how to do it, you know.
And it's like I recently worked on something where the

(30:34):
cinematographer who became the DP did not believe in green
or blue screens. He believed in roto And I'm going, yes,
we can do that, but it'll cost more, take more time,
and it's not going to look as good. Why don't
we just do it right? And you know, that's more
of what you're dealing with these days is educating somebody

(30:58):
on the whys of it. You know, people come to
me and they go, well, AI can do this, and
you go yes, with a lot of back and forth
and you know this and that and so on and
so forth. Right now, I'm working on something with I.
Guess I'm allowed to say. I don't know if I
signed a non disclosure with the Cosmo people. And there's AI,

(31:23):
a lot of AI involved in this, and you know
we're trailblazing because you know Cosmos talks a lot. There
is no five second take in Cosmos. Everything is a minute.
AI can't do a minute. It could only do ten seconds.
So how do you get this ten second clip and
this ten second clip to overlap seamlessly so you can

(31:46):
join them together. So when AI's creating stuff, it doesn't
do that because next time you hit the button instead
of this, it does that this, And then you go, well,
here's the branches of a tree. They're like that, But
then next time they're like that. Go it doesn't work.
So we're problem solving those things. I'm out of my depth,
but it's where I like to be and it's very exciting.

(32:09):
But everybody buys by everybody, Producers, directors, DPIs, hey, I
can do it a meta humans. I don't need to
use you know, my actors. I had a director come
to me and he goes, let's do this all with
meta humans, and I'm going okay. So it's an eight

(32:29):
page fight between five people that starts in a room,
goes off a balcony, lands in a swimming pool, and
then does an underwater fight for a couple of minutes.
The complexity of putting that together versus shooting actors second unit,
you know, and it always comes down to money. What

(32:51):
does it cost to do it with a metal human
and you know, a procedural water or if specialized water?
Is it motion capture? Are we going to key frame it?
You know, there's so many questions, and then of course
I always go, well I want it next week, and

(33:12):
you go, well, that ain't gonna happen, but you can't.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
This has this change though. Really, you know, if we
take you back to what nineteen eighty three, ninety eighty
four for Last star Fighter or ninety three ninety four
for Stargate, you were still coming up against massive obstacles
for things that hadn't been done before figuring out what
could be done with what was available and trying to
kind of push the boundaries of what was possible at

(33:37):
the time. Did that feel different back then to you
as it does now in terms of people's expectations.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, because literally back then, I didn't have people saying
to me, well, simple, you know how to do this.
You know, we're just right, you know, we'll just do
the computer will kick it out. Just have the computer
kick it out. Just hit the button, flip the keyboard under,
hit the do it do it right button and then

(34:05):
heard it on its side and hit the do it
fast button. We know they're there.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
So the expectations are now more difficult to manage. So
you're acting is not as only as an artist and technician,
but as a diplomat in some ways, trying to kind of, yeah,
get your way politically.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
It's really more that, you know, because these days it's
about scripts have great visions, Directors have enlarge those visions,
dps have great ideas on how to shoot something, you know,

(34:41):
but then there's a budget, and then you know, you
don't want to be the guy that's always going, well,
we can't afford that, you know, lock that camera off
and put that blue screen there, and you know, and
let's not have that explosion, but you know we could do.
You know, you want to be the guy that goes, okay,
I'll figure this out. But at the same time that

(35:01):
self injures us because the none of these people are
in the trenches in post. When you think about a DP,
he does what he does. He figures it all out.
He figures the palette and figures it. You know, we'll
have this equipment of that equipment, and then he has
to be beat up by the producers because it's too

(35:23):
much equipment, too many lights, you know, And then he
shoots it, and then he's climbed his mountain and now
he's waiting for the DII. He doesn't see that we
just threw out ninety percent of what he just did
because we can't use it. So thank goodness, we light
ourd the set and we did photo reference on the
whole thing and textured the whole thing and scanned the actors,

(35:44):
you know, and this and that and that and blah
blah blah blah blah. They don't see that pain, and
the director doesn't see that pain. What the director sees
is why does this take you so long? And then
when you give him the credits, they go, why are
there so many people? You know? Because I only see
three people one, Why do you have three thousand or
three hundred or whatever. So we've done ourselves a great

(36:06):
disservice because we're such fans that we keep the process invisible.
Then we lie in articles and only talk about all
the positiveness of it, and then you're faced on set
like I remember when Dennis Spearen did War of the

(36:27):
World's and the pr was about we had ten weeks
to do the entire visual effects on the thing, and
then everybody after that when they come to the go
they did War of the World's in ten weeks. You know,
why can't you you know do this? Why is I
going to take six months with these three CG creatures
interacting with these you you know? And you go, well, A,

(36:50):
you can't. The ford is l M. You know. B
Are you going to accept what they accepted or are
you going to It was a great thing. I once
had a director. This is a big difference from the
old days too, because digitally, when you're showing stuff, it

(37:11):
all loop forever. So I had this director and were
fixing all the prosthetics, which turns into actor replacement because
they didn't like any of the prosthetics, and the prosthetics
got nominated by the way that year, even though I'd
replaced them all. And we had this one little three
second shot and it's looping and it's looping and it's looping.

(37:32):
And then after about two minutes, I go, well, I
guess that this is a final and he goes, no, no, no, yeah, looping, looping, looping.
Five minutes gone by, and I go, so are we
good here, and he goes, let me just keep looping.
I'll find something wrong. You know. It's like back in
the old days with film, the film would shred. You

(37:56):
only had so many times you'd build a film loop
with five takes up it and splice it together and
put them on trees that go through the projector and
after about a minute everything with shred, and you go,
so what did you think? But that's the problem is
that there's a lot of misinformation about how hard it
is to do what we do and how long it

(38:17):
takes to do it, and there's a lot of comparison
to to you know, this guy did it in ten
weeks and there's like eight million shots in it, and
look at them you know, their entire city building and
world building and creatures, you know, and you just go, yeah,
the latest one, what's the name of that movie that

(38:38):
came out last year with the AI Kid where you
could see through his head that creates it, The Creator. Yeah,
the latest one was The Creator. And everybody's going, well,
you know, they shot that in three weeks, and they
did this, and they did that, and again, you don't
want to be the nick negative guy, but you do

(38:58):
want to find out what's going on. So I found
out what's going on and goes and the answer is, yeah,
they did it in six weeks or whatever it is,
but they planned for three years, and they did previs
of every single shot, and they built all the assets
ahead of time, and the director said this is what
I want and didn't change his mind, and you know,

(39:19):
it's like, yeah, those are a lot of things. It's like,
one of the biggest things I run into these days
with led Walls is directors don't want to make their
minds up. They go, can't you just you know, let's
make like five versions and I'll pick from that on
the day, And you go, it doesn't really work like that.

(39:40):
You want to pay for that no, no, no, no,
we were not using it. I shouldn't have to pay
for it, you know. And it's like LED Walls is
taking the post and putting it in pre and if
people planned really well and don't change their mind, it's magnificent.
I have a another director friend of mine, and he

(40:01):
just goes, look, I'm going to do something. That's why
we were not going to shoot on a wall, because
I'll either want to slip the sink or put a
different scene back there, you know, or you know the
effects are going to evolve as they go on, and
I can't really wrap my head around it before shooting.
So he goes, I don't want an LED wall, And

(40:23):
I'm going, well, what if we just build what you want?
You know, We'll shoot it at forty eight frames a
second and every other frame will be green and then
we d in the leave room. So if I need Matt,
I've got Matt, you know, but you at least have
the character with interactive lighting on him. That's good idea,
you know. And so he's you know, tried it and

(40:45):
it worked out when he really you know, slip sync
a lot.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
But there's this expectation, isn't there that a certain technique,
I guess is going to be some sort of panacea,
whether it's the led wolves, whether it's like face replace
a stuff, whether it's the green screen overlase screen. Back
in the day, it seems to be that kind of expectation,
it's just going to tick cool boxes. But ultimately these

(41:09):
rule tools right and you have to find the right
one right for the right time.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
There's a secret to the whole thing, which is what
you learn from magic when you're doing magic, is you
don't want to use the same thing over and over
and over again. The audience will catch on to it.
So what are the various tools? But the director or
the producer goes, you know, we're going to do this
this way, and you go, but you know we could yeah, yeah, anyway.
So it becomes a really fun creative process, especially when

(41:36):
you're working with collaborative people and you can bounce ideas
around and before you know it, you end up with
stuff that's far better than what you thought you were
going to be able to do, and everybody's it's a
love fest. There's no hate in the room, and you know,
and with a good visual effects producer who's handling the
money and what I think visual effects producer's job is

(41:58):
these days is to manage expects. Yeah, as opposed to
you know, yeah, they have to track all the costs
and notify everybody and all that stuff. But if they
manage expectations properly, when they add the eight million dollars
extra to the future visual effects budget, nobody's shocked they
had it in reserve or whatever it is. As you

(42:18):
were about to.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Say, yeah, and also, I was thinking, you know, back
when you're doing something like Stargate, for instance, there wasn't
that big a crew on the visual effects crew. I
mean you look now on the credits and literally hundreds
of people go by from different continents across the world.
Do you think that it's become very difficult to kind

(42:40):
of manage that singular vision that the director has given
that there are so many vendors involved these days.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
No, I find it easy. But that's said, I'll go
back to the fact that I've never worked for a
visual effects company. I've always been an independent super and
early on in my career I discovered the more vendors
I hire, the less likely somebody is going to be

(43:09):
able to bottle up my pipeline and that when a
shot is going south, I have options to dual track
it and let this vendor keep working on it and
this vendor work on it too, and the best, you know,
will be what it is. So given that, like on

(43:30):
could have been long Kissio night, I think I had
twelve or thirteen different vendors working on the show. And
when I did, I got called in on Fantastic four
at Fox to help when they got into trouble. So

(43:51):
one of my vendors was in San Francisco, another vendor
somewhere else, you know. And so back in those days,
it was about hopping on a plane. So I'd go
up to San Francisco every Wednesday, have my meetings there
that I'd fly to the next place directly from there,
which was somewhere cold, I can't remember, probably Seattle, you know.

(44:17):
So Thursday was those guys. Then Friday was back to
the cutting room, you know, to talk about everything that
we did, and then Monday was the local company. Tuesday
was organization day. So now that we have Zoom, I
hate it with all my heart, but it makes all
this much more doable. And what I hate about it

(44:39):
is is that back in the day, boy, I'm sounding old.
But back in the day you would be in a
room with all the artists and so you could talk
directly to the artist. And you know, I think my
career is a lot based on the fact that I
could say to an artist, look, so this is the

(45:00):
minimum of what it is I need you to do.
If you have a better idea, do that as well.
And many times artists would come up with really great
solutions and I would present them and the directors would go, oh,
you know this is great. I go, yeah, it's you know,
it's it's uh, you know, Jony over at CIS or

(45:22):
you know this came up with this idea, And so
sharing the credit is a valuable thing. Now you're pretty
much like we are. It's like, I don't know how
many people you have behind you helping with this, you know, podcast.
When I talk to a vendor, sometimes they put all
the people in the room, but they're so small I

(45:45):
can't really see them and interact with them, and they
speak a foreign language, and some of the jokes don't work,
and jokes, you know, warm up the room and loosen
people up and allow for people to say things. And
at a lot of companies, especially the Indian companies, I
find that they don't even do group dailies that you know,

(46:10):
the supervisor looks at it and then he sends everything
you know out, And I find when you get all
the different departments in for group dailies, it's like, on
one show, we had a water problem going on, and
then we're having a really rough time with this shot,
and another person who is in the room goes, wait
a minute, I'm doing something just like that on another show.

(46:31):
Let me have a crack at it, you know, And
so you get this senergy and the zoom call meeting
kind of loses that. This becomes a little bit less
personal and more formal, and it's harder to gauge the
reactions of people, you know, because like, for all, I know,

(46:51):
you've got a guy sitting right over to your left, yeah,
and they're going, you know, I don't know what what's
going on in your in your environment. So I just
I just find it easy to organize, easy to keep
the look and and everything the same because of the
past experience, you know, you learn how to break up

(47:16):
shots based on what the strengths and weaknesses are, and
you go, oh, this company'd be great for this and
then you share your your look files, you know, and
your references and things like that, and yeah, I don't
find that a problem. I always enjoy it. I just
wish that we could fly. I wish we could teleport

(47:38):
and be in the rooms with these people.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, yeah, I feel the same. I used to travel
for my work and now I do it all remotely
from a hub here in the UK, and it's not
the same. It's just not the same having breakfast with
people and just talking something over and you know, having
meetings in person. That you're saying, is there a director
that you worked with over the years that you felt
kind of synergy with in terms of their understanding of

(48:03):
what you were trying to achieve together and you'll place
in achieving that and their role, you know, understanding the
sort of delineation between you two.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
A lot of them for different reasons. One of them
is Brannon Braga, who you know, Star Trek Fame and
Cosmos and everything, and that Brandon is such a fan
of films that we had a language we developed and
I went to him, you know, on Cosmos Season three
and we had a giant dinosaur sequence but no money,

(48:35):
you know, and I go, you know, we could do it.
I'll find a way to do it, but it's not
going to be as dynamic and look as good as
it'll look more like, you know, a national geographic channel,
you know. And Brandon would just go, let's cut the sequence,
you know, and so you go, well, can you can

(48:56):
you do that? You know, because he's a writer, he goes, yeah,
watch this, and he would, you know, change it to
something else. I remember I said to him, I go, look,
we could do it really well. If we put the
forest in fog in their silhouettes, then we can, you know,
then we can do something nice. But he didn't want
to do that. Another director is Albert Hughes, who I

(49:18):
did Alpha Witch with. If you haven't seen Alpha, I
think it's some of the best work I've ever done.
And it's a great story. A troubled project because of
personalities outside my level, which is why I didn't get
a big release like it should have. But Albert it

(49:40):
was a lot like sol Bass, and it was really
great because he had a specific point of view with
what things should look like graphically speaking, you know, and
I tuned into that and it was just fun and
we played off of each other and we were able
to build some really interesting, the beautiful sequences that was.

(50:06):
That was a It wasn't a tough film in terms
of creativity, it was a tough film in terms of
what you get for your money because we had a
lot of CG handoffs and fixes on a wolf that
didn't look enough wolf like and you know, and then
the studio got involved and said, no, we want it

(50:26):
to be more disney like, and it's like, no, the
whole point of the movie is an interesting movie because
Albert wrote it. It's great. It's a it's a it's
a twofer in that it's a coming of age story
and it explains how we ended up with dogs, and
it set twenty thousand years ago and stars Cody Smith

(50:49):
McPhee there's a you know, big actor now anyway, and
Albert wrote it so that you wouldn't need dialogue because
nobody knows what language this tribe of people spoke. So
you had a person from the London Natural History Museum
come over and give us the finacic language of what

(51:09):
it's likely to have been. And the studio came in
and goes, well, we don't understand a word they're saying.
And you go you don't have to because look at
the picture, you know, And they they dubbed in a
narrator and they added you know, voiceovers and stuff. But
if you turn the sound down, the movie is magnificent.

(51:29):
And then they came in and recut it a little
bit depending. They released four different versions of it. It
was a huge hit in China. But they took the
action sequence it's not an action movie, and they put
it up front and then they play it again at
the end of act one, cut for cut, which we

(51:50):
never understood. But anyway, so Albert was great. Sometimes you
work with directors who have no clue about visual effects
and they're fun. Like Barry Levinson when we did Sphere
with him, he was just so open and collaborative to ideas,

(52:11):
you know, and he'd set aside time and you know,
he said to me early on, he goes, look, I
don't want to see how the sausages made. Just make
me a really tasty sausage, would you know. And we did.
We had a lot of fun on that film. So
and then Roland was a lot of fun back then

(52:32):
in Stargate because Roland didn't believe in visual effects. He
definitely didn't believe in computers, and I had to do
all these tests to prove to him that computers can
do things. And you know, I think, I don't know
if he'll remember this now. He's grown so great, Hey, Roland.

(52:56):
He came over for dinner one night and I barbecue
chicken and I served this ashen smoking hulk. Anyway, but
they made a lot of miniatures, and second unit shot
a lot of miniatures of the gliders, and there was
the shot that they wanted and I said, no, we'll

(53:18):
do it. CG. And he goes, it's not going to work,
and I said, it'll work. It's not going to work.
We're not going to do that. We're going to send
out shoot miniatures again. And so my crew, which was
called Kleiser Wallzac back then, with Jeff Kleiser and Diana Wallsack.
It was their company. They got the job, they hired me,

(53:40):
and then the crew was like six people to do
the entire show. Seven people. You know, Frank Vitz was
inventing stuff on the fly while we were doing it,
and the compositing folks were inventing everything. We were all

(54:00):
inventing stuff. But we had Jeff Williams, who you look up.
Jeff Williams. He's a super smart guy and he hand
built the glider in his own spare time, and he
put together the shot and he showed it to me
and I was blown away because he did such a
great model. And I said, but unfortunately, and I took

(54:22):
him down to the screening room and showed him the
miniature that they had shot. I go, what do you see?
We see no detail, we see no color. It's basically
a black blur. I go, so make your beautiful ship
a black blur. And so he did, and you know,
we put the shot together and then we called Rolling

(54:43):
in and said, Rolling, you got to look at this
piece of film, and we showed it to him and
he goes, yeah, this is what I'm talking about. See second,
the miniatures are the way to go. I guess the CG.
This is all CG. Come upstairs and look at it.
And it was from that moment on that Rolling goes, oh, OK, well,
so computers can work. And he offered me, he indeed said,

(55:06):
do you want to be the head of the new
company we're going to start, you know, And I said, no,
said you don't want to start a visual effects company.
You'll lose your shirt. If you're doing other people's projects, fine,
but if you do your own, not so good. So
they started Centropolis without me, which is another dumb decision
on my part.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
No Stargate felt like it sort of really pushed the
boundaries and kind of opened the door to more technically
demanding science fiction films. I remember seeing that trailer for
the first time and kind of going, oh, wow, this
is something new. Do you feel like that it's a
milestone in visual effects history in a way.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Well it should be. It is a good story, it
was well acted, and everything we did hadn't been done yet.
I mean, when you think about the morphs, you know,
there was no morphine software. It was all hand done

(56:10):
by Ed, and you know, he bought a package that
claimed to be a morphine package that just was a disaster.
It was a two D thing and we had to
do three D stuff and Ed found a way to
make this work right at the last second got fired
over that, but you know, and it was a good

(56:32):
coming together of Old World and New World because you know,
the miners, we had five hundred miners. We didn't really
have to duplicate them, even though we did the exodus
across the desert is actually sticks with rags on them

(56:56):
with a wig styrophone wig head on the top of
the stick, you know, you know, And so we had
live people foreground and then that trailed off to them.
So there was a lot of tricks used, and the
production design on it was really good. Holder did a
great job on that, and those were really enjoyable special times.

(57:23):
And it was a kind of show when you would
fly into the location to do your shot and fly
out and wasn't the kind of show that you lived on.
So we could get a lot done and I'd fly
out and go roll and look at this. So it
was fun and rolling. So those are my favorite directors.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
When you worked with Rennie Holland, I understand you. You
helped craft that surprise attack shock attack for Samuel Jackson
on Deep Blue Sea? What was how what happened there?
Was that something? Did I read something about Samuel wasn't
happy with the scene. I was happy with the dialogue,
and you came up the idea.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Is that right? He came up at the idea. It
was my third film in a role with sam and
we ran into each other and he called me up
one night and he goes, did you read what we're
shooting tomorrow? And I said, yeah, I read it. I
go it's eight pages of the worst dialogue I've ever

(58:23):
heard my life. And he goes, you should just kill me.
And I said, if you get to the front of
the of the moon pool, I will kill you. And so,
you know, I told the story many times, but Rennie
wasn't in on it. I went up to Rennie in
the morning. I did say, Rennie, you know, Sam doesn't

(58:44):
really want to do this and asked me to kill him.
And he goes, We're not killing him. He's the star
of the movie. You don't kill the star of the movie,
all right, whenever you want. But Sam would do take
one and he starts way back with a little bubble
sub and he has to walk over and around the
pool and come up, you know, and he like did

(59:05):
it in like three lines, which I think were you know,
there was twelve of us on that mountain and only
eight of us left. And if you think waters fast,
you should see snow. And he was in position, you know,
and cut, cut, cut, you know. He goes, yeah, Sam,

(59:27):
we got you know, six and a half seven more
pages to go. You need to take your time and
explore it, and he'd just do it time and again,
time and again, and Renny got very frustrated with the
whole thing. And then we're in cutting and we previewed
the film with Sam saying the whole thing and got

(59:50):
horrible test results, and so they fired the editor or
the editor quit or something happened, and they brought on
Frank Curiosity, who is the staff big shot editor at
Warner Brothers. And Frank, you know, looked at it because
there's a terrible scene. He goes, what do we do?

(01:00:12):
I go, use take one, Use take one, and we'll
kill him. And so Frank goes, can we do that?
I go, I can do that. We're all set. I
shot all the elements. So I did it and the
audience went crazy. Most gratified scene ever. Sam called me up,
the best death ever. Then he called me up said
things I can't repeat, but it was. It was fun

(01:00:37):
because we were doing something that was going to make
a difference. It was you know, you don't do that.
That's not down in the middle of a speech. You know,
if you read the.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Way everybody remembers about that movie, like it's the first
thing that comes to mind when I mean I saw
it in ninety nine, say six years ago now, and
that's what I remember of that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Well, it's a nice scene. I really enjoyed making it.
Thad Bear did the work on it over at Hammerhead,
which was obviously I had to hire a Hammerhead because
it's a shark movie and they named themselves after a shark.
But we couldn't get it to look right. You know.

(01:01:25):
It kept looking to me like the whale and that
Disney cartoon that's singing, you know, the Italian Opera with
the frilled collar, you know, and it just if you
look at it frame by frame, you go, it doesn't
really work. But you know, we did everything we could.
We shook the camera and Thad goes, let's hit the

(01:01:46):
lens with blood, and I go, all right, hit the
lens with blood, you know, and we made it work.
But we had a huge problem. I don't have the
model with me, but I do have this from that
very same film, which is the parrot being eaten by
the shark. But if you look at the shark's mouth,

(01:02:09):
the shark can't it can't grab somebody because the mouth
is way back here. So we kept going, well, I
have them. I have him go sideways and grab them,
you know, and it's like, no, I really didn't like that.
I have him come over like that, and then no,
that's too awkward. Don't you know this? So we finally

(01:02:32):
worked it out and then we put it together and
the studio, you know, loved the scene that they decided, Okay,
let's gild the lily, and so I said, what's that mean?
And they go, after he's pulled down, let's have the
two baby sharks come in and pull them apart. Great,

(01:02:55):
let's do it. Sounds fun. So that's how we killed Sam.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Yeah, and I'm sure that has had an impact on
just audience expectations and how films have made since, because
we don't expect the big name to die. But it
has happened since, not not to the same, you know,
the same extent that this shocked everyone at the time.
I mean, you clearly have a sense of humor with

(01:03:22):
your with your work, and I understand you like to
insert little east eggs as well. Is that the is
that the frustrated comedian in you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah. It all started when we were doing The Last
starfre And, which was a film I was called in
to fix m and the director, Nick Castle, who I
love to work with, by the way, just doesn't work anymore.
He makes more money being The Shape than Halloween. But

(01:03:52):
that's a whole other story. See I think you could
see right there's a little bit of the Shape fallen
over sideways. But anyway, he signed it. Nick and I
are good friends. I don't forgot what I was.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Gonna say about the East egging last time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Oh yeah, So Nick Castle, the director, used to call
the studio guys gumbies because they are all like the
Gumby cartoons and they'd walk around, and so Nick goes,
let's put some gumbies on the space ship. So we
redesigned the space ship to have the outline of gumbies

(01:04:36):
all over it. And so nobody's ever said anything about
the gumbies. So on the next film, I went, well,
how far can I go with this? So I started
thinking about moose. I think moose are funny. So I
would put moose in unexpected places in various films, and

(01:04:57):
then I would show the director. I go, look, I
put put a moose over there is that? Okay? Can
we leave it? He goes, what's the moose for? And
I go it's funny. It's an Easter egg. Nobody will know,
you know, it's a moose, so they usually would let
me keep it in. And then and then moose became penguins.
So and I got really, really bold on a Cameron

(01:05:25):
Crow movie with the moose. We put moose antlers on
a horse in a gas station. It's just there. Nobody
said a word about it. Camera says okay. But it
was really big. It wasn't hidden in a corner. It
was like here. So in the next film, I put
penguins in it, and I put them really big, and

(01:05:48):
they like walk across the frame, and they were overly bright.
I couldn't get the vendor to tone them down, and
we couldn't do it in the d I in those days,
and nobody said anything about it. So I started putting
more and more things in. And then I found the
UCLA study on the gorilla playing basketball, which if you
haven't seen it, have a look at it. It explains

(01:06:12):
why you can do this stuff and nobody sees it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
I was just thinking that very thing when you were
talking about the penguins.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yeah, yeah, so I see how far I can get it.
And I've lost a job over it. I got interviewed
for green Hornet, Yeah, the green Hornet, and the director
I said, you know, I like to sneak things in
and he was he got outraged. Just how dare you?

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
I go, no, no, no, it's fine, And if you
don't approve it, I won't do it. But I always
do it. No, no, you cannot do this. This is
not this zeckl rely is you don't do that anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
I didn't get it with that movie anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Well, I didn't get a call back on it. And
one of the things I find is that if you're
working correctly, meaning the collaboration and flow is casual and
more deep, that you can sometimes affect the outcome of
a movie. Like you know, Rennie and I used to collaborate,

(01:07:15):
although I don't know if he would agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
But.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
You know, you go, you really shouldn't shoot a scene
like this. Can you just move the camera over there
and place them, you know? Or you know? Yeah, And
a lot of that happens in pre production, and nowadays
you do it with previs and you know, you build it.
The last thing I did, they would do storyboards, but

(01:07:42):
they wouldn't share them, so I did my own previs,
you know, and I would show it to them and
then we would shoot stuff and they go, well, we
never saw your previs. And you pull it up and
go look shooting it cut for cut coincidence, great minds
think alike. But it's really good, so you know, it

(01:08:02):
makes it easier, and then you know, when you get
a reputation such as it is, it makes it easier
to approach the director and go, look, I just put
four penguins really big, like like on Blood Diamond. There's
a they're evacuating free Town and they're coming across the

(01:08:27):
frame in a huge diagonal line with a village burning
way in the background. But right here is a family
of four penguins, really big, you know. And I showed
it to Ed and I go, I put those there,
and I go, here's a version without them, you know,
and he goes, well, they're too big, And I said, well,

(01:08:48):
let's let's see. I go invite some people in from
the office here and let's see if they say so.
We invited people in and nobody saw the penguins, so
Ed final it goes fine, if it'll make you happy,
keep your damn penguins.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
It sounds like there's a YouTube video waiting to be
made of all of your penguins colleated in one place
at one of the other strings to your many strings
to your boat is the VS. The Visualist Effects Society.
When you chaired that for a while and kind of
advocated for, you know, workers in the industry better conditions.

(01:09:26):
Was that something that was really important to you at
the time, Having, you know, seen what you've seen over
those decades, it's still important.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Yeah. The problem is is that VS. Isn't the isn't
the organization to affect that kind of change. I don't
know if you know it, but back in the late
eighties I tried to get a visual effects guild going,
and I met with the unions and they really didn't

(01:09:57):
want anything to do with it, and they said, oh,
you should, you know, go talk to the TV guys
because you're really you know, tape operators is more a
it's more of a tape operating kind of thing what
you do. And then I tried again in the early nineties,
and then when this whole industry went global, I was like, well,

(01:10:19):
I don't know what to do. And then the union
came to me when I was chair of the VS
and said, you know, we wanted visual effects union. So
we put together a secret group of influential visual effects
and special effects people and we worked with IATZI to

(01:10:45):
try to get them to do it the way we
wanted it done. And after a year or two we
ended up just going our separate ways because effectively what
they wanted to do would have gotten everybody fired, you know,

(01:11:06):
and it wasn't going to bring about the change that
we wanted. At one point, Local six hundred, which is
photographers cinematographers, came to us and said we'll take everybody
in the VS into our unit, and we were met
with them. Bob Coleman was our treasurer at the time,

(01:11:29):
and we met with them and Bob asked the question
that broke the bank, which is, so you're going to
waive all fees and wave all dues until you actually
can represent us, and they went no, we're still going
to be an entrance fee and you're still going to
have to pay dues. And we said, well, how when

(01:11:51):
will you be able to represent us? And they go, oh,
well it could take twenty years. There's a whole process
and people are going to have to sign these cards
and this and that, you know, blah blah blah blah blah,
and so we essentially, you know, it's a hard thing

(01:12:14):
to say. We essentially said, our deal is you let
us in no entrance, fees, no dues until such a
point as you can actually represent us. Otherwise you're just
taking our money and we're not getting any benefit from it.
And you know, when you think about unionization, which is

(01:12:34):
what would have worked, you know, when you're union to
get a pension plan, you get a health plan, there's
a place to go if you're working you know more
than you know, eighty billion hours a day when you don't,
you know, And it's what we need. And the problem
now in twenty twenty four is that the industry's global,

(01:13:00):
the union is local, and until there's a world union,
all that's going to happen is, in my opinion, is
that it will be more people. If you want a job,
you're going to have to go to another country. That
they'll be less and less and it's certainly not going
to make it any more competitive. It will make it

(01:13:20):
less competitive.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
And with.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
You know, the tax incentives that people are offering, we're
already the migrant film workers and we travel to where
it is. I haven't shot anything in Los Angeles since
one sequence in Cameron Crow's movie Elizabethtown and before that Stargate,

(01:13:48):
so it's a rough thing. And the other problem that's
very disconcerting to me is because we have gone out
of our way to sell the equipment as what does
the work, the software, the computer processor, you know this
and that, because the perception of producers and directors and

(01:14:12):
production managers is, well, I have a computer. Yeah, I
hit the button. So if you don't want to hit
the button, I'll find somebody else to hit the button,
you know. And we've really sold ourselves short. And I
always like to do the comparison with the directors of
photography is you never hear them going, oh, I shot

(01:14:32):
it with a Panavision gold Star camera. What you hear
is John Toll shot this movie. John Told did this,
and John Told did this, and they sell their artistry
so that you know names like Billy Freakin and John
Toll and Michael Goy and all these people. I like

(01:14:55):
a game, and I'm as guilty as the next person
failing at this. But so who won the OSCAR last
year for visual effects?

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
I know it wasn't the creator because I remember following
that and I've forgotten who it was now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Right, And there's your point. Yeah, that's the point. I
don't even care what film. Who are the four people
that wont it? See, we're not selling our artistry, we're
selling our equipment. And as such, it's not like, oh,
the best artists are in LA. What they hear is, oh,
the best computers are up in wherever Ilm is these days,

(01:15:36):
or New Zealand. If I need monkeys, I need to
go to New Zealand. That doesn't matter that all the
artists that did that left the company and moved somewhere else.
So I follow artists, I don't follow companies. And it's
very hard because the artists are what used to be
a very small group of practitioners is now blossomed into thousands.

(01:15:59):
And as such our job has become more of a
factory job. And they don't see the faces and the fingers.
They just see, here's the assembly line. It's got all
those computers and processors on it. And that's not a
good thing for us.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Was it was Godzilla minus one?

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
That's correct, yep? And there's only three people and one
special effects guy, can you name any of them? One
of them was the director.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
No, I can't let this point. Yeah, no, it's good.
I mean that was probably the first time in a
number of years, though, that I'd actually seen the faces
of the winners. Because the other thing is the broadcast
of the Academy Awards. Sound editing gets removed from the
broadcast to catch up with the delay, you know, to

(01:16:48):
meet the specific window of time that needs to be broadcast.
Editing gets cut, visual effects gets cut. But that was
one time I did see the faces of the people involved,
So maybe there is a small positive to be had.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Well, thus the Visual Effects Society. That's all I could
say is that when we designed the award show, when
I created the award show under duress from those it's
a whole other story to that. But anyway, the whole
point to the award show is to recognize an honor

(01:17:24):
and to be able to publish these names and get
press coverage and all that stuff. And you know, when
you think about the categories of Visual Effects Society honors
right now, there's twenty five of them. You know, I
left the committee after nine years or something, you know,

(01:17:44):
and they've they've expanded there are things, and they're they're
handing awards out for some things that some people find
a little odd. But at the end of every award
season we always get quests for you know, why don't
we have my Emotion Capture Award? Why don't we have

(01:18:04):
an editing award? Why don't we have a previous award?
You know, all I can say is when I first
presented the awards to the board, under Jim Morris was
the chair, I had eighty four awards. We covered all that.
The board voted it down, saying that the awards show
itself would take three days at that rate, considering it

(01:18:26):
takes two and a half to three hours to hand
out twenty five awards eighty four awards that nobody wants that.
So the awards does what it's supposed to do, but
we as practitioners need to take the start and talk

(01:18:52):
about it. Meaning you need to say people's names. It's like,
you know, it's it's there. It's becomes very political because
you don't want to look weak in front of somebody
that's hiring you. But it would be like, you know,

(01:19:15):
it's like, you know, oh, if I could only get
Mitch Draine, I could knock out these sixty four shots
because he's an excellent artist. You know, if I could
only get the cloud the Deer Brothers, you know, but
we don't do that. We just go, well, City Site
did this, Maybe we could, you know, I'll hire Cinny Site,

(01:19:35):
you know. But meanwhile, nobody's there anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
So well, I feel like I'm doing my little bit,
Jeff with my podcast because I put people's names in
their faces forefront. You know, Tomorrow I'm speaking to Pablo Hellman,
and then I'm speaking to Stephen King and Rob Coleman,
and I've spoken to Nila Rhotis and you know, a
whole bunch of people.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
You know, some podcasts they put the movie up front.
They say you know so, and say work this movie.
I don't do that, actually, and I'm probably suffering for
that fact. But I do like to sort of point
to the artistry of people rather than the film itself,
and you know, the umbrella that they worked under.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Yeah, we'll TELP. First off, Telp Pablo, I said, hey,
we'll do. But the problem is when you think back
on it, you know, we we know the Holy Group,
you know, you know, Dykster Mirror and Ralston, Edlin and
Tippett m h. You know, then the next generation is

(01:20:36):
like Rob Legato, me Pablo, most of the visual effects
supervisors at ILM. And but anyway, it's like it's hard
to get down into the weeds. It's hard to go
after the artist. But again, if you go back to

(01:21:01):
the let me tell you an imperfect story instead of
a perfect story, then you can have an artist and
he could show you look at what they shot, never
mind why they shot it, which is a whole the
other thing. Look how I figured out how to do this.
So the artists are doing what we used to do,
you know. And one of the things, as an aside,

(01:21:23):
that the artist seemed to like is they love my
war stories. As to why I did not shoot it correctly,
you know, and you go, well, you know, we did
the best we could, but unfortunately they dropped the camera
in the sand and we didn't have a thing, and
the sun was setting behind the dune and we had
to get the shot. So I grabbed this other camera
and we had held it on this tripod because we

(01:21:45):
didn't have time to do that. So we're lucky we
got it at all. And they're going, well, I got
to stabilize it, and I got to do that, you know,
and it's like, yeah, you're doing all the great stuff
that I was supposed to do because I'm supposed to
know what I'm doing. But that's like a whole show
is like iconic shots from various movies. How did they
really happen? I don't want to hear. You know. Rob

(01:22:09):
had this great idea and then he tested it and
it worked perfectly. Everything happened and it was nice. And
as a compositor, all I had to do was hit
the button and watch it come to get you know.
It's like there's some stories out there that will and
producers and dps and directors need to understand this in

(01:22:34):
order for them to really buy into helping us help them.
And sometimes we have that sometimes, you know, like Albert
and Brannan and even Roland even though he does these sequences.
Nobody can shoot anything on anymore, but you know, they

(01:22:56):
do the stuff. And by the way, my favorite kind
of visual effects it isn't the Marvel watch me create
a universe, even though some of the work and that
is studyingly beautiful. My favorite stuff, because I remember I
started as a magician, is the invisible visual effect that
looks like there's no visual effects in this project. That's

(01:23:18):
that's where it gets exciting for me. But I love
the do the giant thing everywhere now and again because
I really like giant explosions, and so does Ready Harlan.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jeff Oakan there.
I just love his blend of deep technical knowledge, problem
solving spirit and that totally irreverent sense of humor. From
what looking under sau Bass to Samuel or Jackson getting
eaten mid monologue, it's clear that Jeff had a hand
in some iconic moments, often in ways we never knew
about without a podcast like this one. And that's exactly

(01:24:12):
what this podcast is here for a sort of oral
history in a way of behind the scenes unsung heroes,
you know, pulling back that curtain to celebrate the creativity,
the chaos as well and the craft behind those movies
we love. Coming up on the podcast, I've got chats
lined up with a director, a concept artist, some more
VFX folks, and also Walter Merch coming up soon as well.

(01:24:35):
My friend Dave Barkley Puppeteer, has just released a book
as well, and I've got him on the podcast. It's
already recorded. That'd be coming up in the next few weeks.
And I'll also be writing some more pieces for ILM
and Skywalker Sound, which I'll keep you posted about in
the show notes and on my link tree, and I'll
talk about those in forthcoming episodes. Also keep an eye
out for some special episodes later in April. My pal

(01:24:57):
Rachel will be sending back reports from Styles Celebration Japan,
which I'll be dropping in as bonus episodes here on
the feed. I can't be there myself sadly work commitments,
but Rachel's going to capture the vibe for us. I'll
be out in Vegas just before that. I'm going to
work for one of my clients at the big show

(01:25:18):
out there, NAB, demonstrating some of their kit. So if
you're at NAB, I know some of you are in
the industry, come along to the EVS Broadcast booth and
say hi, thanks again for listening, and I hope you
can join me next time on the Film Youmentaries podcast.
Now you've seen how bad things can get and how
quick they can get that way, well, they can get

(01:25:40):
a whole lot worse.

Speaker 2 (01:25:42):
So we're not going to fight anymore. We're going to
pull together and we're going to find a way to
get out of here. First, we're going to see you after.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
This podcast is produced, edited, and presented by Jamie Benning.

(01:26:43):
Music is by Michael Hewitt Brown of MB Music. Thanks
for listening, weirding Way Media

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124 - Push the Button - The Curious Career of Jeff Okun

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}124 - Push the Button - The Curious Career of Jeff Okun