American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 86

as

another smaller

flashes of

rig that would hold

Leach's miniature

counterpart.

Both

rigs featured a sliding, pivot¬
ing platform of Blob that came up
through the floor, as well as a sepa¬
rate piece that stretched from the
victim's head to the window behind

him, nicknamed "The Waterfall''

on a

small seat mounted

on

rolling platform, leaning forward.
His body was encased in a translu¬
cent pink fiberglass shell - except
for where his head stuck out past
the neck and an area where his

right hand

exposed."
top of the fi¬
berglass was layered what Gardner
refers to as the "Aquapull shroud"
Aquapull is a fabric which becomes
transparent when wet. "This was
really the base structure for the
Blob in this sequence," Gardner
says. "We made this enormous
shroud that fit over the entire rig. It
was
only open at Donovan's right
was

Over the

involves the ingestion of a high school football
jock, played by Donovan Leitch,
gruesome scenes

before the incredulous, horrified
eyes of his girlfriend, played
Shawnee Smith. "Originally,
sequence was

going to be

a

by
the
collab¬

oration between creature effects

and

makeup effects," Gardner ex¬
plains, "but by the time we got
around to shooting the effect, Lyle
had left the film. Lyle's approach
was

to do it the entire

sequence

using mechanical miniatures of
Donovan Leitch's character. I felt

elbow and

his face, so it pro¬

-

"Over that went what

we

vest made

needed Donovan himself to sell the

us build a miniature of
Shawnee Smith, and I talked

erything except his face and his
right arm. It actually zippered up
the back. This was a bulky piece
designed to create a sense of the

Donovan into

mass

out

and

principal photography
wrapped. The sequence starts

as a

full sized live action effect

over

the

of the

course

scene

jacketj which was a
quilt that fit over

of Blob

the whole structure and covered

puppets and the actors."

streaked with blue while the

construction of two very

American

Cinematographer

elaborate

a

couple of long strips about 3' wide
by 9' long whose sides were heavily
quilted while the center was clear
silk with small little pockets sewn
into it. These

required the

ev¬

of the Blob. We also used

cuts back and forth between the

The effect

nylon tricot fabrics which were
pulled from underneath at different
speeds from different directions.
This helped create a sense of move¬
ment happening just below the
surface
it was really quite a sim¬
ple way to accomplish it."
The platform Leitch sat on
was
designed to roll back into a
cavity inside the waterfall. The full
size waterfall was a fiberglass piece
covered with a layer of clear vinyl
bladders, Aquapull shroud and
three Blob quilts of different
lengths which were pulled over it at
different speeds.
-

Gardner's

three
to

pull off the

was a

underneath

moving pieces were
pieces

were

streaked with

red, and when the streaks crossed

December 1988

created

crew

stages of mechanical effects
sequence.

The first

miniature of Leitch for the

establishing shot where he unfolds
and reaches forward. The second
another

was

tended

kept him dry. We
paint veins
into the nylon base, then we paint¬
ed the Aquapull on top of that. If
you put on a sleeve of this stuff, it
looks like your hand is coated in
slime
it doesn't appear to have
any real structure.
called the 'Blob

had

in

used urethane tints to

they would give us a lot more
permit us to shoot a
wider angle, but I also felt we

giving us a day out of

a
gross surface
of large bulges. To create
fine surface movement, we layered

movement

Donovan

that

his life after

84

over

control and

letting

of depth that way.
"Directly on top of the fi¬
berglass were clear vinyl bladders

some sense

tected him and

puppets were a really good idea in

effect. I talked the director into

face, the
got, the further away from
him, the redder it got, so we created

that worked off air compressors,

"He sat

ville, Louisiana.

the closer to his

-

clearer it

which created

a

One of the film's most

colors

Blob

-

recreation of Abbe-

purple. We tinted the
pockets varying

slime itself in the

The

impression created is of the
moving in two different direc¬
tions at once
part of it seems to be
sliding over its victim and onto the
floor, while the Waterfall gives the
impression the creature is also mov¬
ing up the wall and out the window.
"Donovan spent a day in
this horrible rig," Gardner laughs.

Miniature street

the fabrics moved on top of each
other, there would be occasional

- one full-scale that would
house the real Donovan Leitch, and

rigs

-

-

of

miniature

with

his

face

dis¬

holding hands with

miniature of Shawnee

she tries to

Smith,

a
as

pull him free of the

Blob. The third stage was a fullsized closeup head with the mouth
distended out of frame. "That

was

only full-scale puppet in this
sequence," Gardner says. "There
was a fourth
stage that was never
seen: the
very tail end of the blob
pouring out the window with Don¬
our

ovan's face stretched

eyes

rolled

up

across

it, his

into his head."

To create the memorable
effect of Shawnee Smith
Leitch's

arm

pulling

off, Gardner used his

over-the-shoulder "Blob sled"
which featured

rig with a
quick release mechanism he could
plug a fake arm into. "Shawnee
actually fought against someone
an arm

riding the back of the sled holding
the pistol grip release, and he could
let go at any time," Gardner recalls,
American Cinematographer - December 1988

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 1988
