American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 88

they manufactured the half scale
puppet for the shot."
Eric

Allard, head of All
Effects, recalls that he was basically
hired to work mechanical post¬

production in conjunction with
Dream Quest, but they soon began
taking a larger and larger role in
post-production. Assisting Allard
Ron

were

Griffin, Lewis Lindwal,

Phil Bartko, Dennis Curcio and pyrotechnician Joe Viskocil.
"The

phone booth
conceived

problem with the

gag was that it was
a full-sized
physical

as

effect," Allard explains, "which
Hard

plastic model

of the Blob with

a

soft end. This is
the version of the
Blob which

ex¬

plodes up through
the ground onto the
Main Street set.

that

meant

sheriff, who ironically ap¬
pears as Clark is trying to reach
him by phone. "We had two guys

Blob in order to make

in the water

were

sheriff

much easier. As

town

puppeteering the dead
grand ap¬
pearance. The sheriff was basically
a
mechanically assisted handpuppet in that scene. Chris Gay oper¬
ated

as

he made his

head

the

and

neck

and

shoulder movements, and the eyes
were radio controlled. The sheriff
had been

partially absorbed by the
Blob at that point, and half his face
is streaming off as if it's been
dissolved
I was going for the look
you get when you pour colored liq¬
-

uids in water. We used

a

lot of semi¬

we

move

mass

of

something
happen. It was turning into a big
rigging job, whereas I felt if we
to do it

half scale, it would be

long as we could
make the phone booth and the girl
look right, the Blob would be much
easier to deal

with, since the half

scale Blob would be 1/8 the

mass

of

high. We felt that the high¬
the more violent the
impact and thus better the effect

was
er

too

the pressure,

would be, but too much pressure
aereated the methylcel, turning it
into

white foam and

ruining the
having to back
and move the
mortars away from the phonebooth
a little bit and it worked
great."
a

shot. We ended up
down the pressure

While Gardner's effects
work

elaborate, it

was

also

was

straightforward, unlike the task
that faced Dream

Quest. "The di¬
vision," Hoyt Yeatman
explains. "He wanted to see this
chaotic, stroboscopic light effect
rector had

a

on inside the theatre during
the Blob's attack. The problem was

going

that once you establish something
like that in a scene, you have to
follow it through the entire se¬

quence. The shots that
Blob - which were
shots

involved the
composite
needed to have a continuity
strobelight effect on the Blob

-

the full scale Blob."

of the

Using the lifecast and
bodycast of Candy Clark that Gard¬
ner had made,
sculptor Wayne

itself. Most of the shots in this

Strom recreated the actress 1/2 size,
while Allard's crew built the phone

side

booth out of softened aluminum.
"It was basically a

large rectangular

consisted of three
background shot in¬

sequence
elements a

a

real movie theatre with

a

stroboscopic light going, a middleground element consisting of a
quarter scale miniature of theatre
seats and a quarter scale miniature

transparent fabric with painted
vein patterns trailing off one side of

box," Allard says. "We put a single

his face to create the

on each
side. Each of these panes was fitted

foreground element. All of these

with

stroboscopic light pattern occur¬
ring from the same direction and
with the same frequency as in the
live-action background plate.
"We ended up using a de¬

right look."
Originally, the effect of
the Blob covering the phone booth
from the outside causing it to im¬
plode was to be done full scale by
Gardner and Conway's crews, but

sheet of tempered glass
imately 14" wide x 3' tall

approx¬

glassbreaker on the floor,
they struck the tempered
glass, it would all shatter at once.
a

and when

We added the mullions and door
detail

supposed to do the effect
involving the Blob devouring Can¬
dy Clark," Gardner says, "but after
doing several tests, the creature
shop realized that the Blob quilt

from inside, it looked like each pane
was broken
up into four separate
windows.

and the air mortars weren't all that

about 18" away from the glass. We
loaded the big steel cones with

trol up to eight
The live action

about 100

VistaVision effects

ready built a full-sized dummy of
Candy Clark with basic head move¬
ment and spring loaded arms that
would press against the glass but
which were able to collapse in¬
wards when the glass shattered. At
that point, we were in the last week
and

a

half of inserts and

we

didn't

have time to redo the effect, so we

provided the lifecast and bodycast
and hair sample to All Effects, and

American

Cinematographer

on

"Outside the booth, we
had six air mortars

positioned

pounds of methylcel and
blob silk apiece before aiming them
at the phonebooth. Everything
was
supposed to work together puppeting the Candy Clark minia¬
ture, breaking the glass and firing
the air mortars
bit of

a

getting it

-

but

we

had

a

little

disaster in terms of not
on

blue

screen

same

we invented some time
ago
called Blinkatron, a remote control

vice

lighting device which incorporates
microprocessor similar to a

a

motion-control device. It

can

con¬

channels of strobe.
camera

and/or the

camera are con¬

nected to the Blinkatron via cable
and

once

speed,

the

camera

gets up to

little light would mark the
frame and the computer would play
back whatever program we'd typed
in. We were using high speed
a

strobes

we

frame and

the first take.

a

elements had to have the

"We

were

the inside of the booth, so

of the Blob, and then

the time crunch became too critical.

controllable full scale, so they de¬
cided to go half-scale. We had al¬

86

had to

semi-dissolved remains of the

in the air mortars and the pressure

could fire up
on

the

to every

keyboard

tried the effect, we found we were

we
a very random type pat¬
tern and we'd play it back until the

containing the methylcel too much

director

"The first few times

December 1988

we

typed in

got the look he wanted.
American Cinematographer - December 1988

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