American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 90

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ND wheel which went from clear

the two trees in front of it. "The

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trees

slight progression. As the camera
speed changed, the little black me¬

mits.

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we

built maintained

constant or net

*

*

*

*

we

keep the amount of light passing
through the lens constant."
All of the miniature sets
Dream

Quest shot

for post¬

production Blob effects were built
by master miniature maker Greg

new

TV

series. Before

doing any building
The Blob, Jein first went to Ab¬
beville to walk the town, where he
on

took
the

panoramic reference photos of
as they appeared at
time
later, they were given

buildings
-

false fronts.

Motion Picture Equipment
Service/Sales/Rental

Jein decided to construct
the main Blob miniature, the town
of Abbeville, in a 1/8 scale "because
it worked for

me

on

car

1941," he
parts were

available in that scale, so we didn't
have to make all these scratchbuilt

automobiles, though we wound up
sculpting most of the cars ourselves

on

a

lot of the accessories. Unfor¬

(ARRI, ECLAIR, BEAULIEU, BOLEX Etc.)
Factory trained by AATON
and ANGENIEUX in France

20 yrs

experience in motion

picture field
Servicing all major motion
picture equipment

set in relation to where it

was on

Chicago, IL 60610 312-664-3752

good job using partial live fo¬
liage and plastic leaves. They origi¬
nally used live leaves, which gave it
a better look, but
they all died by
the time they got around to shoot¬
ing it."
-

DILIGENT

The ultimate

the Blob

disposal of

left in the very capable
hands of Chris Gilman, head of the
was

relatively new effects facility with
the unlikely name, Diligent
Dwarves. After the Blob

ed with

freezes

a

was

blast¬

large dose of C02, it

over

and becomes

a

Blob-

crystalized blob - which
Gilman and company ended up
vacuforming out of lightweight
plastic, to the pleasant surprise of
The Blob's director. "Originally, they
-

a

wanted to make the frozen Blob in

resin," Gilman laughs. "I said, 'No
way! It'll weigh nine zillion
pounds!' Instead, I told them we
could vacuform it out of clear plas¬
tic, and paint it from behind. They
weren't

sure

vacuform

could

achieve the look

they wanted, so we
agreed to make them a sample.
Rima Litonjua made a quick crystal
pattern from wood blocks - we

been scaled down

pieces out of hard urethane, which
we
glued onto a board. We then laid
resin around the base to join them
all together, then drilled a bunch of
holes and vacuformed right over
that to create a real quick 6' x 6'
piece."
The powers that be of The
Blob were impressed. The only
trouble was they needed a lot of
frozen Blob in a hurry. Even Dili¬
gent Dwarves would have had trou¬
ble turning out the 130 4' x 4' panels
required in so short a period of

or
they should
pushed it back through the
wall of the soundstage. The steeple
was the first
piece we built just to

have

see

how fast

we

could do it

float. It worked out
us

some

-

mass

okay, and

we

gave

ideas about how to

use

produced vacuform bricks.

The whole town took three

months to construct. We had

or

four

a

lot of

good people we borrowed from
other companies who were pretty
dead at the time, so the quality was
actually pretty good for a low
budget/medium budget film."
were

probably the most difficult

445 W. Erie Street Unit 103
88

a

made molds

The town hall and its trees

SMS PRODUCTIONS, INC.

Mike and Dave did

the location. It either should have

put it together like a big parade

AATON
ANGENIEUX
REPAIRS

on us.

real

sicle

ARRIFLEX, SPECTRA,
STEENBECK, and TIFFEN

Buy/Sell/Trade Used
Equipment

burden

Encounters, Batteries Not Included,

tunately, in that scale we ended up
with a church steeple that was 15
feet high, which nobody wanted!
They couldn't get it back far enough

expendables

duplicate the trees in min¬
iature, he'd have to find another
location, so that was the biggest

DWARVES

the later Star Trek films and

we

couldn't

CHRIS GILMAN

and

Full line of

big worry," Jein ad¬

a

"The director felt if

out-of-this-world creations for Close

Dealer for most

major
companies including

were

Jein, who is most famous for his

laughs. "A lot of

SALES/SERVICE/RENTAL

As

exposure.

a

turned the frame rate up or down,
this little wheel would track and

that

$42.00 each

Hosch and Dave Schwartz to build

stops down in a very

27

ready-to-use motion picture and
video tape production forms inc.
calendar, casting, production reports,

Jein built the

city hall and contracted Mike

chanical box

Computer-generated

items to construct.

and makes the shots appear to
strobe. Instead, we used a variable

December 1988

time

-

on

and that

Gilman's

those and cast the

was

the least of

problems. "We

were real
concerned that the frozen Blob

crystals would appear like a repeat¬
ed patchwork pattern," he admits.
American Cinematographer - December 1988

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