American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 91

"To solve that
one

main

problem,

we

created

pattern, but within that

pattern we had nine individual

plates in the middle that we could
pull out and rotate - like a little
jigsaw puzzle in the center. We
used all nine plates all the time,
we
just pulled them out and re¬
arranged them to create different
patterns. This allowed us to pull
324 variations off that one pattern!
We'd pull five of any given pattern
before rearranging the center sec¬
tion. That way we could interstack
five of them, instead of stacking 130
panels individually. They nestled
like egg crates onto five or six pal¬
lets four feet square and four feet
high.
When
the
Diligent
Dwarves

crew

arrived at the Ab¬

beville, Louisiana location, they set

all 130 panels of frozen Blob like
giant jigsaw puzzle in a vacant
parking lot. Once the panels were
laid out in the basic shape the direc¬
tor had specified, they used magic
up

a

markers to sketch its outline before

stapling the panels together into
larger panels measuring 10' x 12.'
The larger panels were then num¬
bered since it wasn't possible to
leave the frozen Blob set up over¬

night for fear it would be
dalized

or

van¬

stolen.

"We

originally sup¬
posed to set the Blob up on Satur¬
day morning so they could shoot
through Saturday night and wrap
sometime Sunday morning," Gil¬
man

were

remembers. "Then

someone

decided

they wanted to shoot with
it Friday night and wrap out Satur¬
day morning, so we hustled about
15 people together, and each of us
carried the large sections down the
street and set them up in front of
the courthouse. When we got there,
we realized we had a
big problem.
We had originally been told the
truck would be blown up in a cer¬
tain spot, but when we got to the

thing set

in less than ten hours!
did some quick
thinking as the carpenters began
constructing wooden risers
ranging from 1' to 18" to 2' in
height, in order to give the Blob a
mountainous shape. We decided to
work our panels as close to the
truck as we could, while arranging
it to span the street from curb to
up

"We

curb. The director said he wanted it
to look like

a squashed tomato, and
quick sketch on a piece of
wood, which we had photocopied.
We put our original grid pattern
over his sketch to
figure out where
our
panels would have to go to
accommodate that shape. It was a
nightmare. We had to relabel each
part of the grid in order to keep it all
straight - if we cut a piece away on
one side of the pattern, it often had
to mesh with something way over
on the other side.
We actually
gained about ten feet of frozen Blob

did this

from this!
"We

got the thing put to¬

gether

up to the truck, and since
the truck's flatbed was made of

wood,

we

stapled the panels right

'tip to the bed! We bent the excess

panels around the truck, stapled
them completely along one side of
the truck and halfway along the
other, then draped them down onto
the pavement below - it looked as if
the Blob had just finished flowing
out

from beneath this truck before it

blew

up and froze. Then we
brought three or four tons of rock
salt
dyed purple and red - down
to the set by the dumpsterful and
dressed the edge of the huge prop.
-

Then

we

laid broken chunks of

resin in and about that to make it

appear as

if pieces of frozen Blob

had broken off and fallen to earth."

Dealing with
erative Blob and

an

an uncoop¬

impossible

sections and cut around this truck,

Stuart Ziff, Tony Gardner, and
Greg Jein, All Effects and Dream
Quest managed to produce effects
footage that far surpassed that in
the original film. Whatever the new
Blob lacks in originality was made
up for many times over by the tre¬
mendous ingenuity these talented
artists displayed under pressure. In
years to come, these effects may be
the only reason anyone will watch
this otherwise disappointing film.

especially since we had to have this

A

courthouse,

we

realized that dur¬

ing shooting the night before they
had blown it up in a completely
different position - right in the
middle of where

our

frozen Blob

supposed to be! We were all
wondering how in hell we were
was

going to set this thing up. We
couldn't just arbitrarily take away

THE

schedule, effects artists Lyle Con¬
way,

December 1988

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American Cinematographer - December 1988

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