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From a firefighter’s mosaic to phasers and photon torpedoes, digital painter and animator Adam Howard reveals a passion for pyro in CGI Fridays Episode 6.
SEASON 2 COMING SOON!
Industrial Light and Magic alum and CGI educator Ed Kramer (Star Wars, Stargate, The Mummy, Galaxy Quest) catches up with pioneers and innovators to learn about the coolest VFX in our favorite films and how they got started in the industry. Hilarious, informative, and surprising, CGI Fridays is a must for anyone starting a career in visual effects or computer animation, as well as fans of behind-the-scenes stories from some of the biggest science fiction films of all time.
Adam Howard: When I started,
there weren't any computers at
all in 1980. In Australia, there
was nothing. We made everything
by hand, there was selling a
nation and it was graphic design
and illustration. I was there at
the very beginning on the
console paint box, I animated
the first opening title sequence
in the southern hemisphere
design on paint box, and then we
animate it on a Cray X MP, there
were two jobs at Sonic vision at
the time that were being done.
Ours was the second one in line.
And the one immediately before
us, was the Dire Straits music
video money for nothing.
Russians did that. Russians did
that. Yeah, but they were they
were animating it on crazy all
over the world. I think there
was a seven or eight craze
around the world because it
company called mini museum. And
they sell like microscopic
pieces of things. Like they'll
sell you a two millimetre square
of a gold foil from Apollo 11
and stuff like that. And you get
them in little boxes. It's a
really cool site. But one of the
things I bought was one of the
processes from the Craig's and
Peter was in Boston, which
animated my job back in 1982. So
yeah, I started, like right at
the beginning. So I've seen the
entire progression of CG from
nothing to lose. And Adam
Howard, I grew up in northern
Australia, very long way away
from Hollywood, but movies and
TV were my passion. My mom said
to me, you never gonna get
anywhere watching the idiot box
TV. Fortunately, she was wrong.
I grew up in Melbourne, I went
to school called Scotch College
in Melbourne, which was my high
school, kind of equivalent with
the United States. And it was a
very academically based school,
not really up my alley away. But
I went there because my dad had
gone there. And my brother was
there as well. In my third year
there, the Art Department hired
this guy called Rick route. And
Rick had been a commercial
artist and an illustrator and a
designer, and had done bizarre
things like taught prisoners in
the prison system. And Australia
taught them after he came in.
And on his first day, he said to
all this, I'm just gonna let you
know I don't have a curriculum,
I want you to tell me what you
want to learn. And I'll make it
happen. Everybody had different
interests. Some kids wanted to
do pottery, someone's oil
painting, I wanted to do
animation. So Rick made it
happen. Rick became my greatest
supporter in the school in year
11. He showed up at my parents
house, one Saturday afternoon, I
answered the door, and I freaked
out because I've got God as a
teacher at the door, what have I
done wrong, he came in, he said,
It's okay, I just want to talk
to him about something. We all
went and sat in the living room
and he said, to speak to my
parents, I need you to
understand something, Adam has a
gift that must be pursued. He's
an incredible artist. And given
the right tools and the right
experience and opportunity, he
can turn this into a lifetime
career. If you make him do you
12 That scotch, he's going to
crash and burn, because he's
just not built for that system.
But if you let me spend the next
three months helping him prep
the portfolio, I want you to
take them out of the school and
put them into this orientation
programme at Chisholm Institute,
which is now Monash University
in Melbourne, and have him do
that as a prep so that we can
get him into the graphic design
course at just add to my
absolute amazement, mum and dad
both, okay, and so Rick and I
spent the next few months
prepping this portfolio of art
that I applied, and I got in and
I went, and I did that course
got to do my first real hands on
animation. At that point, I
didn't find a graphic design
degree, that gave me my
grounding in art. But the real
training began after that, once
I got my first job, I was lucky
enough to get a work experience
at the ABC Australian
Broadcasting Corporation. And in
the graphic design department, I
was there for one month. And
after that month, I went back
every Friday, after school load
on everybody's desk, and I say
this, my name is mine about the
second job becomes available,
give me a call. And I kept on
doing that to the point where
this guy, we're gonna we're
gonna lose the head of the
department, malls to shut me up
and everything else. So who's
gonna give you a job, I did a
couple of little jobs in
advertising, first doing design
work on some pretty incredible
projects, and then went to work
at ABC. And it began in those
days, again, no computers,
everything was handmade. And I
was working for a guy called
Gary Emery, who was one of the
top 10 graphic designers in the
world at the time, they ran a
company called the American
synth design. And it was one of
the first times that I learned
this thing which became
invaluable to me later on, you
got to come up with the right
idea the first time, you don't
have a chance to come up with 10
and pick whatever works best,
you got to come up with the
idea. And so in the mornings, we
would have a briefing. And like
an hour later, he would come by
our desk and say, Okay, what's
the idea, he would then
obviously put his polish on it
and you'd finish the job, one of
the jobs that I've worked on,
and I'm only allowed to give
very generic information about
this because I had to sign the
national secrets a hat was
designing the signage for the
new parliament house in
Australia. Wow, we were privy to
stuff that I will not be allowed
to talk about ever. We had armed
guards that stood by the
safeguards and when we come up
to us in the morning, and they
would take the plants out of the
safe and roll it out on the desk
and we'd be allowed to look at
them and not touch them. At the
end of the day. They'd roll in
and put it back in safe and then
I went to ABC the first job I
had was working on ABC News
during the weather. My parents
were watching the news, they
would watch the weather and go
off there's really good
information so it's accurate
coming from the Bureau of
Meteorology, but we would
literally just get from the
barometric pressure information
that they've given us and we
will just trace over that with a
piece of acetate should another
down shooter and loaded into
this very primitive computer.
And it was just two colours.
That was the earliest computer
that I had the opportunity to
work on and it was GARBAGE. This
is 1981 of the good things about
ABC Television and Auburn was
that if you wanted to, you could
take the opportunity to learn
any part of the process. They
were always open arms welcoming
you to any department. In my
early years, I worked in theatre
at Melbourne Theatre Company,
and I was an actor and I did a
lot of behind the scenes stuff
as well as good lighting and
sound specialist sound which I
love doing because I'm a
musician as well creating
environments with sound. When I
was 16. My dad was a member of
parliament in Australia, he
introduced me to this guy called
Harold Friedman and Harold had
been appointed as the state
artist for Victoria. He was
given this mandate to create
major works of art to go around
Victoria. He was a renowned oil
painter, and had done some
massive murals one at Flinders
Street Station in Melbourne
train station, which was about
170 feet one absolutely massive
and about five storeys high, I
got to go and work with those
guys as their Apprentice on a
mural that was made at the fire
brigade building in the centre
of Melbourne, which was done
entirely as a mosaic. It's about
70 feet wide and five storeys
high. It's two and a half
million individually hand cut
pieces of glass, most of which I
can certainly 80% of the fire in
that mural I made went up in
1983. I think it just got
classified by the National Trust
as a national treasure is
protected for life. And it was
all about the illusion of a
pixel when you were looking at
the work up close to her piece
of glass that would make this
big to this big the higher you
went up the five storey height,
the bigger the pieces had to be
so that from the ground, the
illusion was they're all the
same size, we had mirrors in the
ceiling that were reflecting the
desk, and then another mirror in
front of us on 45 degree angle
that was reflecting that mirror
so that we could see the whole
thing, how old painted the whole
thing in oil paint as a guide
for us. And then we traced the
painting, scaled it up and then
turned it around backwards. And
we had to do the whole thing
backwards because you glue the
gloss on the paper. And when
it's all finished, you get the
paper and you set the glass into
some map of a wall and then you
soak the paper off. It's
everything you do you have to do
backwards. That was the really
early days of getting started. I
was working on a number of
different shows I ended up
becoming the main title designer
for the comedy unit at ABC. And
so we were doing all these
comedy shows. Everything was
handmade. There was no computer
animation, computer graphics of
any kind at all the economy
series and we would need
something like a joke album
cover or something or the book I
would make physically make the
whole book and problem whatever
it needs to be. And I was
working on the show called
Countdown which was the
Australian version of American
Bandstand. This guy in Meldrum,
whose nickname was Molly, he's
known all over Australia as
Molly Meldrum was the host of
the show, Molly had been one of
the founders of the recording
industry in Australia. He knew
everybody worldwide, and to the
point where when people were
doing concert tours in
Australia, part of their
contract was that they would
appear on Countdown and perform.
We had Madonna and David Bowie
and Tina Turner and Phil
Collins, and all these
incredible people. And this was
one of my first jobs in the
business is working with all of
those people. I was working on
Countdown and a number of other
companies series and still doing
the news and current affairs
weather occasionally, there were
about nine of us, I think in the
graphics department at that
point. Keep in mind, I'm like 17
One day, the art director Scott
Bruno weighed and called me into
his office and he said, I need
you to come in and sit down and
close the door. And I thought,
Great, I'm gonna lose my job.
And he ultimately said, No,
you're not gonna lose your job.
That's not what this is about.
And he said, you know, that big
box has been sitting out in the
hallway for a few days. I said,
Yeah. And he says, The reason
I've asked you to come and close
the door is because when I tell
you, I'm gonna tell you, we're
just gonna love our asses off.
This is really funny. They say
it's a computer that does
graphics.
We were cracking up, he said,
Look, you have the waste
programme commitment, so that of
anybody in the department, why
don't you just take it out,
spend a day putting it together
when it's a piece of rubbish,
let me know and we'll get rid of
it. I got together with the
engineering guys. And they
assembled the whole thing I was
presented with this tablet,
which was about three foot
square, massive thing really
heavy, there was a pen and it
was like a steel pen. It was not
like bends, but it was steel and
had a steel cable on it. And
there was a massive hard drive
rack next to us which was
screaming these Winchester disks
which stored an unbelievably
massive amount of data which was
10 Meg's it was really loud and
noisy. It was one of the first
systems if not the first system,
it was a console paint box what
became known as the classic
paint box. At that time, there
were only about six of them in
the world. They didn't have
anybody to demo it so they just
said just plug it in, see what
you think my brain just went.
There was a connection between
me and this machine. I put the
pans at a tablet and the cursor
appeared on the screen and I
play piano and I could read
sheet music and so looking up
here but working down here was
something that I understood and
so as a musician, my brain
connected to that as an artist
because it just became my hand.
I was drawing on the thing in
minutes it I think all the
sequences are allowed you to
paint multiple frames and Put
them into this tiny little
sequence with 20 frames. But you
can do a little loop. I think
the very first thing I had
random added on paint box was a
radar with a grey and things
spinning. I did that on the
first day, my brain just
exploded, I could see what this
thing was potentially capable of
doing. Keep in mind it was
designed to do news graphics,
still frames that will then keep
behind the newspapers or the box
or whatever the newspapers
shoulder. I went to Bruno's like
seven o'clock in the morning.
And I said to him, Okay, this
time you need to sit down, I
said to him, I'm 17. And the
youngest one here, I have the
least experience of anybody
here. And the very last person
you should be talking to about a
multimillion dollar commitment.
But I have never been more clear
about anything that I've ever
seen in my life as what I'm
about to say to you. Now. This
is the next major industrial
revolution, staring us in the
face. And just like the steam
engine, revolutionised industry,
this is going to revolutionise
our lives, maybe one day,
there's going to be something
like this in everything we do.
We've got to jump on this
bandwagon, we got to do it right
now. Because if we don't in a
couple of years time, somebody
else will and we'll be dead and
gone by it. So we went into the
road and he sat down next to him
in 10 minutes, I showed him to
be able to draw a mask, like he
would put down Frisco paper for
airbrushing. And you could draw
a mask and paint under it and
around it and then get rid of
that and do something else. That
was amazing. And he looked at it
and he went, Oh, wow, this isn't
a piece of rubbish. Okay, well,
yeah. Okay, show me more. So I
spent another 10 minutes showing
him that this is okay. We've had
some meetings, we're gonna go to
today. Go back to work to get
this now. So we would meet at
eight o'clock in the morning for
the news, talk about what we
were going to put on the news at
seven o'clock that night, worked
my whole day on the news. And at
about 10 to seven. We were
getting ready to go live to
where with news. Keep in mind
when it comes to a graphic, same
map of Australia. He was
literally a graphic sitting on a
stand with a camera pointing at
it. It was just real artwork.
And Bruno came in and he flicked
me in the back of the head and
says, Okay, it's done. They're
gonna buy it. I just looked at
him. What? And he goes, Yeah, it
was really impressive. And
here's the thing, you're the
only one who knows how to use
it. So you're running the
department as a 17 year old?
Yeah, along with all the other
designers in the department. We
all learned very quickly, but I
was the main one on it. Maybe
between the nine of us we could
get six or seven graphics done
each day. You had like a
photograph of Reagan and
Gorbachev? Well, you had to find
those photographs cutting things
literally with a scalpel cutting
photos at a Time Magazine and
Life magazine pasting them up
and airbrushing shadows
underneath them rubbing down
letraset lettering. And that was
our graphics, very few graphics
were capable of being put
together each day in a period of
about two weeks, we went from
that few graphics to about 50
graphics a day. Wow, one of the
great things that we realised
was that you could save these
images and you could use them
again, with the old graphics.
Once we glued a picture of
Reagan down on a piece of paper,
we couldn't peel it up and use
it again without destroying the
way that we would present it to
the newsroom. It was a system
called DLs, which was the
Digital Library System DLs
provided the newsroom with a
stack of images that were all in
numerical order, they would just
hit a button graphic one would
come up, hit another one, the
second one come out and they
were all assembled in that stack
in the order that they needed to
be presented for the show. One
night news guys were at seven
o'clock. And at five to seven
the BLS died. And everybody went
into a complete white panic
screaming you know, you fix this
thing, fix this thing. And I
remember this guy was in Boston,
who was the director of the news
at that time. It's amazing. It's
like 40 years ago, and I still
remember what his name was, was
screaming at us over the
talkback, you get this thing on.
Now all your old dead. I said to
somebody in the room, you know,
all the graphics are stored in
paint box, we can try going live
from paint box rather than the
DLLs. The library does weigh in
paint box display book 12 images
screen, I thought that's fine.
I'll just go and find each one.
While we're doing the link to a
story we'll find the graphics
and then we'll put them up and
that'll be great. Well, it
didn't keep in mind was that to
display one of those 12 screen
would go.
Unknown: It would draw it on,
you would draw it on. The first
graphic came up and I'm just
dying the screen. It was on like
page three. And I had to go
through 36 images before I found
the one that I needed. Anyway,
it worked. The closest one that
we ever got to was literally as
the image hit the bottom
scanline they can't do it. The
whole graphics departments just
sitting there in the back of the
room watching me sweat bullets,
and they go home that night. I
said so how's the news tonight?
Oh, no, it was okay. Why? No
idea the hell we went through.
Ed Kramer: You established a
paradigm that held up until now
there's still live graphics done
directly at the paint box onto
the screen.
Unknown: Yeah, exactly. As a
result of that was naming
conventions, we realised that we
could give each thing its own
distinct name, we could go into
a text library, which was much
faster than looking for the
visual library and find them
that way. And we started the
whole concept of naming
conventions. Funny thing was
we're also young, the next
oldest one in the department was
probably about 25 and then the
oldest one was about 50. All we
were doing just doing Agile. We
didn't realise that every time
we put pen to tablet we were
kind of setting the groundwork
for brand new industry, but it's
been incredible to see the
industry develop over the last
40 years.
Ed Kramer: For our listeners,
it's really hard for people now
to understand that the idea of
putting pen on a tablet and
seeing something up on the
screen was revolutionary at the
time. Photoshop did not exist. I
was using a system called via
video. Very similar time, it
only had 16 colours to work with
exactly one of the things that
made the Quantel paintbox so
revolutionary is it had 16
million colours you can do
gradations of colours make it
look like airbrushing. Yeah, the
earlier paint systems like via
video looked very primitive and
jagged. Apart from
Unknown: things like masking
techniques and all that stuff.
The airbrush was absolutely
astounding to be able to mimic
airbrush and chalk and pencil
out of this tablet and pen was
incredible. And when people ask
me how I choose, people want a
hiring crew on choosing artists,
I tend to still choose people
who have a strong artistic
background, rather than just a
digital one. I'm just working on
a piece at the moment, it's
supposed to look like metal.
It's a lot of airbrushing. If
you've used a real airbrush. You
know the multitude of styles and
techniques that you can create
from that brush that if the only
thing that you know, an airbrush
has is what comes out of the
button when you hit it on the
screen. You don't know how to
use an airbrush back in those
days, the tool was very limited.
If you knew what a real one
could do. You could work out
ways to cheat the limited tool
to do what you wanted it to do.
And when I was a little kid, one
of the things that got me
inspired into what I do now was
magic and illusion. Everything
we do is illusion. And people
look at things and they believe
it. And if they believe it, we
succeeded. Years and years ago,
I was working on Star Trek, I
got the amazing opportunity to
speak with Linwood Dunn. I've
been trying to get in touch with
him. Dan Carey, who was the
visual face producer and
supervisor on the show knew him
and so he gave me my numbers.
I'm at work one night and the
phone rings. And we're done
here. And then we fell off the
phone. Lynn was very old at that
point. But he said I can only
talk for a little bit because
I'm going to assembly meeting
tonight. It was ancient and
still active. We ended up
talking for about three hours. I
said to him at one point, look
when I'm ever going to ask
anybody this question. It's got
to be you because you invented
my job with the Acme done
optical printer and optical
composites, what's the one
guiding principle that you would
recommend for a long career in
visual effects? And he said, Oh,
that's easy, my boy. He said you
spent your entire life doing
shots that no one notices. And I
said okay, why? And he said,
because my boy, you only have
one purpose in this job. And
that's the serve the story. The
story is everything. If you do a
shot and the audience is Wow,
what a cool effect. You failed
because you made it about you
and not about the story. If it
just happens, and they accept it
and they go on with the story.
You succeeded. He said be
invisible your entire life and
you'll be around forever. That's
awesome. Back then, even though
paint box was an incredibly
sophisticated for its time box,
it still had many limitations.
And so our challenge was to make
the systems do what the makers
didn't even know that it could.
I had worked on a main title
animation for a music video show
called Rock arena. This
fantastic indie music show,
which was secondary to countdown
countdown was like rock and roll
pop music everything has a
countdown Molly Meldrum was the
guy who really discovered Abba
encouraged Michael Jackson to go
out on his own. That was the
kind of level of people that we
were dealing with on Countdown
but on rock arena, it was a lot
of up and coming bands and
independent bands. I designed a
main title for them where I did
all the prep work and paint box.
We had the opportunity to do it
as I don't know what we got this
What's this new 3d? What is that
is this company down in South
Melbourne that's got a big 3d
computer. Why don't we do that.
But his company was called Sonic
vision, Sonic vision had one of
the seventh or eighth Cray X MP
supercomputers in the world.
They at that time, were just
finishing up the Dire Straits,
music, video and money for
nothing. And it was being
animated on all the craze around
the world just so they can get
it all done in time to go on
MTV.
Ed Kramer: I gotta just jump in
here for a second and explain.
The Cray was the machine that
was rendering it and work was
done on the Bosch FGS 4000
Unknown: Exactly. Yes. Yeah,
exactly. So we had artists to
build everything for us on the
Bosch and then it was all
rendered on the cry. I finished
the money for nothing. Music
video and the next day we moved
in and we did the rock arena
main title, which I designed as
a fly through around Melbourne
around the city and pass the
tram cars and through the
gardens. It's like 1982 It's
very early. I think there's a
version of it online somewhere
on YouTube. It was the very
first time we did a 3d
animation. About a year later, I
was working on a TV series
called The Jerry Connelly show.
One of my great inspirations at
that point was Peter Gabriel's
music video sledgehammer, which
Nick Park and the guys at Altman
had put together they spent
seven days shooting Gabriel
under a damn shooter with pieces
of glass up on top of him so
we're gonna animate all the
clay. I wanted to do something
like that. We had no budget for
cel animation. We had no budget
for claymation. I said, Well,
why don't we animate it on paint
box and everybody include In
quantiles, when you can't
animate an unpaid box, I said,
What do you mean? Of course we
can. They said no system doesn't
do that. No, I know that. But
your system does full frame
video images, what's animation?
Why don't we just use it as an
art tool or lay it all off to
one entertain and then we'll go
into an edit bay. And we'll cut
all the frames together. And
hopefully we'll have animation
that works, you can put in a
great idea. So I spent about a
month I went down to the photo
studio and ABC with our
photographer and Jerry Connolly,
the star of the show, and we
shot all the images of him like
moving his head around which we
shot with a motor drive on the
camera, we printed them out as
colour photos, I put them on a
down shooter, and I'd scanned
every photo into the paint box
to build the animated sequence
of him. And then I animated all
the pieces around him and like
planets and all kinds of stuff
happening. It was kind of
combination of sledgehammer and
the Mission Impossible theme
music we wrote the music for I
was involved in that as well. We
did the first 2d animation in
the southern hemisphere and for
that show, we'll all of a sudden
realise if we've got enough time
we can do anything with this
thing. So I was at ABC for about
four and a half years and then I
was asked to go and work for a
company called Armstrong audio
visual AV in South Melbourne
which was the biggest post
production facility in southern
hemisphere at the time very
large company large recording
studio called Metropolis audio
with Madonna and Michael Jackson
and Paul McCartney. All kinds of
people recorded there joined a
small little group called AV
options set up to do visual
effects. Animator, designer,
Director, supervisor everything
one man department working on
some very primitive systems as
well as paint box downstairs
from where we were, there was a
little company called the
electric paintbrush company,
Peter Doyle was working there
and Peter went on to be the
senior colorist for all the
Harry Potter films, Pete and I
ended up working in tandem and a
few things and we will tell you
get access to music videos, like
kick nav, we did a children's
show called Round the Twist,
which is kind of a cult TV
series in Australia. And then we
just kept on pushing the
envelope and creating visual
effects for anybody who needed
it. It was all 2d, it was all
hand painted on paint box, which
at that point was a V series
paint box, which was the next
one up all of a sudden we had a
pen that was while Wow, the
tablet was considerably smaller
and lighter, didn't weigh as
much as my car anymore. That
road that I got to work in was
very quiet and dark and perfect
for what I was doing. During the
course of working for AAV there
was a remake of Mission
Impossible TV series being made
in Queensland, made by Paramount
bit shot in Australia. All the
post production work was being
done at the post group in
Hollywood. We had a producer
from Paramount who was working
with us in Melbourne. This is
1989 I had been planning a trip
to the states just because I
wanted to go to the States. And
so I was talking to him and he
said what you should go see a
few people while you're there,
and I'll hook you up with the
guys at Paramount. I came to LA
went to the post programme and
met a bunch of people at post
group who were doing that show
but my real thing was Star Trek
The Next Generation. My ultimate
dream was I want to move to Los
Angeles and I've got three
things that I want to do on my
bucket list. I want to work on
Star Trek The Next Generation. I
want to work on MacGyver and I
want to work on Star Wars. A man
whose dreams actually came true
amazingly, yes, Star Trek was in
production. So that was a
possibility. MacGyver was in
production. So that was a
possibility to Star Wars was
never gonna happen because three
phones would come out and that
was it as far as everybody knew,
etc. I came here in 89. The
first interview I had was with
Richard headland, their boss
felt Oh, wow. He's assistant
said he's only going to be able
to give you a couple of minutes.
We're shooting solid crisis
downstairs right now. We
discovered we had a whole bunch
of things in common and we
talked for two and a half hours.
One of the thrills for me of
that day was the production
designer on solid crisis was Syd
Mead. I idolised the work in
Blade Runner. He said, Would you
like to meet him? Yes.
Ed Kramer: You have a photograph
of you and sit on your IMDB?
Unknown: Yeah, there is Yeah.
Many years later, we ran up to
the art department. And there
was a drawing board. With one
pencil sitting on it. The school
was almost still spinning. He
had just left the building. I
said do you mind since I sat in
the chair and I held the pencil
on getting the essence of said
unbeknownst to me at the same
time, there were people working
on that show like Pat McClung,
Terry Wandel, all kinds of
people who ultimately became
dear friends of mine, I knew
their names from credits, but I
know that people anyway, so
Richard says, this new kind of
digital thing is going to be the
way that it's going to go. If
you do want to come back, come
back to Los Angeles, I'll give
you a job. Great. Richard Edlund
told me that it's real. I went
back to Australia and sold
everything in my ex and I just
moved the following year. We
came here in 1990. I called
Richard and couldn't get in
touch with him and spoke to
somebody else who said, What are
you talking about? Digital is a
flash in the pan. It's always
gonna be form articles. It's
state of the art. That's the way
it is. No, you don't have a job.
I was kind of flabbergasted by
that. I was staying with a
friend of mine who was working
on Star Trek, who was my first
initial contact of hear from
Mission Impossible. He said,
When I keep on doing interviews,
we'll see what happens. I had
said myself, if I can't get a
job in three months, I'll get
the message and I'll go back to
Australia, not realising that
people go to Los Angeles and
spend 2030 years trying to get
the job they want. I was very
young, very naive three months
and he was at a party for ABC.
And he came back to the house
that night. He says okay, you
have an interview tomorrow at
one o'clock at ABC. If you're
going to go to it because they
want to hire you. So I'm going
to ABC and Barbara Eddie who ran
the audio promotions division
hired me as not only a paint box
artist but a hairy artist, which
was the console compositing
system, which use paint box as
its base. But it had a whole
three bins system where you
could put wave clips, getting
stuff into the system was very
hard. getting stuff out of the
system wasn't easy, but it
became easier. Over time, I
became one of the three Harry
artists at ABC American
Broadcasting Corporation. All
this time, I was still wishing I
could work on Star Trek, I
wanted to work at the post
group. And I was trying to meet
rich Thorne, who ran the post
group, he was just impossible to
track down from back when I was
in Australia. The main contact I
had at Paramount was a guy
called Fred Chandler who ran
post production at Paramount, I
thought that he would be
somebody who could really help
me get to Star Trek. I had been
talking with Fred for a couple
of years, I called him he said
to me, Look, Adam, I gotta tell
you that you're a really good
guy. And I'm sure he works
fantastic. But the reality is,
you're in Australia, and I'm in
Los Angeles, and you probably
never going to be here. And so
this is ultimately kind of a
waste of time. So let's just
stop talking now. And I said to
him, Well, actually, I'm calling
from a mobile phone. I'm on
Melrose, I can be there in five
minutes. And Fred Oh, that
changes everything. It's the
kind of main gate will be a
drive on for you coming to
Paramount, I drove to Paramount,
which for me was the very first
time I've ever actually been to
the studio. And I drove up to
the gate and I met Mr. Hammond
Welcome to Paramount. So went to
Fred's office and he said, When
you come in there are going to
be about 10 people in my waiting
room. They've been waiting for a
couple of hours. I just don't
have time to talk to them. He
said, Walk straight through the
room constraint in my office,
and I guarantee you they will
get up and scream and yell and
complain. Don't worry about
that. Just come on through. So I
walked into the office. And sure
enough, that's exactly what
happened. I walked into his room
and he's the little guy and he
was on multiple phone calls at
the same time, pre cell phones,
big old Lucite desk phones. He
was yelling at people. I'm
hanging up on the wall. And he
goes right now who you I said
Adam, how he is? Oh, yeah. Okay.
Now, what do you want? I said, I
wanted to meet rich Sloan at the
post group about stuff, right?
He says, Okay, do you have a
real? Yes, absolutely. We'd like
to see it. No, don't have time.
Just sit there and wait until
you pick up the phone. And he
called Rich's assistant. And he
said, Karen, I have this guy
sitting in front of me from
Australia with the best demo
reel I've ever seen in my life.
Rich, we'll see him tomorrow at
one o'clock, hang out. And he
looked at me and goes, Okay,
you're all saying, yes. That's
how it happens. Don't fuck it
up. The next day I went and I
saw rich played in the room. He
liked it. And he said, Look, I'm
really sorry, I can't hire you.
I thought my God is taking me
two years to get to the point of
being able to sit down and meet
with you. And you can't hire me.
Why is that? I'm sorry. I just
can't I can't hire you. But it's
really good meeting you. And
thank you for making the effort.
And you know, maybe we'll meet
again some other day. I was
pretty devastated. Then another
job ABC for seven months doing
movie of the week graphics. Day
one designed the main titles,
but I animated the main titles
of the Hanson series dinosaurs,
the egg falling and cracking
open and the Ben Hur kind of
text. I illustrated all of that
stuff. So I'm sitting with my
boss one night, seven months in
and the phone rang. He goes
Adam, how you get rich Lauren,
can you talk? Is it? Not really?
Can I just switch you to another
phone? Because I went into the
machine room and I picked up the
phone. I said hi. He said, Look,
I know I kind of freaked you out
before. I apologise for that.
I'm sorry that I couldn't hear
you because I was planning on
leaving the hospital. And I'm
starting my own company Digital
magic. And I want you to come
and work with me. On Saturday.
The lead animator on Saturday
was a guy called Steve Price.
Wonderful, wonderful guy.
Ed Kramer: Steve Jumanji? Yeah,
exactly. Until he passed away.
Adam Howard: He passed away.
Yeah, Steve was amazing. I ended
up leaving that Friday and
Saturday the following Monday at
Digital magic as thieves
assistant on Star Trek The Next
Generation. He was animating the
final episode of season four,
which was a cliffhanger episode.
I spent one week working with
Steve just watching him. He
animated all the phases and like
that in the show. And he left he
left on a Friday. And on the
Monday rich walked in and he
closed the door. And he said so.
In a rough weekend seats left.
He's gone up to with ILM. He got
to work on hook. He's not coming
back. And paramount, very
worried because they've had a
cliffhanger episode. And they
don't know what they're going to
do. We've had a very, very
stressful weekend. And it's been
very, very bad. And I said, Oh,
that's that's just fantastic. So
what's the good news? The good
news is your race. So after one
week of watching Steve, I became
the lead animator on Star Trek
Next Generation. As a fine
artist. I had a real thing about
reflections in the shadows and
minut detail. The stuff that
Steve did was great. Totally
worked for the show. But I
thought I could make it a bit
better. And so I went to the
visual effects producers and I
said, Look, what's a phaser?
Phaser is a light source. If you
get a phaser going near
somebody, what's it going to do?
They said What do you mean? It's
going to cast light on them and
it's going to cast shadows
behind them across their faces.
And I want to be able to do that
and just make these things feel
more real. And they said When
was your first day on the job?
You want to do that? Yeah, why
not? And they said okay, well,
if you can do it in the same
amount of time that Steve did
his you're on so I stay better
time weekend worked out
different ways of instead of
hand animating every single
frame, I built loops of various
layers that made the phaser up,
I drew a thing that we
ultimately called the pom pom
there was a hot wide set of the
grid out to nothing and that
became something I developed as
a technique on Star Trek for
when a light source will turn on
quickly and it would just be
there for one frame and it was
just something just with the
blacks a little bit that just at
the centre and give you I that
little crunch that you get when
you hit by lightsource. I came
back the following Monday and
showed the guys of rubble Gatto
data or rum or Gary hustle and
Dan Carey. They Oh, wow. Oh,
that's kind of cool. Yeah, go
for it. And so if you look at
the final episode of season
four, and the first episode of
season five, there's a bit of a
difference I tried to not have a
stark difference that overseas
and and find those first few
episodes we just wrapped into
the new work amazing way later
on that year, I had two
envelopes arrived on my desk one
day, I opened the first one and
it said you've been nominated
for an Emmy. Wow, the soundtrack
for an episode called conundrum.
I was just dumbfounded because
I'd always just wanted to be on
stand outside the Emmys and
watch them. The other one would
say congratulations. You've been
nominated for an Emmy. I thought
they'd been messed up. They sent
me it and then I read it more
carefully. Yeah, matter of time.
Exactly. We went and we won the
both first year in the States. I
won two Emmys for Star Trek,
which was just beyond a dream
come true. The funny thing about
that night, we were going to go
to the governor's ball
afterwards for dinner. And the
guy said no, let's not go to
that. Let's go down. So the
pathway grill is a great grill
in Pasadena. We attend stretch
limos that all pulled into the
driveway. The paramedic provided
for us very graciously. We were
getting out of the cars. And
then Kerry looked at me he goes,
Okay, so here's the thing.
You're the new boy. So you get
to go get a table for 20 people.
So I'm in my talks, and I walked
in and I went up to maitre d and
said, I'd like a table for 20
plates. And he just laughed at
me. And he said, Oh, come on. He
said, It's me night, you kind of
need a table for 20 people look
at this plate and the place was
packed with people. He said last
time we were the awards tonight.
I was standing there with my
hand behind the back. Is that
very straightforward. You're
good. Okay. I hope you had a
good time. And I had a wonderful
time. Thank you. So it's such a
pity that you can't help us and
He does not I did not a chance
you'll have to come back another
time. And he turned around and
walk away. And I know, it's such
a pity he kind of helped me. And
I had an MTV channel. I set them
on his desk and he just went Are
they real? Yes. He goes, Oh my
God. Are they from tonight? Yes,
yes. Yours? Yes. Stay right
there. And I watched him go
around the table, go check,
check, check check out they
cleared a bunch of people out of
the restaurant almost instantly,
and they put a table for 20
right through the centre of the
restaurant. And I went out to
them and I said okay, was it
because
Unknown: we've got a tail. And
so we had 20 Emmys lined up down
the centre of the table, which
is pretty amazing. It was a good
night and then you know
ultimately Star Trek was
incredibly good to me over the
years. I ended up working on
such a next generation Saturday
as nine Star Trek Voyager
enterprise first contact
insurrection did all the
weaponry for all the races and
all the shows all the medical
beams, anything like that
anytime a shoot exploded and I
did those things, we kind of
changed the way that look to me
working with Gary hussle. One
was a famous episode of Deep
Space Nine where this great
little ship was introduced the
first time that defined and
there's a shot at the defining
this thing roaring out of the
background passcamp had to be
blazing gunfire. And I said to
Gary, what does it need to be?
He goes I don't know, just make
a call. I designed these photon
torpedo cannons that were just
machine guns at the front of the
things. Sending out photon
torpedoes was 20 minutes that it
took to animate. It became Star
Trek war and when a few years
later somebody got all this fan
mail saying that's not what it
looks like. It's supposed to
look like this Star Trek was
incredibly good to me. I got
nine nominations over the years
and I won for pretty amazing
when you
Ed Kramer: were doing that work.
Were you still on the paint box
with Harry? Or have you moved on
to something more 3d There was
Unknown: no 3d at the time 3d
came in for the first time on
Star Trek Voyager. The first
time we ever had a 3d ship was
on Voyager before that
everything was managed it so the
miniatures were all shot at
emoji in North Hollywood, not by
Universal. We did an episode of
Deep Space Nine cool way of the
warrior Gary hustle was shooting
it and supervising it. May he
rest in peace. Lovely, lovely
guy. We had to have all these
clean on birds of prey martyrs
and ships flying. And so we had
the big bird of prey miniature
which was about six feet long,
which had been built by ILM for
Star Trek The Motion Picture.
They shoot that down to us and
we were using that for the old
day close ups and then we had a
small one that we shot multiple
times for mid ground behind that
and then we started going to
plastic kits Judy Elkins lovely
president was working on the
show. She had a whole team of
people who were making little
plastic kit putting on Buddha
prize and painting them up and
putting like reflective tape on
them and making them look great.
We realised the stage at image D
wasn't even deep enough to be
able to get the really fire
background ones and we couldn't
scale the move effectively
either. So they got Hallmark
Christmas decorations, birds of
prey and just stuck them on
sticks. We have entire fleets of
them flying in the background on
his Christmas tree decorations.
But that show got an Emmy
nomination because you know, the
scale of the shots became
massive. Until that shows this
was kind of indifference to the
Disney night old man. We had
nine big explosion stock
explosions that had been shot
years earlier by the guys on the
show. And we use those generic
explosions, we would use little
pieces of explosions and like
little pieces of curlicue off
the side and some of the
hardcore, a ship would be there.
It would cut off and there'd be
an explosion. And I said to
Gary, you know, we should try
and do something cool. Let's
actually get debris flying out.
And so they started shooting
debris passes and I animated
stuff coming out of it. And all
of a sudden ships were able to
break apart in slow motion and
just make it a little more
dramatic. So we kind of changed
the way that was being done. It
was all to the at that point
Boyd and they started
introducing 3d elements. I think
we have one 3d element in next
generation, but it was very
early days and CG was still just
beginning. There were shows like
Stargate SG one upcoming shows
there was at a show called
seaQuest that had a CG
submarine, there was some things
that CG could do okay for TV,
that there were many things that
it was not going to be capable
of doing for many, many years.
We were just laying the
groundwork. One of the biggest
problems I worked on in Los
Angeles was Titanic. Titanic was
revolutionary in so many ways.
It was the first time that
anybody really saw like full on
CG shots that were 100% CG. And
people really believe that
digital domain was doing
beautiful work. They built
miniature ships in multiple
scales that that also had a full
scale ship that they built down
in Rosarito Beach in Mexico,
just one side of it on a sinking
rig and a huge water tank so
that they can actually sink it
with real people on it. But they
had CG versions of the ship as
well, which were incredibly
detailed. They did a lot of
motion capture of all the CG
artists, a DP who became
passengers on the ship. And they
populated the entire deck of the
ship, people walking around in
the sunlight and sitting on deck
chairs as some of the real first
digital avatars. I was working
on the former PRP film because
of the ocean post, we were doing
a lot of CG elements. We were
doing CG cavitation bubbles off
the propellers underwater, we
were doing a lot of traditional
compositing like the high
overhead and starts that low and
then rises up to a high shot of
one of the lifeguards with one
of the sailors paddling through
the sea of dead bodies. The
water in the tank only had 20
People in the water. And then
there was a solid wall and he
had a flashlight that was
hitting the water and hitting
the dead wall behind him. We had
to cut off the back half of the
shot and extend that with CG
water. So we got CG water from
the airtight software that they
were using a digital domain,
they animated that water for us.
We were copying that into the
background. And then I was hand
placing dead bodies all the way
out and continuing the
flashlight into that water. But
when the flashlight had to hit
the bodies, they will have to
light up and catch the light
from the flashlight that was all
fake. There was a lot of
traditional work on it. And
there was a lot of incredibly
complex CG work on it in the
middle of doing all that one of
the producers came in and said
we've got a bit of a problem we
have this shot Jim Cameron wants
to put in the international
trailer which is due in one
month, we took it to ILM and
they said the shots impossible
with the honours that we
provided. So we took it to
digital domain which he owned at
the time and they said the same
thing. So what do you think? I
looked at it well, I guess it's
possible and it's only time and
money and if you've got the
money I'll make the time they
were back to German told him
that neither that's the correct
answer. Give him the dog. His
shot is 10 seconds slow motion
shot of Jack and Rose running
down Cardo toward camera with a
wall of water chasing them down
the corridor. What had been shot
with two stunt double suffocate
and Leo they run right past
camera. There's no getting away
from the fact that neither of
them look anything like cable
there. It had to be a hip
replacement. They had shot Kate
Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio
running down the hallway in dry
set. But the problems was that
in the live take with the stunt
people the lights are flashing
on and off. And so they tried to
help us flashing the lights on
and off when they did dry run.
But none of the flashing matches
because it's just some guy just
doing a hand flicker. No one
could say that the shots were
done incorrectly because Jim
Cameron was the camera operator.
So take one, the first guy ran
in and in slow motion we saw his
foot slip and slam down against
the wall and those steel walls
so they could take the pressure
of the water down for the dunk
tank that was coming from around
the corner. He hit the wall
knocked out unconscious takes a
new start man. I think he's
named Steve the guy who was the
son of man ultimately for where
they did that Stan and I spent
two and a half months making the
shot the faces are ultimately
completely hand painted. For 240
frames. I had to paint jiggle in
their skin and eyebrows
performance into their face
using some photographic elements
is the basis for basically hand
painting and completely and then
painting over wide into them to
make Majan hair flicking around
in front of Kate's face and
water splashes everywhere said
10 hours a day, seven days a
week for two and a half months,
all campaigned on inferno, this
incredibly powerful tool set up
and stopped working, I called
discrete logic and said, Guys,
we got a problem, I can't even
open the system. They didn't
believe me initially, I
ultimately came down from
Montreal and had a look at it
and they went, Oh, my God, you
broken that colour corrector,
they had one week and they went
back and they rewrote the colour
corrector to be able to handle
the kind of requirements that I
was putting into it. And that
became the basis of the colour
curriculum that's inflamed. Now,
obviously, it's developed
exponentially since then. So
then I had one week left, and I
finished the shot and we shipped
it off in the gym. So he was
very happy. And that was a good
thing. The coolest part of
during that sharp for me was
that it was total lockdown. Let
me concentrate on this thing,
the only person who was allowed
to come into the room was my
boss, because last year who owns
PRP, so Monday, I was working on
the shot, and this is very quiet
knock at the door, Allen stuck
his head and he goes, Hey, is it
okay? If I come in? I've got
somebody I think you'd like
you'd like to meet? And I said,
Yeah, you know, when you're
focusing on something, you use a
yam, whatever, okay, coming in,
and you don't even turn around
and pay attention. You just keep
on doing what you're doing. And
so they came in, I sent somebody
sit down next to me, I have a
feeling I should stop what I'm
doing, and pay attention to
whoever it is that sitting next
to me. I turned around and I was
George Harrison from The
Beatles. Oh, my God. And he and
Alan were all friends, many
people may not know is that
George was an incredible film
producer. One of the things that
he's most well regarded for in
film was that he funded all the
Monty Python films. So he was
fascinated by technology. And he
knew about in tablet technology,
but you've never actually seen
it operating. And so he sort of
can just watch you work and as
you want to go is What do you
mean? I said, Do you want to
just try it out? You may as well
you hear he said, Okay, well, if
you just give me a blank frame,
I'll just draw on that. And I
went, Okay, I'm sorry, I can't
believe I'm about to say this.
Because I'm saying it to you.
But no, if you want to do it,
you got to work on this shot.
And he said, Well, what do I do?
And I said, Well, it's 551 of
the shots. There's a little
highlight in the middle of
Kate's forehead that needs to be
painted. I said, so just go to
frame 150. This is how you do
that toggle between these two
frames now, see what it's
missing there. And then there's
the paint tool and showed him
how to do it. And so he just
painted the little highlight,
because this is so cool. And I
left it in there. So one of the
Beatles worked on Titanic.
Ed Kramer: A great story. Oh, my
God. And he
Unknown: was such a lovely guy.
And then he said, like you've
been waiting to come out in the
lobby. And so we went out to the
lobby and had a cup of coffee
and talk for a couple of hours.
And that was great. And then off
he went and went back to work a
different
Ed Kramer: George than the one
we usually talk
Unknown: about. Yeah, exactly.
How did this lead to Ilm?
Through the years in LA I was
approached a few times by ilm, I
think initially probably from
Steve's recommendation. Because
I've been working in episodic
television and commercials a
lot. One of the things that that
taught you was to work very,
very quickly and very
efficiently. And to come up with
the right idea first time, which
went back to my years with Gary
Emery in Melbourne.
Unfortunately, every time I
called me I couldn't go because
I was already committed to some
other project. And even though
it was ILM calling me and that
was my dream, I wasn't gonna
bail on the job that I was
already doing because you give
you work. That's what you do. So
I kept on doing that for many
years, I worked at ABC and then
digital magic and then Pacific
Ocean post and then PRP film, I
left PRP to work on again as the
compositing supervisor. That was
an unbelievably stressful
experience of just coming up
with a lot of work in a very,
very short period of time. It
ended up getting us an Academy
Award nomination which was
wonderful, but it also kind of
raised the focus on me as one of
the artists out there I was at
Sunday working on Seabiscuit I
finished on a Friday night and I
was driving off the lot having
just finished that film. And I
got a call from recruiting at
ILM saying, Okay, it's us. I
know we've kind of done this to
you before, but we're going to
do it again. Is there any way
you could be here on Monday? And
I said, Actually, yes. I went
back to my apartment, and I
packed my bag and I drove up the
coast and I had an uncle who
lives in Petaluma, my mother's
brother. Monday morning I went
to ILM to the old current
location, the real location. The
job was Master and Commander and
Pablo Holman was one of the
suits on that I had trained in
LA at Digital magic. And then he
went on to become popular helmet
Academy Award nominated,
fabulous, sensitive advisor.
They had a sequence that I had
been working on for a while it
was shot at midday, the blazing
sun and Peter Weir, the director
had decided that he wanted to
make it five o'clock in the
morning and Deepak and you know,
you're on the ship's deck with
shiny wood and brass fittings
that are all shiny and ILM had
been working on it for a while
and they were having great
difficulty in solving the
problem. And Peter was getting a
little frustrated by that. What
are we going to do and he says
we've done everything we can do.
He said there's only one person
I know who's crazy enough to
even attempt this, you should
give him a call. And so that was
the call that I got. I only had
a box available at night over in
a building where the saver
department was which was
discrete logic Inferno, got on
the box, and in the first two
hours I solved the problem. I
worked all night. The next
morning I was getting ready to
Leave, I came back to the room
and there's all these people in
the room. This one short guy
backs out of the room and it's
my old friend from paramount for
Chandler. And he goes, buddy,
come in, meet Peter. And the
director Peter Weir was there,
along with Jim Morris and a
bunch of other people. I had
idolised Peter since Picnic at
Hanging Rock of the last way.
Even though it was ilm, the
reason that I really wanted to
do that job at ILM was because I
got to work with Peter Weir. He
looked at it and he said, Did
you do this? And I said, yeah,
yes, this is bloody amazing. And
I said, Does it do what you want
it to do? Yes. Oh, absolutely.
Can you do this the whole
sequence, it wasn't even a
compositing thing. It was a
colour correction. One of the
things I had developed in Star
Trek was using the colour
corrector as a compositing tool,
I would ramp colour all the way
up to the point where you broke
the shot. And then I'd
selectively key different colour
levels out, take all back in and
undo it and make it work again,
that was the solution for this
one, and it did work. And so he
turned to Jim Morris, and he
said, Okay, so Jim, this guy,
you're going to hire him full
time right now. So the four week
gig that I went up to do at ILM,
which was sold in the first
night, became a full time job,
so I went on to do one gig. I
left nearly five years later and
17 movies later, including Star
Wars