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In part two of his interview, digital painter and animator Adam Howard tells Ed Kramer about his work on the Star Wars prequels with Industrial Light & Magic and working with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and director Alejandro González Iñárritu to create the seamless one-take fake of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) in CGI Fridays Episode 7.
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: So we're not to do
one game left nearly five years
later and 17 movies later,
including Star Wars back at
Digital magic, I've also gotten
to work on MacGyver, so he got
to work on Star Trek, MacGyver
and Star Wars with George, you
and I worked on four films
together. It was an amazing
experience a total dream come
true to work there and meet all
these people, including you, who
were people that I looked up to
for a long time. And all of a
sudden you have my colleagues
and friends and that was
amazing.
Ed Kramer: It's quite a feeling
when you first start working at
Industrial Light and Magic and
you realise that all these
people who've done the work that
you have just idolised you know,
Jurassic Park and Bess, and now
they're sitting right next to
you. You can just ask them
questions over your shoulder
anytime.
Adam Howard: First time I met
Dennis mirror, I tend not to get
starstruck. But meeting Dennis
just blew my mind. There's just
some people in this business who
are absolute legends, and
without whom none of us would
have jobs. And so to be able to
work with those people and know
them as friends is a really
amazing thing.
Ed Kramer: I was very lucky to
have gotten to work with Doug
Trumbull on the Luxor project,
got to be friends with Doug and
saw him just a few months before
he passed away, really wrote a
little piece about that for the
companion, I saw you have a
photograph of yourself with
Doug, who was
Adam Howard: a screening Los
Angeles, Silent Running, he came
to that and he spoke afterwards.
And so I got to meet him there.
That's the amazing thing about
this business that it doesn't
really matter where you start.
You don't have to be from
Hollywood. And certainly now
with the way the industry has
gone, thanks to COVID You don't
have to be in Hollywood at all,
but you can be anywhere in the
world and you can still be a
great contributor to this
business. Growing up in
Australia. The some of the
biggest days of the year were
the days when the new Cineplex
magazine came out. That was my
Bible, I read them cover to
cover, and I knew every name of
every person in every facility,
there was so many people that I
admired, and I emulated that
work and stuff that I was doing
and all that as best I could
with the tools that I had most
of those people now, my friends,
just the fact that you can work
in a business where you get to
meet your heroes and get to work
with them. You have amazing
moments where your hero will ask
you your advice on something. It
closed me away.
Ed Kramer: I remember sitting
with Doug and discussing an
effect that he wanted. And I
just couldn't believe that Doug
Trumbull was asking me my
opinion, it's amazing when you
get to do that. I'm looking at
your IMDB right now. After
mastering commander, there was
Peter Pan and then there was Van
Helsing. Yeah, and day after
tomorrow. One of the things that
I like to have people talk about
is what did you work on what
particular shots did you work on
a mustard
Adam Howard: monitor ended up
being a lot of shots. The
majority of that film we were
doing water replacement ocean
replacement, Van Helsing, I did
most of the animation of
Frankenstein's head when he's
got the electricity going off in
his head. There's a big shot of
the brides of Dracula moving in
on Kate Beckinsale. And they
both come down to water and
their jaws extend the vampire
fangs come out a couple of shots
of one of the bride's turning
flames against the building as
she's hit by snakes from Hugh
Jackman. I think just about
everybody in the company worked
on that shot. I was doing little
pieces of international stuff
falling off it. There was a fun
shot in that film where her
brother turns into a werewolf
and he's pushing himself back
was up a wall. Great shot, too.
Yeah, yeah. But in that shot, I
remember we had an amazing I
think Japanese woman who was
working on code to do stretching
the skin so he could like rip
skin from his chairs and pull it
off. She'd been working on it
for quite a while. It just
wasn't cutting it for what
everybody wanted. And so I said
to the guys, why don't we just
go old school. Why don't we just
get some plaster same, we took
some yellow plaster sand down on
stage against the blue screen
and we just like stretch these
different thicknesses of plaster
sand until they would snap and
then I took those pieces and
rotated them around in Fernand
instruct them on the skin and
blended them in and colour
corrected them. And so the skin
that's stretching on his knees
as lumps of plaster, same on top
of this incredibly sophisticated
CG animation that was being
done. That's the other thing
about this business. It's all
going to be digitally put
together. But sometimes doing it
old school is the better way to
do it. I was working at a movie
called unknown a few years ago
supervising that film. But Liam
Neeson and we had a shot of the
hotel Avalon in Berlin, and they
were talking about doing it as a
CG thing. I said no, let's build
manager. We built a 24 line
manager in London, and they blew
it up and it's in the movie and
it's perfect. And the beauty of
doing those things is you call
cut and it's done. It goes
straight into the film
Ed Kramer: in camera work
anytime you can get it done that
way.
Adam Howard: So then other films
day after tomorrow where I also
got to work with Dennis again.
My big shot down was the big
overhead shot the Statue of
Liberty frozen with a cast
moving through the snow that was
incredibly hard shot at taking
assets from another house that
had been working on it, and
they've taken it away and given
it to us adding all the snow
drifts and things coming off the
pizza. How do we do things like
pacifier and Triple X shots or
trains exploding and Triple X
Pirates of the Caribbean Dead
Man's Chest. One of my favourite
charts that I worked on was one
where Jack Sparrow is tied to a
bamboo pole wedged between two
cliffs and he's trying to shoot
Get himself off the things like
50 feet up, and all sudden he
unravels and he drops. So the
ground is a tight close up of
him hitting the ground frame
like here looking up, he looks
at camera laying down as a
bamboo post, because we're just
under the ground in front of
him, I was under the
understanding that I had to get
the shot down very quickly. I
didn't have a bamboo pole, I
didn't have any elements of
grass or anything like that. So
I painted the grass, I painted
the bamboo pole. And I flew it
in like three frames and gave
her a wobble and animated some
dirt kicking up on the grass
displaced and submitted the
shot. And that was maybe three
hours of work. A few days later,
I got an email saying okay, oh,
you wrote I was ready. I said,
What product? Well, the roto the
match move and all that stuff
will be done. And I said, guys,
the shots done, it's in the
movie, we never use any of that
stuff because the shot has been
made quickly because it needs to
be
Ed Kramer: take a moment and
explain to our listeners what
you mean when you say
compositing,
Adam Howard: if I'm doing public
speaking, refer to myself as a
glorified sandwich maker. And
what you want when you make a
sandwich is to have a really
nice final product that looks
appealing and feels right. The
process of compositing is taking
multiple elements that have been
created in different areas,
whether they're a live action
foreground elements, sometimes a
lot of action background on
totally different elements shot
at different days, different
years, sometimes, matte
paintings, CG animation force,
perspective elements, any kind
of element that's been created
by any department of the film,
can you take all these disparate
elements and you layer them one
on top of the other, your job as
a compositor, is to blend them
all together and make them feel
like they all belong in the one
space, you have to have a
thorough understanding of light
and shade and reflectivity and
all the really subtle cues that
your brain knows to tell you
it's real. If you looked at it
as an untrained eye, you
wouldn't know what was wrong
with it. If those things weren't
in there, you'd know that there
was something wrong with it,
which is why people in the early
days of CT will get oh god CDs
crap, it all looks terrible. I
can always tell when something
CG No, you can't because if done
is done CG and it's done
perfectly. You can't tell at
all. Sometimes we're limited by
budget in not being able to put
all the final little tweaks in I
used to say to one of the guys
that I was working with who was
a fine artist, he would try and
make every single frame of work
of art. And those televisions
that we're doing 30 frames a
second, it's got to work in the
space of a second, you're not
going to look at the single
frames just make it feel right
in motion once you can step away
from making everything look
perfect and a still frame and
realise that you can create
incredible illusion in one frame
that is very rough. One of my
favourite examples of that is
the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
When Bugs Bunny is shaking his
head in motion, it looks like
he's shaking his head. But if
you go to the middle of the
shake, and stop on it, he's got
a mouth. It's about this wide
with 100 teeth. And he's got
eight eyes because they couldn't
paint motion blur, because it
was all hand drawn. So they
cheated it with that and the
brain is an incredible thing.
And so in compositing, we get to
take the tools that we have and
the elements that we have, we
just use whatever tricks we can
with colour correction or
layering to fool the brain into
believing that what they're
looking at is real.
Ed Kramer: And like you said a
moment ago, when you have
different elements that were
shot at different times one
element may be should be casting
a shadow onto another element.
So you have to go in there as a
compositor and create that
shadow.
Adam Howard: Exactly. The funny
thing happened on two phones at
ILM. One was Mission Impossible
three, I was working in a shop
where Tom Cruise has been flying
through Shanghai on his
parachute. And he smashes
through a window and lands on a
desk of a table. And then
there's a shot from the end of
the table looking down his legs
as he gets sucked back out the
window into Shanghai again,
because an updraft called the
parachute. We've been working on
this thing for a while all of
Shanghai was CG. And I was doing
all the neon signs everywhere,
painting all that sediment and
putting it all in the shots. And
you know, neon reflected
everywhere. So we were painting
reflections on all the buildings
and making all that work. I was
about to submit the shot. This
is the last day of delivery. And
I call them one hand guys stop
everything. I can't submit this
shot. All of our focus has been
on what was outside the window.
And it was only when I was just
doing my final QC of the shot
quality check of everything, I
realised that there was a piece
of blank duva Team taped to the
wall over on the side that was
there to stop some reflection
that they didn't want. And none
of us had noticed it. In all the
days and days and days I've been
working on the shutdown
obviously and saying that I had
to quickly paint a section of
wall and carpet over the top of
that. So that was gone. Then we
submitted the shutdown was done.
Another one was Chronicles of
Narnia. There's a shot toward
the end of the film where the
little boy the three kids is
lying down on the ground and
he's been knocked out little
girl comes up with his little
glass vial and pulls this magic
liquid into his mouth and he
comes back to consciousness.
They realised at the 11th hour
that there's no liquid in the
bottle and it's closer this time
we've left corner and we're
working in the home facility of
the present do this is there
anything you can do with this
and so I just took some swans, I
animated some fluid fully
inspired by the Bolero sequence
in one of my favourite animated
films Allegro non troppo where
the sludge of the Coca Cola is
making its way out of the car.
bottle. So I took that as
inspiration and I animated this
thing coming out and then caught
the highlights of the glass back
over the top. And I looked at it
again recently and you can't
tell it's not real. That's a
good example. Now, somebody
might say, Okay, well, we'll go
and we'll do a full fluid sim.
And that's going to take days,
and you literally have minutes
to create something, and days
are not an option. So you've got
to be able to come up with a
quick solution that's going to
look completely photographically
real
Ed Kramer: when you say we had
been looking at this shot, and
nobody noticed that you sit in
that screening room, you watch
that shot over and over and over
with 20 different people and the
visual effects supervisors
looking at every little place,
it's amazing that something
could escape so many people for
for that long. The next thing I
see is Star Wars Episode Three
Revenge of the Sith
Adam Howard: many, many shots in
that film spread throughout the
entire film. One of the main
things I did was I designed the
look of the holograms,
particularly Yoda sitting in the
conference room where they're
all sitting in the round room,
the scan line glitchy thing for
Yoda. And then we played that
all the holograms, I had one
shot, it should have been a
pretty standard shot. It's a
shot of Padma Tang, and again,
she's pregnant. So they're in
this big hallway a big columns
over his shoulder looking at
her, and he puts his hand up to
the face and holds her face as
she's telling him again, I'm so
happy This is wonderful. The
problem with the shot was that
George had shot it three times
he wanted to go into editorial,
he decided well, I want to use
Hayden from one and her from the
other and the hand from another
and none of them lined up yet
and wouldn't be here it was
covering a face and the hand
that he wanted to use and the
timing that he wanted to use it
occluded her face in its own
take, but in the face that he
was using of her Her face was
back here, instead of her face
cutting the fingers off here.
Her face was back here in the
final comp. So when the hand
went in, they vanished. And as
far as on effects I went to John
on I said, mate, what am I going
to do is I don't know, you'll
come up with something. I said,
Can I use my hand? And he goes
Sure, John had just bought this
brand spanking new 12 megapixel
DSLR camera, which was just a
magnificent piece of equipment.
And I said, can I borrow your
camera, I was driving a Jeep at
the time, that Corona, the old
location. And so I drove into
the parking lot around the back
of the building, and tape some
green screen to the back of my
jeep. I printed out different
frames of the hand. So I knew
what the lighting was and what
the position of the hand was
relative to camera. And then I
literally held the camera
handhold on motor drive, just
moving my hand into frame all
these times until I knew that I
had something that was roughly
approximate Hayden Christensen
took those steel frames into
info and I loaded them up and
cut them out of the green screen
in the final shot when the hand
comes sliding in, hits my hand,
except for this part, which is
hidden in the thumb, which is
hidden, but all of this is my
hand that goes behind her face
when it comes out. It's his
hand. This is the switcher
changer. We had another shot of
Emperor Palpatine as a hologram
on one of the war tables toward
the end of the film. For some
reason they had either not shot
that element, or it had been
forgotten, ordered and lost or
whatever. And there was so much
stuff going on that felt it's a
miracle that it never was able
to be kept track of. But they
didn't have that element.
Palpatine said, Well, do we have
the costume and amazingly, the
costumes have just arrived back
at the centrefold that day from
Sydney where they've been
shooting movie, they dug out the
costume, and I put it on, Sam
Edwards got his video camera and
he put it on a tripod and I
stood on the picnic table
outside of the building against
the white wall. That became the
element of Palpatine. And then I
made it a hologram and stick it
on there. And so I'm in the
movie twice, which is also
another island tradition, which
I'm sure you've been part of as
well. We all ended up in the
movies when bits and pieces were
missing. I left ILM and I went
off to be co visual effects
supervisor on Russia three with
Jackie Chan. After that, I did a
couple of other films that I
ended up in the central coast of
California and supervising the
Harry Potter theme park ride for
Universal Studios. While we were
working on that my friend Pat
McLaren was the lead supervisor
on Wolverine. They had had some
difficulty with one of the
houses that was working on the
film and decided that they
wanted to redo all the blades
coming out of Wolverines hands.
There were maybe 50 shots that
had to be done from scratch. I
pulled all of my crew off Harry
Potter for three weeks with
universals approval, we just
hunkered down, we had to track
all the shots and render the
animation and work out how to
make it look like the metal that
it needed to be. We did every
single blade shot in that film
and big shots like him on the
motorcycle exploding out of the
barn that was a functional.
Ed Kramer: That's when you got
to take pictures with the three
stars.
Adam Howard: Yeah, the three of
them were really lovely. I got
to go to London for a few weeks,
we went down to Leavesden
studios. They were shooting the
final two films. They were
nearly finished shooting the
seventh film and they were about
to start shooting the eighth. We
had a very small team at Cafe
effects who were doing the work
on Harry Potter, a small team of
brilliant people. We had a lot
of previous for that because we
had to go to London and work
with John Richardson's
mechanical rig that he flew the
kids on to do the broomstick
shots. For those of you who
haven't seen the riot universal
with a big chase sequence where
you're sitting in a church pew
and it's flying around the
grounds of Hogwarts. was chasing
Harry and Ron on broomsticks
while they look for the last
dragon. We had to shoot Harry
and Ryan on the broomstick
react. So we had to build an
entire CG Hogwarts, which had
never been done before. But I
was talking to the production
designer, which version Do you
want me to use? Because what
most people don't know is that
in every single one of the films
was a different, he loved
changing in each film, and like
the astronomy tiles, like rotate
it a little bit. It's got some
extra windows and different
staircases and different
bridges. And he just kept on
adding to it and improving it as
the years went by. And he said,
Well, ultimately, it should look
like age. And I said, Well, is
it designed yet? No. That's it
so it's not gonna look like it
can look like seven he agreed to
that. So what we ended up
building was kind of a hybrid
between six and seven. He sent
me all the blueprints for the
castle. We spent close to two
and a half years doing that
project and we built an entire
CG Hogwarts Castle, the Black
Forest, the lake, everything was
an entire CG asset, all built in
Maya and we were using Houdini
for a lot of the water effects
and smoke effects and Dementor
effects basically using every
tool, but we might have
composited in Nuke, add three
compositors working for me on
that show. Each one of them had
one shot to work on for two and
a half years. 28 second long
shot, but all they did was just
work on one shot for all that
time. So keeping morale going
was a big part of that show.
Those shots technically are
incredibly complex. The way they
work in the right is there's a
hemispherical dome, which is 20
feet high. And your little bench
plugged into the middle of it on
the man of the robotic Cuca,
whose arms were originally
designed to manufacture motor
cars. And now we use them in
theme park rides all the time,
each one of the diamonds was one
of five on a turntable. So they
were all slowly turning all the
time and there was a track
around the bench would plug in
and it would be rotating with
the dome, and then it would peel
off and go on to the next
animation. Or at least we'll set
pace or whatever it was within
the dome within the 20 feet, the
projector was only hanging eight
inches down from the top, it
couldn't be at the centre where
you would think you'd put a
projector for a dome, because
that's where the people were, it
couldn't be attached to the
people's rig because the rig was
moving independently off the
dome. So it had to be attached
to the dome. So they had to work
out math of what would happen to
images that were projected with
a special offset lens that would
project the image down to the
bottom of the dome and all the
way through but keep the same
pixel size all the way through
even though in the reality that
the pixels at the bottom of the
frame were much smaller than the
pixels at the top of the frame
so that when they unwrapped on
the dome, they all became the
same size and because of the
distance and the offset of the
lens, it was incredibly bright
at the top and almost nothing at
the bottom. And so the render
the images look absolutely
bizarre. The colour space was
very, very wrong. They were
almost black at the top and they
were really blown out at the
bottom. But when you projected
within the dome, it all
flattened out and became real
colour this poor animators and
compositors were working in this
colour space that was just a
total mind walk. We had a full
dome rig set up in a warehouse
in Santa Maria, California. We
just walk up on the platform and
stand there projected and see if
it worked big CG challenge. It's
still playing and still one of
the highest grossing pipelines
in the world. I
Ed Kramer: see Twilight Saga
parts one and two as a visual
effects soup
Adam Howard: that was assisting
John Brennan who was the lead
supervisor on that phone and
Terry window and filthy that
Phil was there from Tibbett
doing the wolves and we were
handling everything else. One of
the main sequences that I was
involved with was a huge battle
sequence in the snow. We shot it
in Louisiana, in an old cattle
barn was like a cattle showroom
that sell cows, the building
smelt by cows the whole time. We
were there for a couple of
months. And it was brutal. And
on top of that it was paper
snow, every type of synthetic
snow that we could use was on
the ground and then in the air.
And it was completely surrounded
by green screen, which is all
very brightly lit because it had
to be mid day for the fire. We'd
walk out of there at the end of
the day and our eyes are
bleeding not not literally but
virtually because because all we
could see was like green and
white or that we didn't realise
the danger of shooting in a
building like that with paper
flakes no and potato flakes No,
because the paper flakes almost
vaporised into a very fine mist,
which he couldn't see and so we
were breathing that in for so
for a while some of us were
getting sick from that. So we
will have to wear respirators
for that there's one famous that
we had sequence coming up with
one of the heads had to be
thrown into a fire we couldn't
actually shoot it in the
building because if we put a
naked flame in the building, the
whole thing's gonna blow up with
all of us inside it. So we had
to build a small set piece
outside and shoot that at
nighttime in the pouring rain
with fake snow on the ground. It
was getting soggy and looking
terrible. It's in the movie and
it works and it looks fantastic.
The stuff we went through to
make it happen was crazy. We had
one sequence on that where we
built a rock wall the main
character has to climb up during
one of the fight sequences that
they built out of wood and
plaster and almost stuff that
you normally use to create a set
piece like that. I think we've
got to shoot it on a Saturday
and they finished on Friday. We
all went home for the night and
when we came back the next day
they had been a massive
thunderstorm that might happen
the rain bucket it down on this
thing that was sitting outside
because they wanted to shoot it
against the night sky so that it
didn't need a sky calm all the
plaster has had soaked all the
water up and it crushed the
entire set and pull Last season,
we destroyed the set. I thought
we got there the next morning
and there was no set it was all
just destroyed Saturday to
rebuild. Good inside, we did the
walls, we did all the
interaction between the main
characters, a lot of high
replacement for contact lens
stuff when the actors didn't
want to go with contacts.
Vampires had very specific look
for their eyes. So we had to do
that work and
Ed Kramer: something that I'm
really excited to ask you about.
Cosmos. Yeah, I just gotta say
at one point in my career, I got
to actually work with Carl
Sagan. Oh, wow,
Adam Howard: that was lead
visual supervisor. There was 12
or 13 episodes I was on at the
beginning of the show. And then
I left about three quarters of
the way through. It was an
amazing show, working with Dell
deGrasse Tyson is just a dream,
because the guy is just genius.
It's amazing to sit down and
have dinner with somebody like
Neil, which I did many times.
You can talk about anything, any
subjects and his insight into
those particular things that are
just astounding. And when he's
talking about science and
mathematics, I mean, his
conversations were incredible.
The challenge with that show was
to visualise the great cosmic
calendar, all the things that
had been seen in the original 70
series with Carl McEwan are
really updated. Look, we spent a
long time making it all look the
way it is. It's beautiful to see
that it's on Disney plus now
very proud of that series.
Ed Kramer: What are your
favourites one or two shots? My
Adam Howard: favourite one
ultimately, is the cosmic
calendar. It's just a brilliant
concept, the history of the
cosmos, it's amazing to take the
entire history of the cosmos and
in just man on the street terms
compress it into 12 months. So
the very first second of January
1 isn't a big bang. And the very
last second of the last day of
the year is right now you can
say that humans developed on
like June 23. And the pyramids
were born here, it puts such an
easily accessible perception of
what that timeframe is, which
otherwise is really inaccessible
to anybody's brain because it's
an asset. And it's working out
how to shoot green screen
elements of me also working on
the ship of imagination, which
was fun building that said,
working out what it needed to
look like and how I was involved
in designing the main titles. My
original concept was staying
right inside an eyeball treating
the edges of the retina like the
surface of a planet was flying
those tiny little details and
then pulling out of it and
ultimately revealing an eyeball
that then became the cosmos
space image.
Ed Kramer: I remember watching
that the first time and going
God I love these graphics. I
wonder who did that one of the
things that I love at the very
end, the word Cosmos goes off
into the distance and the
beginning C and the s come
together before it leaves. And
that's Carl Sagan. Yeah,
exactly. I saw that right away.
I just want to say somebody
noticed.
Adam Howard: Thank you. I'm glad
the executive producer of the
series was Andrew Yang, who's
called widow. Her insight into
all that is massive. Her
knowledge in her own right is
extraordinary working with her
and Branca Jason Clark and Neil
Wallace. Guys. It was a great
experience.
Ed Kramer: after that. I see
Birdman selfless peewee.
Adam Howard: I love working on
Pee Wee's Big holiday because
Pee Wee's Playhouse was always a
favourite show of mine in the
late 80s, early 90s. Working on
that phone was really fun and
working with Paul Rubens was
amazing. Paul has become a dear
friend, he was actually out here
in Florida. But three weeks ago,
we had dinner with him, which
was great. It's really fun. Paul
will say something a certain way
as it's peewee. He's such a
great guy. From a challenging
point of view. right alongside
the challenges of Titanic
Birdman was an unbelievably
complex film. For people who
have not seen the film. The
entire film is one continuous
shot and wonderful 1917 was my
it was based on a Russian film
that had been made many years
ago that tried to do the same
thing. And Hitchcock had done
the same kind of thing. I think
every window and rope this was
an entire movie. That was one
continuous shot. The director of
photography, Emmanuel Lubezki
was the guy really driving the
process of the Atmel hundra
consulting Rita was the director
and it was his vision to make it
all happen. So I was on as the
supervisor of the film to work
out how we made that happen. The
biggest challenge that we had on
Birdman was that there was no
motion control on the film at
all. The entire film was
handheld. Wow, for example is a
shot with Michael Keaton walking
out of his dressing room down a
corridor down the stairs through
the backstage onto the stage
across the stage out the door
into the street up the street
into the dressing room that he
walks out of was built on a
soundstage underneath the stage
as the patient Sesame Street in
Queens. The staircase that he's
walking down is a small
staircase in the St. James
Theatre in New York, the stage
is in a completely separate part
of that theatre. Then he walks
straight across that through the
backstage area on the other
side, walks out the door that as
he walks out the door, there's a
hookup in there as well to a
different take. And then as you
walk down the street, they will
pass the drummer and as a
separate hookup because the
director wanted to use different
performances and couldn't use
the ones in the continuous take.
So we had to blend all these
pieces. Traditionally what you
do in shows like that is you use
old school techniques. So you go
behind somebody's back and you
can cut and dissolve to another
dark subject and it looks like
you've done a continuous mode.
In these worksheets or framed
everything was all right there
in front of, you had no way to
cheat, he would hold the camera
with his viewfinder. And I would
stand next to him with a little
playback monitor and say we're
going shot at shot B, I would
have shot eight on a loop. And
he'd be watching, especially
toward the end of the shot
saying, Okay, so that's what
role, he would just optically
match his camera to what he was
seeing on the view screen next
to me, then we get into post and
we blend them all together. And
there are some shots where we're
just doing like a true friend
dissolve from one to the other.
And you cannot tell it was a
ship a lot of little CG help. It
was an amazing achievement for
camera, because she thought was
genius. We had a lot of shots
that were very, very, very
difficult. The first day I
arrived in New York, they said
to me, so we've got this shot we
want to do the camera starts off
because then the spiral
staircase, into the poems where
they make out on the poems and
the camera goes over their heads
and drops down through all the
flying set pieces to the stage
and then moves across the stage
rather than Michael Keaton's
face. How are we going to do
that? Hi, guys, nice to meet
you. We can preface this. And we
can do some rough layout and
work out how we can need to move
and how we do gaps between
things. And these are all
problems they're going to take.
And I said, Well, it'll take a
few days to do the previous and
then we need to export that move
into a motion control rig. And
at this point, I didn't know
that we had no motion control on
the show. And the producer
looked at me and he said, Well,
that's lovely. But we're
shooting this in 20 minutes. How
are we doing it? Okay.
So do we have a grips department
available right now? Yes. Do we
have a stunt department? Yes.
Does the stunt department have
to send a rig? Yes, get them all
in here right now. And so
between those, we designed this
thing affectionately called the
Trojan horse that was a big
wooden cage on huge rubber
wheels, about five guys on the
back of it to jump on it and
push it so that it had weight so
that it would move through the
saddle. The initial shot was the
camera handheld on one side by
me and on the other side by
Chivo going down the staircase
following the two lovers as they
walk through this little doorway
and then start making out. So we
will puppeteering the camera
over the top of them. And then
we rotate it around and pull it
off the back of the set. While
we're doing that the cameras
attached to a stunt to send a
ring. And so the stunt guys are
pulling you into the Senate
right so the cables pulling the
point where we went go with the
camera, it's free hanging, and
we had to let go very gently so
that it didn't swing. As soon as
we let it go. They got a cue and
had to drop that to send that so
that the whole camera dropped
down to the bottom. But it had
to be on a slight rotation so
that it would spin as went down.
And so we will puppeteering that
from the top as it was dropping
down. As it got to the bottom
the Trojan horse arrived, which
had a little scoop camera
dropped into it was Styrofoam
and foam rubber, and they hit a
charge and released the cable.
And then the guys push the
camera and the camera went all
the way up to the stage. And
then Chiba was there on stage
pulling the camera out. And
going right up to Michael
Keaton's face, we did two takes
of it the first time around in
the movie, it's got some
blending and fixing of the flies
that were hanging above the
stage, which had a bit of wobble
to them. So we fix that to make
it a very smooth drop. But
everything else is completely on
camera. And like you said
before, if you can get it in
Canada and in Canada, the thing
that you realise very early on
in the business is that this is
not a one man shot. It's
hundreds of people involved in
getting one shot to the screen.
And in a case like that multiple
departments with years of
experience in each discipline,
or contributing their own little
bit to making that thing work.
And when people can force it and
they see you make 100 people
sending their mail, why so many
people what are they all doing?
They're all just standing
around. The reality is that
those people are waiting for
their one second when their bid
has to work. They wait and they
wait. You've spent a lot of time
on a film set waiting. But when
it's your time you go in, you do
your bidding, you step back and
provided you do your bid at the
right time in the right way.
It's invisible and it works.
Ed Kramer: We're getting toward
the end of this What's your life
like these days? What's going on
with Adam Howard, and then I
want to talk about your
painting.
Adam Howard: Okay, like 42 years
later, I'm still a visual
effects supervisor. I did a
great little psychological
thriller last year called fear
of rain that we shot here in
Florida. We did all the visual
things work at Mel's up in
Montreal. But I ran all that
from here because it was all
during COVID We had to work out
a whole new way of working where
we couldn't be unsettled. We
couldn't be imposed. We couldn't
travel. So we did everything
remotely. We did another farm.
We've just done one core idea.
And I'm just in talks with
people about different projects.
Most recently I was in the
Dominican Republic shooting a
movie, which I won't mention now
we shot in the water tank at
Pinewood Studios in the
Dominican Republic for three and
a half months. And that was an
amazing experience building a
huge set piece in the middle of
this 20 foot deep water tank,
working with scuba camera crews
and really extraordinary people.
I'm just talking to people about
other opportunities now. So
yeah, that's what's happening.
Ed Kramer: Your paintings are
some of the most extraordinary
portraiture ever created.
Adam Howard: Thank you so much.
My I've been drawing and
painting my entire life. I've
been drawing faces for 50 years,
and I'll be 60 this year in
November. So I've been drawing
since I was a little kid but but
one thing that's always
fascinated me the most were
human faces, even though there
are really kind of a finite
number of details in faces. When
you combine them there's just a
multitude Even possibilities and
all the subtlety of light and
shade and reflectivity and all
that stuff all comes to the
forefront when you're doing a
human portrait. Somebody that
you will know Miss Lisa Bowers
from ILM and amazing visual
effects person in her own right
a few years ago decided that she
was going to wait visual effects
get to spend more time at home
with her daughter and her
husband and she pursue portrait
painting. She paints amazing
watercolour portraits, I was
completely inspired by her work
around 2017 I decided I'm just
gonna start drawing portraits
and I was doing them combination
of colour pencil markers and
some paint very much inspired by
the poster art of drew Suzanne
and Mark Roberts, particularly
those two guys, were both
friends of mine, especially Mark
who's a great guy, South African
guy lives in Perth in Australia,
does a lot of Star Wars and
Indiana Jones posters legend is
doing colour pencil portraits
for a long time and then Adobe
came out with a brand new
software tool in their package
called Fresco and I was one of
the first people who use fresco
it took all the best paint
elements of Photoshop and plug
them off into their own distinct
lead paint paste app for iPad.
I've been painting my portraits
on iPad. Since then, I have so
much fun during the painted
brushstroke by restaurant.
There's no automated anything.
They're completely created from
scratch. I wish I could make
money out of the attempt to
paint celebrities. Unless
somebody commissioned me to do
something I paint celebrities
because everybody knows what
they look like they did one
recently at Michael Keaton. And
it was Michael in the centre but
surrounded by a bunch of his
different characters like
Batman, they'll do some Birdman,
Mr. Mob and all those things.
And when they look at a portrait
and they go oh, wow, it's
Michael keep going back to when
we're done. If you're invisible,
it weren't my challenge always
is to keep training my eye to
just keep on trying to make
stuff look photo real. The
portraits I do are not for real
in the sense. They look like a
photograph. They definitely
paint it but they need to
absolutely without question be
the person. The reality of the
human face is that when you're
drawing it, you can be 2% off
and it doesn't look anything
like that person I was doing
painting few years ago with my
mother and it was bugging the
hell out of me because it didn't
work. And I kept on looking at
hang on what the hell is it?
It's not right. I was using the
photograph as reference and so I
put the photograph down. So what
is it about mom that I remember
my mom stole my very much so
she's in the Melbourne stuff.
And I remember that she on her
bottom eyelid. She just has
these tiny little reflections of
like wateriness and whatever I
noticed the painting. Oh, that's
not there. And so got a tiny
little paintbrush. I got some
white paint. And as we put two
little dots on each eye, she was
real using photographs. I use
that to get the dimension.
Absolutely right beyond that.
It's just a selection process of
what you put in and what you
don't put in.
Ed Kramer: Have you ever made
prints large and had a gallery
show?
Adam Howard: I've had a few
gallery shows on the originals.
I had some big prints made
recently because I was invited
by a dear friend of mine exile
Emma to do some portraits for
the 40th anniversary party of
Empire Strikes Back they had the
party at the old Colonel light
on stage. I did want to Richard
outland and one of Dennis mirror
and one of Phil Tippett and one
of Anthony Daniels and see
Threepio and one of George we
had them printed up like movie
poster size. They were spread
out over tables, and they're
good some great photos of
Richard looking at his portrait.
I have not had a show of these
ones yet. But I want to do that
I will eventually I'm working on
one right now Robin Williams,
another hero of mine, like I got
to meet a couple of times. It's
so much fun to see it all come
together. I hope people like it.
I
Ed Kramer: can't believe that
you can't figure out a way to
monetize those. I see one of
those and I go this should be
selling for $50,000
Adam Howard: in your mouth to
god's ear.
Ed Kramer: Let's do it. All
right, knocking knocking on some
wood here. This has been
absolutely loads of fun. I think
it's going to be really fun for
our listeners as well and
parting words, where do you see
yourself in the big picture
timeline,
Adam Howard: the one thing I'm
pretty sure of is that we'll
never return it. You have to
love what you do. You need to be
inspired by every day you need
to get great passion out of
doing. I love my job. I have
always loved my job. I love
creating, whether it's a
painting or whether it's an
effect shot, it's all the same
thing. As everything is in
everything. My great thrilling
visual effects is sitting in a
theatre when a film is finished
and knowing what the intent of a
shot was. As far as the audience
is concerned it never knowing
whether that intent is actually
gonna be fulfilled until you're
sitting with an audience. And
when you do something's supposed
to be specifically funny moment
and like 700 people all crack up
laughing at the same time.
There's no better feeling than
then. You know, again, you're a
huge team working on creating
that moment. The thing I say to
kids who are starting off, never
give up. Never ever ever give
up. Don't listen to the
naysayers. There are going to be
plenty of people who will tell
you you cannot and what I have
found in life is the people who
say you cannot other people who
did not just keep on going
believing yourself. Do it.
Ed Kramer: Awesome, my friend,
thank you so much for giving me
so much of your time. Such a
great time
Adam Howard: catching up again.
Ed Kramer: Oh, thanks. All
right. Appreciate it. Bye bye
bye We count a couple of shots