RDAVIS@USC-ECL.ARPA (07/20/85)
From: R H Davis <RDAVIS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
1) You must understand that because of the nature of the movie
industry there a large egos. Large, unsatisfied egos breed/feed
large, madly spinning gossip wheels.
_As_I_understand_it_...Paramount Pics had, after the effort with Disney
Pics on "Dragonslayer" [excellent!!], been dying to start it's own SFX
shop (Universal had one...why not us?!?). But, it had to be a facility
with a "look" of it's own so that their services would be in demand from
the outside(a sound business attitude, reflecting Gulf & Westerns attitude
as a whole). Robert Able & Assoc. was doing some incredibly innovative
work with his Levi's commercials via computer tech. Paramount Pics set up
an initial $6mil contract to open a shop and have Able develop his ideas.
"Make this stuff different from anything going...ST-TMP is our flagship
film into Sci-Fic"
In the end Able developed a lab that would shoot model animation that
was almost entirely developed at a term which was later shot with models
with almost NO human interaction. The problem was that noone explained
to the computer the nature/texture/depth of film and so naturally every-
thing had a very flat look to it(I've seen some of the footage). At this
point of the game Able had almost used his entire $6mil and Paramount,
already panicing from the pictures rampant budget (Roddenberry is NOT a
movie producer), salvaged all the footage they could and called in Trumble
to shoot the model work (as he was there already developing SHOW-SCAN) and
Greg Jene (spell??) to do the miniatures.
I know of no input from Dykstra, although his presence is certainly
possible as Paramount was throwing any available EFX tech. in town into
the project at this point. The Able footage that made it to the final cut
of ST-TMP includes ALL the "Exterior" shots of V'ger, the worm-whole(?)
effect and almost all of the Ilia and electronic planet footage.
A lot of bad press is out about Able but, most of it is ego rattling
because Able was in the right place at the right time despite his lack
of "traditional" EFX experience and got the contract.
Dykstra has a lot of bad press because he developed tech. for ILM under
contract for "Star Wars" and then proceeded to illegally use that tech.
on his own projects (Battlestar). (He never worked with ILM after SW, by
the way). This means that for a long time Dykstra did very little visible
work as he was a bad risk. More and more these days, though, you see him
working on independent projects. He's very talented ("Firefox") but he's
also not a very wise businessman..... God!! 'nuff said, already!!
bd
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