Erik: Hey! Everyone welcome to another awesome episode of Hollywood FX. This week, we kind out with Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff of Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated or ADI. These guys are the crème of the special effects crop and got their start with FX legend, Stan Winston. After opening up their own shop, they’ve worked on such movies, Spiderman, Alien 3, Jumanji, Alien Resurrection, Cast Away, The New X-Men movie, and of course Tremors. That’s right, now among the two degrees away from Kevin Bacon.
Alec Gillis: Where is that son of the—
Tom Woodruff: Hey!
Erik: Hey!
Alec Gillis: Oh hello right in time.
Erik: Alec.
Tom Woodruff: Nice to see you.
Erik: I hear some—coming in there?
Alec Gillis: No.
Erik: Okay cool.
Alec Gillis: So this is our design and display room and this is where the beginning and the end of the process is kind of you know, we like to have our artist working in a cool environment surrounded by the stuff from our past. The walls come through us from Alien Resurrection.
Erik: Its earlier you guys made a hulk—this was for pants.
Tom Woodruff: Yeah, the request came to us from the studio that they need a full size instead of hulk legs because they we’re working at some sort of costume issue with the pants and got them all done and they never came and pick them up.
Erik: If any of you guys would—watching your legs were still ready. Some of this I mean is so crazy. I think maybe it’s the eyes was so—I mean I’m expecting all of this some of these faces just turn and look at me. A rumor about this particular creature that an original version was little more phallic than—
Tom Woodruff: We have our final display, we actually sunk some of the anatomy back inside the body. There is the scene in the movie where the creature is holding one—by the neck in a shot sort of like this and left people at FOX saw all this kind of—over the shoulder and they had to go in and digitally remove it. So in that aspect, we get the actually—as certain realism beyond the expectations of everybody at the studio. One of these pores are can be applied. This is one of the clones from the Sixth Day.
Erik: So I’m seeing a million things that are awesome and then maybe the first that jumps out is the—.
Tom Woodruff: No, not the original. It’s a replica.
Erik: It’s—at the bottom back. A little propane take in there or the trade secrets?
Tom Woodruff: Everybody wants to roast meat. Basically the way this gorilla suit is constructed if you think of it from the inside out. So this is our muscle suit. You can see its got kind of a stiff fish rib cage and then other areas like the shoulders maybe a little softer, we’ve got a little layers of bean bags so that you things can balance. And there is also the muscular leg as well with that big cape ass. And then after that, we have this beautiful hair suit and the hair suit is like a giant full body wig. It’s all hand tied yak hair.
Alec Gillis: You can see inside this suit. Everyone has this little bumps is the hair fiber because this is tied into a knot and pull down.
Erik: By hand?
Alec Gillis: By hand.
Tom Woodruff: We have a couple of different versions of hands also. These are the walking hands, these are very durable, and they are cast out of urethane so that you know they don’t scoff out. If you see this kind of proportion you can you know, this gives into correct arm length. And there is a locking mechanism in here that it can let go and so we can do this stuff for. When he walks he can throw it and walk it you know. Then we have another set of hands and these are for close up action and these hands give us so much more articulated quality too.
Erik: And here is the—here’s the head.
Tom Woodruff: We have 27 several motors in the face of the same to provide all of these expressions. This is why it takes four puppeteers on the outside and what’s in the inside to really bring it to life—sweet. And then he can go to angry you can see up this area. Just keep opening probably. All it’s reactive movement if you see a real ape as he open his mouth like this there is all this flexing that happens with the jaw actually connects up here. So, we made sure that we added that so that slave to this jaw when it close is the temple movement beyond.
Erik: Well, thank you guys so much.
Tom Woodruff: Well thank you very much.
Alec Gallis: Oh sorry, just the shake shall we.
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