MATRIX: Could you explain what an Assistant Editor’s duties are?

ALLISON: When we get our camera rolls from the lab we check them against our breakdown that lets us know which slate goes where — sometimes you get camera rolls containing different scenes and they need to go on different dailies rolls. I break the film apart into the slates, which generally leaves us with lots of little bits and pieces, and then we build them up into rolls that Catherine [Chase, 1st Assistant Editor (Film)] has sorted into a screening order that she goes through every morning.

MATRIX: As I understand it, not everything that is shot is shown at dailies.

ALLISON: No, it’s not.

MATRIX: Are the shots you assemble what is shown at dailies?

ALLISON: Sometimes. We have selects and non-selects that need to be gone through eventually as well, so I might pull out one slate and the other four are put on a different roll that still goes into the system but are slates that the brothers don’t want to see but still can be used in the film.

MATRIX: How did you become an Apprentice Editor?

ALLISON: I was a projectionist on the first MATRIX and they needed some help in the cutting room towards the end of filming, so I was sort of thrown in the deep end.

MATRIX: What equipment do you use?

ALLISON: My synchronizer has all the frames on it – there are four sprockets to a frame – and using the synchronizer I can then mark a sequence at any frame. When you make a cut you want to cut it in rack because if you cut it in a sprocket short you’ll see the frame line when it’s being shown. To make the cuts I use a splicer; I just put the film on it and then I cut it. Splicing tape will join it back together again; it’s got the same kind of sprocket holes in it. You just line it up on the splicer, tape it on both sides, and off you go.

MATRIX: Do you still project the dailies?

ALLISON: No, I take them up to the projectionist and tell her what order they go in, what has sound, what is mute, and then I get to push the button and go, “ready to roll.” It’s all very exciting, I still go to the dailies every night.

MATRIX: What is your role while you’re there?

ALLISON: Basically just to take the film up to the projectionist before the Brothers arrive and to make sure it looks presentable. I test it to make sure all the sound is working, and have a look at the picture to make sure there are no hairs in the projector and that the image looks right. When they come I sit next to the microphone so I can talk to the projectionist so if they want to roll through the focus I can let her know. Then I get the film and take it to telecine afterwards.

MATRIX: Have you ever had any big drama where the sound didn’t sync?

ALLISON: That’s all checked here on the Steinbeck [a device for editing film] before we actually go up. Sometimes there are some technical difficulties but usually it can be sorted out. Sometimes machines just don’t want to cooperate.

MATRIX: Are there other duties you’re responsible for?

ALLISON: It depends. Today is a pretty light day, but if we’re really busy I can be sitting here breaking film apart until after lunch. Once it’s all compiled we check it to make sure it’s all in a screening order, and then log it by the barcodes that run along the side of the film. We have a special barcode reader that picks up those little barcodes so when we log it we know the start of each slate from where the barcode is.

Once it’s all logged, Dave [David Birrell, AVID Assistant Editor] syncs up the rushes, it’s checked, and then we get it out to the numbering machine where we mark it again, placing rubber numbers on it for each scene. Every foot of film needs to be numbered, so later, when they’re in post-production, they can cut the film by those numbers. The numbering machine is not the fastest, so that takes a little while. Then the footage is placed in boxes and we take it up to rushes and there we go. Then we do it all again the next morning.

MATRIX: What has been your biggest challenge so far on this production?

ALLISON: It would probably just be the hours. Sometimes we get a lot of film and it’s just really hard, but we seem to get there every day. That’s probably been the toughest — day in, day out, more film, more film.

MATRIX: What would you say your hours are like?

ALLISON: About thirteen or fourteen hours a day, depending on overtime, but I try to stick to twelve. It all depends on when they wrap and when they get up to rushes.

MATRIX: Generally how many minutes do you show every day in dailies?

ALLISON: It depends what the Brothers have selected, but we probably haven’t sat through longer than sixty minutes at a time. And if they skip a night then we’ve got double dailies the next night, but lately it’s been about half an hour’s worth. That’s the three units — main, second, and third. It’s quite nice to see all this work you put in during the day projected that night.

MATRIX: Thank you so much, Allison.

Interview by REDPILL

August 2002

THE ART DEPARTMENT

MATRIX: What is your background?

CINDI: This is really only the second film I’ve worked on; it’s new for me to be in the film business. Previously I was an Architect, so my training is in architecture design, not in film. I’m learning about film lighting, film sets that you take apart, how much the Set Decorator does, and how much I do as a designer. It’s really interesting how much the Production Designer [Owen Paterson] sets the tone for everything, and then each person fills in the blanks and tries to create the Production Designer’s and the Directors’ vision.

MATRIX: How is the work sectioned amongst the Art Directors here?

CINDI: There is a Supervising Art Director, Hugh Bateup, three Art Directors, and four Assistant Art Directors, so we pretty well split the work into thirds. We did the Merovingian’s Chateau, the Industrial Hallway, and we did the Oracle sets early on because those were existing sets we had to get back together. I’ve been working on the Sewer and the Mjolnir Pipeline, the Nebuchadnezzar Loading Dock, the Logos Loading Bay, the Mjolnir Crash Site, and the Mjolnir Foot. You’re all over the place doing all kinds of things. There are somewhere between a hundred and thirty and a hundred and eighty sets – you get different stories – so there are probably about fifty sets that our team is doing.

MATRIX: There are two films being filmed back to back; are they being filmed in succession in any way?

CINDI: No, they’re being filmed by actor availability and Wire Team availability. There could be sequences that are at the very beginning of the second movie and at the very end of the third movie that are shot on the same day. There aren’t too many things that are repeated like that, but it’s shot as convenience and scheduling and budgeting works out. The actors have to really make some jumps and leaps. For instance we have two sets, the Sewer Main and the Mjolnir Pipeline, that are right next to each other and are being shot on Monday and Tuesday. One is at the end of the second movie and the other is at beginning of the third movie.

MATRIX: The designers also have to make leaps from one world to another: from the rusted decaying world to the cleaner lines of the Matrix.

CINDI: Yes, on all of the Merovingian’s sets you could put your finger on anything and there would be no dust at all; it was all in perfect condition because that’s the way he designed it. But there are a lot of shabby elements on the sets where there’s a lot of deterioration. It’s fun. I like it because I like history and have always appreciated historical films; I love historical detail. Because my training is really as an architect in the contemporary world I have a lot of resources for doing something like the Industrial Hallway. I can do a lot of the doorframes and overhead lighting straight office sets, but it’s nice to do a variety.

MATRIX: How precise do you have to be when you’re drawing sets?

CINDI: It’s very precise, especially on things like the Industrial Hallway where you go through a door and you go into another set. When you walk down the Industrial Hallway you open the door and you’re in the Merovingian’s Chateau, you open the door and you’re in the Teahouse Alley. All those sets have to meet up to each other and they have to look like they actually work, so when you’re filming backwards from the Merovingian’s Chateau you actually look like you could go into the Le Vrai Restaurant. It all has to flip around to each other.

We do things in millimeters, but the thing you learn is you always want to end in a zero or a five. You don’t ever want to make something 83.6 millimeters because nobody can do that. You can do eighty millimeters or eighty-five millimeters. In computer work the numbers always come out 1,185.6 millimeters, and who is going to do that? It’s just 1185 and you’re all set. We’re still human beings working with hammers and tools, so there’s only so accurate that we can be.

MATRIX: Do you have much contact with the Construction Department?

CINDI: A lot because we draw the sets and hopefully we’ve drawn it clearly enough for them to understand it… but sometimes not. Sometimes it seems so obvious to us, but we’ve left things off the drawings or there are incongruities on the drawings, which doesn’t happen very often but it happens. We work with them to interpret the set again because so much of it is their decision making. We say what we need to have and ask if we need to change anything make it easier for them to build it or take it apart.

For instance, on the Abandoned Apartment set they did all the framing, it wasn’t important how all the joinery went together as this set is not that precise. You knew it was going to be sloppy and dirty, so there’s a lot of overlap.

THE ABANDONED APARTMENT

MATRIX: Explain how you follow through on the Production Designer’s vision and what the differences are from set design to architecture.

CINDI: By the time I started on the film, Owen had been probably working on it for at least a year, maybe a year and a half, and on almost all the sets he’d worked with a group of Conceptual Designers. They had three-dimensional sketches, cartoon-like sketches, which showed the feeling and the color and maybe little character studies, as well as some of the hand props that the characters would be using, but didn’t necessarily fill out all the spaces.

For some of the sets, like the Merovingian’s Chateau, we had complete computer models. Owen had worked that out intricately, so the work that was left for us to do there was to assist in color selection and decoration elements.

But a set like the Abandoned Apartment hadn’t been storyboarded and there were no conceptual drawings, so Owen did a very simple plan and we worked from there. I looked for images that he was interested in: I found a villa in Sicily that he liked that was just a single sheet that showed a lovely wall that was decaying. When I showed that to him he said those are the colors we want to work with, and because that set is in the Matrix we should use the green range of blacks. That’s why, when you look at the set and the black on the flowers on the walls, the black is not truly black, it’s a green black so we know we’re in the Matrix, not in Zion or the real world.

Starting from that collection of images he liked, we continued to develop it into three dimensions – similar to what I would have done for an architecture client. The difference is that here all I do is show the outside profile of what I want the room to look like, and the Construction team decides how they’re going to build it behind the walls. They decide what is the cheapest way, and what is the best way for them to build it someplace else and put it together back in the Sound Stage.

As an Architect I would have been responsible for the structural safety, the fire safety, the exits and all those issues, but here it doesn’t matter. I just show the outside profile, and everything behind the walls is somebody else’s choice; we are really just concerned about how it looks.

The Abandoned Apartment set was a great opportunity because here the Set Decorators got to do a fantastic job with the curtains, and some really great upholstery finishes where they’ve shredded it and made it look like it’s disgusting. Also, the Set Finishers took this beautiful wallpaper I designed and made it look like it’s a million years old, and like it has been waterlogged and water damaged.

The story we developed behind this set was that it was a sort of chinoiserie apartment and that there perhaps had been a fire upstairs, so there was fire damage. I even had certain sections of the ceiling where there was fire damage and there was smoke in certain directions, and the water would have come from the smoke and the floor had to come up in a certain place so it all matched. When you look at it now, it’s all decaying pretty evenly. It’s wonderful to look at this masterwork: to have a Scenic Artist make the plaster look like it’s falling away and the wallpaper look like it’s so old.

For the wallpaper I used the theme of opium poppies, so it’s a drug theme sort of alluding to the use of the red and the blue pill, and your choice of what you’re going to do. This apartment is where the Captains make their decision about what they’re going to do for their next action, and how they’re going to take over from the machines. They sit in this room and discuss, so it’s kind of their “think tank,” it’s their conference room, much like the Sub Metro is another conference room for them to talk. This is a little more intimate; it’s smaller.

MATRIX: Is it usual to make yourself backstory for a set before you design it; does that help you design in any way?

CINDI: Yes, it helps me have a sense of logic. I know when you’re working in film it doesn’t have to be logical, and that’s something I hit up against a lot because, as an Architect, this piece of wood should stand on top of this piece of wood and would have been done in this order in the real world. Because it’s film the order doesn’t matter, but it helps me to have some kind of logic to frame what I’m doing so I’m not just making it up, so it’s not just fantasy. I actually think that this would have happened over here, so it makes sense that these stains match those stains, or else it’s just chaos.

MATRIX: What was the process from the beginning through to the end on the Abandoned Apartment, and how much involvement do you have in it?

CINDI: This one was unusual. As I said, it was one that hadn’t had a lot of attention ahead of time, so I was very involved in this one. I showed Owen the pictures, worked out the plan, and showed him what I thought would work for the window wall, but he said he wanted it a little deeper with a little more wall so we’d see more of the wall texture. A lot of subtlety is that, again, from having an architecture background I’ll design a room that’s logical. It doesn’t matter where the windows and walls are, it just has to look good on film.

This was a funny set because it’s really just two rooms – or one room with a divider in it. We needed to have a place where Neo and Trinity could hide, one corner separate from the group discussion, so it needed to have a little bit of division. It was really about scale. Owen wanted it to feel large – somewhat reminiscent of the Lafayette Hotel from the first movie.

I got to do my own design on a lot of the motifs, but that’s unusual, it’s usually more of a team process because there were so many people involved before I even started. There are so many people who draft sets, and even when you’re drafting and you do exactly what you’re told, you still have an opportunity to put a little bit in there. So each person who touched this set had an opportunity to add a little bit of their personality or their ideas.

MATRIX: Wouldn’t the poppy wallpaper normally be a Set Dressing job?

CINDI: Actually, wallpaper would fall into Scenic Finishing, so that means it would be done by the Painters. The people who produced this wallpaper were friends of the man who was running the Scenic Department; we had a guy in Erskineville make the wallpaper for us.

I blew up the design a couple of times because I wanted to put a full panel up for Owen to get a sense of what it really looked like. That’s one thing that is really important to me as you’re designing – if you can try to blow it up to full size and really look at it before it goes up on set and before we spend too much money. This is a very expensive gold wallpaper that we overprinted, so it had to be right. We needed real wallpaper because we knew we’d peel it off and you want to have some of the backing piece left. If we didn’t have that we would have had to make a fake backing sheet and then put our printed sheet on top of it, and we couldn’t have gotten the luminescence of the gold.

The wall covering on the bottom of the walls is a store-bought product. One of the reasons I think they picked that is because of the motifs – the medallions there are similar to the medallions that are on the shutters and around the fireplace. A lot of it has to do with what is available. The cornice trims and moldings are what the manufacturer had in stock at the time for a reasonable price. But there is still that home decorating element: I’ve got a budget of five hundred dollars – what can I do with it? You have to stretch it as far as you can and buy what you can.

MATRIX: Are you a hand illustrator or a computer draftsperson?

CINDI: I draft with pencil on velum. I have drafted on computer but it doesn’t seem to be favored so much in film. We have worked with computer drafters, but I think that the Art Directors and Production Designers are also pencil drafters, so they’re more comfortable working with pencil drafters. Sometimes they do computer modeling and they appreciate computer modeling as well, so you have to be able to do both.

I’ve done a lot of Photoshop work in complementing the hand drafting just to get the images, and a lot of Internet research. When I did the Abandoned Apartment set I probably used the computer thirty percent of the time, and drafted seventy percent of the time – working them together.

We’ve done the Zion sets on the computer and the Production Assistants we have working on the Zion sets are Photoshopping the finishes on top of that. We’ll do an elevation, say, of the Zion Elevator and all the railings and the edge of the Dock in the computer so it’s just an outline drawing. Then the Production Assistants will go onto the Internet and find a picture of rusty steel and they’ll start rubberstamping it into the areas. So they’ve got these beautiful absolutely exquisite renderings that look so real and they’ve got the depth.

MATRIX: So it is a type of pre-visualization.

CINDI: Yes, and it also helps the Scenic guys. It really helps everybody to get a picture of what we’re doing. It’s very interesting – we’re really blending our technologies a lot.

THE MEROVINGIAN’S CHATEAU

MATRIX: What was the first set you did when you came onto the show?

CINDI: I think the first thing we did was the Merovingian’s Chateau because that was such a big one that had been thought about for such a long time. That involved seven different sets that were linked together: there was the Great Hall, the Library, the Upper Hallway, the Lower Hallway, the Basement, the Parking Garage and the Keymaker’s room. All these pieces had to fit together, so the team I was on all worked on those together.

Owen had computer-modeled the Great Hall and he had rough modeled all the other sets, so we had something to start with. We knew the scale he was looking for and we knew the sense of movement – how all the sets connected to each other. He had worked with the Concept Artists who had illustrated the upstairs, the downstairs, and how many doors you go through – that’s all that set is – hallway after hallway, running and turning, running and turning.

They had really worked that all out, so it was a matter of taking those concept sketches and trying to turn them into orthogonal drawings. You have a three-dimensional sketch and you have to turn it into something very flat that you can measure and say this is three meters high. Because Owen had already done a computer model, we could get some pretty good scale numbers off that. And then it was a matter of going to the Internet and researching villas. We looked at a lot of European chateaus where we thought we were going to match the exterior of our chateau to a real chateau. The Hermitage [State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia] website is excellent, it has 360 degree views of all the rooms at the Hermitage, so we could see the chandeliers, and the balustrades, and all the things that we needed for our chateau – all the details were there.

We also looked at a lot of Venetian villas because we had that underground feeling – the floor pattern in the Lower Hallway came out of a typical Venetian piazza. So we borrow all these things and put them all together, looking for the classic European feeling, The Merovingian feeling: Western philosophy, Western European heritage. You have to have the visual imagery that matches that philosophical style because there’s so much storyline. Larry and Andy have thought about the history of philosophy so much that you have to give the visual clues that backup their story. You have to match the same sense of opulence that they’re speaking about, and they’re speaking about the history of Western man.

MATRIX: Did you have the opportunity to speak to them about it?

CINDI: I have had very little contact with Larry and Andy, so it’s mostly through Owen. When you read the script and see the character names that are famous philosophers or characters from mythology, you start to read about the Merovingian and the others. It was a big deal for us to research that and see what it meant, and that gives you a lot of clues.

There were also things like the Merovingian’s logo. I made a stab at it thinking, big M, big guy, big ego. When Owen saw it he wanted more frills, so we got some swords, we got some more frills and I put a crown on it because I thought he thinks he’s the king of everything. I put all that on there, not thinking about it consciously, and I saw a show on Napoleon two weeks later and saw that was where I got it from; Napoleon was just an N with the laurel leaves. The Brothers liked it, but it was a shot in the dark, a guess after looking at the Chateau and knowing a little bit about the history.

MATRIX: There were a lot of sculptures on that set; can you talk a little bit about those?

CINDI: The sculptures were really Brian Dusting’s [Set Decorator] baby. The idea is that they’re all the same character – they are all the Merovingian – although it’s not a representation of the actor’s face, it is one person. Again it’s the ego of the one person who controls everything. You can see that in the mural at the back where we’ve got the big M at the top of the mural in heaven, puppeteering the angels who are puppeteering the little people, you and I, down here slogging it out in the mud. He’s totally in control, he loves himself, and he’s got pictures of himself everywhere.

Some of those statues are based on actual statues of the Merovingian; there are a couple of statues that are supposed to be the Merovingian, so we found the body poses. Then there are classic warriors that we worked on combining with the architecture because the two guys at the base of the stairs had to light your pathway up the stairs, but be turning enough so that when you came in the door you got a good look at them. There was complex geometry in that room. The guy who was the model for that actually works in Props Model Making, so we took lots of photographs of him and tweaked him around to make him do his thing.

MATRIX: A lot of action went on on this set, did you have to make allowances for that?

CINDI: Yes. On the Abandoned Apartment we had no idea what the action was, I just imagined what I thought was happening and we just left the floor space really clear. The furniture was really easy to move and the walls moved away easily so they could do whatever they needed to.

In the chateau the action was really choreographed; they had been rehearsing with a mock staircase in California. Once we got our staircase established in Australia, they built an identical staircase in California and rehearsed with that staircase, so it was very precisely worked out. Owen had a really good idea of where everybody was going to fly into and who was going to be thrown into what pretty early on. Some of those things changed at the last minute, but that was pretty tight. Anything that had a fight sequence in it we had known ahead of time so we could plan for it.

If it’s a dialogue sequence it’s up to us to guess how the camera is going to move based on reading the dialogue and looking at the pacing of it. The scene in the Abandoned Apartment was intercut with sequences of them going to the Power Station and the Rerouting Facility, so you knew it was going to be fast. But then Morpheus had these words that were so powerful you knew it would be static shots of Morpheus talking about providence and the paths that the captains were on so there’d be some strength and static. They wouldn’t be moving too fast because you want to really hear what he has to say.

LOCK, TRINITY & HAMANN

MATRIX: How well do you know the scripts?

CINDI: Pretty well, but not as well as I should. You have to know everything and how all of the little things relate to each other, and you look for certain things. Right now I’m working on Commander Lock’s Office, so I’ve gone through all the references to any graphics that are in Zion because we’re designing a table for him where he has got some moving and some static graphics.

What is Commander Lock responsible for? He’s responsible for defense. So I looked up everything that’s in the script about APUs and Defense Ducts and broadcast levels, and anything I can possibly find about the ships, like any mention of geothermal reports. Then I read through the scripts again looking for everything about the Osiris that I possibly could find. When you’re trying to design one element, that’s all you’re looking for then, and next time you’re looking through it you’re looking for something else. It’s like a research project when you go to the encyclopedia, but you only look for one topic at a time, you don’t notice the other topics.

As this project goes on you start to know who is playing each character. We knew who the big cast members were, but I didn’t know who’s playing Ghost, and now that I’ve met Anthony Wong and he’s a real person, I read the script and understand what Ghost is doing there and find it interesting. I relate to it very differently than I did the first time I read it. When we came back from Christmas break [2001 – 2002] Hugh made us read it again and I have had to go through it at least one more time since Christmas. It’s the Bible; every word is a clue to the relationship between storyline and design, you just have to squeeze it right out of the script.

MATRIX: Did you have the opportunity to work on Trinity’s Bedroom set?

CINDI: Yes, that was a really interesting one because you know Trinity is tough but here she is in love with this great guy. She has found the One, the man that the Oracle has told her is the man of her dreams. So she has a soft side, but we’re not going to see that outside of the bedroom because she’s a real hardcore person and she has been fighting all her life. Her apartment is pretty ordinary, it’s just like the other apartments in Zion except for the last little niche. It’s a little softer but it’s not corny, there are no candles and glitter, but it’s still warmer softer rock so it’s a little more sensual without being cheesy. It was a very interesting game to play with that.

The other bedrooms where they’re in the ships are all pretty straight – you don’t see much of their personality – but this is Trinity’s actual room so she has created her own personal space there.

MATRIX: Can you imagine ever going back to architecture now?

CINDI: One theory I have is that this creative process will liberate my architecture so that I could go back and maybe enjoy architecture more and not be so confined by the budget and the scheduling. Perhaps my clients may be a little flexible or allow me to do something a little crazier. I might push myself a little further if I did go back and do that, but right now this is very liberating. We have a schedule and we have a budget, but it’s nowhere near as responsible as architecture.

Although we have to keep to a budget on every one of these sets, so it’s very strict, but if there isn’t money for something we can leave things out. With a client with a house you can’t leave out the stove or not buy that one person in an office a desk. In film we can figure out a way to shoot around something: we can’t afford that wall, so we’re not going to have that wall. We left walls out of some of the sets to save money – but you can’t do that for an architecture client. If something doesn’t fit together in film you throw a prop in front of it because nobody is ever going to walk back there, so nobody ever knows.

MATRIX: As an architect you were responsible for safety; who is responsible on film?

CINDI: Everybody has a responsibility for safety here, but I don’t decide how the wall is held up. As an architect I would decide the size of the studs, and how it was tied into the ceiling and the floor, or I would design the beams tied into the structure of a skyscraper. In a small building, I would design the superstructure and if it fell over it would be my fault. Here, the Construction guys are responsible for whether it falls over or not. If I see something that is dangerous it’s my responsibility to speak up about it – everybody on all the teams has that responsibility to say something is not right.

As a licensed architect when I used to sign the drawings, if anything went wrong I would be in a lawsuit. Here it’s a team process and we work with the Construction team together – how should we design this, how should we build it?

For instance, we’re working on Hamann’s Office right now, and we have three different kinds of foam that are going to come together. We have a blown foam by one team, we have a sculpted foam by another team, and we have foam over plywood by the Construction team. They’re all the pieces that have to fit together, so we have to work out our methods and materials. We’ve been discussing it and discussing it so everybody knows what they’re doing. They’re going to have flame tests to make sure the lights don’t get too close to the foam and burn. Everybody is concerned about safety and about the best and the fastest way to make the set, and also the least expensive way to make it. The best way that it will work for the filmmakers so they can take it apart and get the shots they need as well as be able to light it.

MATRIX: Do you know what happens to these sets after they have been filmed?

CINDI: Most of them are trashed and parts of them are saved. When we finish with a set we’ll do a strike plan very specifically, saving bits that we think we can use again in another set, not even in the same set, or something that we think we might need for a portion of that same set in the future. We’ve got a shed full of bits and pieces we can borrow from that are shapes that we think we might use in something else. If there was anything that was remotely pipe shaped in the first half of the movie we saved it because Zion is full of pipes – so anything that could be a column that could be turned into a pipe – we’ve got it.

MATRIX: How did you feel when you watched the 20 minute clip shown around Christmas 2001?

CINDI: It was so exciting and it was terrific to see, it’s so new for me and it’s shocking to me. I was in an actual movie theater and that is the big screen and something that I did is up there. A lot of what they showed at Christmas was the Abandoned Apartment set with Morpheus sitting here. The framing was tight to Morpheus in his red chair so I could only see a small amount of my wallpaper over his head, but it was still my wallpaper.

It was great to see it, and it was great to see it looking so good. It was perfect to do just before Christmas because you were a little tired after working a little bit too much, and you saw that and felt it was all really worth it. We do our set design, but we’re not necessarily here maybe to see each set get lit, and we’re not here for the whole day to see it filmed so you don’t see what happens. And you never know what the Editor will do with it, so you don’t know how that’s going to work out. To see 20 minutes edited together we all felt we’d done something really neat.

MATRIX: Thank you very much Cindi.

Interview by REDPILL

January 2002

THE ORIGINAL FILM

MATRIX: Having been involved on the original film, can you compare and contrast from then to now?

TREVOR: It’s the same amount of stress but it was organized a lot differently. This has been by far the best organized movie I’ve worked on; the first one was framed together a little bit at the last minute. There’s a lot more money spent on this project compared to the first one, which means that we’re doing a lot more interesting things and a lot more larger things, which has been good. On the first film we had probably between 20 and 30 people in Prop manufacture, and on the sequels the most we’ve had is 65 at one time, which is double the amount of what it was last time.

The time frame turn over of sets has been pretty intense because it has been a 3 or 4 day turn around, so we’re just trying to keep one step ahead of everybody. On the first one, we seemed to have a lot of pre-production where there was a lot of thought about what was needed at the time. The only thing that happened that was really insane on the first one was right at the end where they had a certain amount of time to finish the remainder of the sets and it was a nightmare, whereas this one has been methodical. It’s another set, then another set, then another set, and you just have to keep up with it.

MATRIX: What was your reaction on first seeing THE MATRIX?

TREVOR: That it was outstanding, a landmark; there have been many movies since then that have copied the effects THE MATRIX had when it came out. I’m very proud to have worked on that movie; it made all the hard work worthwhile, which was just fantastic.

MATRIX: Between the original film and the sequels, what have you been up to?

TREVOR: I have been working full time. I have my own company so I still manage to do that, even now, and I’ve worked on about 4 or 5 movies, which have kept me employed full time since the first film. I’ve worked on Star Wars, Down Under, The Thin Red Line, as well as small TV shows and cop shows; whatever comes around. My company does prop manufacturing and miniatures, similar to what I do when I’m employed fully on movies, but unfortunately I can’t devote as much time to doing that because this is my real love – I love movies. I try and do that on weekends and evenings and employ people on the sideline. At the moment, for instance, there are a few cop shows that are on channel 7 and channel 10 and I’ve done acid dip guns, fake guns, soft weapons, soft props for stunts, dead bodies, and things like that for them.

MATRIX: What were some of the more memorable props you produced on the first film?

TREVOR: Everything that we did was memorable. We did the Bug Extractor, the Ecto Chairs, the bomb the first time around when they’re in the lobby, the pods, all the ships; it was just amazing. Being a prop manufacturer, it has been perfect – not all movies have this amount of props.

If you take the Bug Extractor, it took one person probably 3 or 4 months constantly working on it to machine all of that up. It went through two or three prototyping or design stages, then it had to be practical – it had to actually work – it had to be put into a box, pulled out of a box and used in the back of a car and in a dark situation, and it had to be easy for the actor to use. When you make something, it doesn’t always have to be those all things, so the development stage on the Extractor was happening right until the end. When it was shot we had to make allowances for certain things they wanted to do. There were lots of attachments that were put onto it that made it do the extra little things and updates.

MATRIX: Can describe what worked on it, because its degree of functionality is not clear in the film.

TREVOR: No, it wasn’t given the air time it actually deserved for the amount of money that was spent on it. It had probably about 50 or 60 miniature and subminiature micro ADs inlaid into the actual head of it. It also had spring loaded claw arms that could actually attach around a part of a human body, but not strongly enough to pierce a human body, so there was a lot of playing around with all of that. The piston was all hand made, and the up and down movement once the trigger was pulled was all air driven, the rams couldn’t be purchased so they were all hand machined and hand made. The handles all flipped out and all the lights came on; it was an amazing little thing. I believe Geof Darrow [Conceptual Designer] did the original sketch and then Owen [Paterson, Production Designer] passed it on through the Art Department.

THE ECTO CHAIRS

MATRIX: The Bug Extractor won’t be seen in the sequels, but the Neb’s Ecto Chairs live again.

TREVOR: In every ship in some way have used the chairs, and if not the chair, the skeleton frame that actually supports all the cushions. The cushions have been replaced and they’ve been oriented different ways in the chair for different ships. They’ve been used a lot but they were built so well for the first film that even though they’ve traveled the world they’ve now lasted another 17 months, which has been fantastic. Basically, the rest of each Main Deck is similar; the monitor bezels have changed – there have been lights replaced in them – and other subtle changes like color changes, but the headrests and the jacks are still very much the same.

MATRIX: What was some of the process in building those chairs?

TREVOR: At the time, they weren’t built to last, they were built in the best way that we knew how to support somebody and to have the hydraulic rams push against bare metal. We didn’t want them to break and we knew that there was going to be a lot of acting around them on the Neb Main Deck; there was a lot of action in that set, with effects and stunts. Like the Bug Extractor, the chairs were one of those things that we had a lot of preparation for, so the design stage started very early on and we went through 4 or 5 prototyping stages. We had fittings on steel frame chairs and we made patterns and adjusted the patterns, then we had it all cast and machined – everything was built from scratch, the stainless steel components and everything, there was no expense spared. Ultimately they were made to last, but not because we knew they’d be used again; we never knew there was going to be a sequel then.

MATRIX: Do you remember the time frame it took from prototyping?

TREVOR: I’d say at least 3 or 4 months working solid, from the first time I saw a sketch of this very organic looking thing that Geof Darrow drew, to the time when Sergei [Chadiloff, CAD Computer Modeler] did his renderings of what he thought it would need to be made to actually fit a person. Sergei had to make sure someone would be comfortable in the chair, that there was lumbar support, headrests, and that you could adjust from a 5 ft person to a 6 ft 5 person; there were so many different things. Someone can do a beautiful sketch but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be practical, so there were about 3 or 4 months of prototyping and then machining. The Steel Department was involved and Prop Manufacture was involved, it was a big project.

MATRIX: Film crews often like to subtly make their mark on a film; how did you find the opportunity to make your mark on the Neb?

TREVOR: Very subtly – on the foot plates of the chairs my initials are incorporated into the design – not many people knew even then. Basically, myself and one other person Dion Horstmans [Prop Maker] made the patterns for the chair, and before we sent them off to the foundry it was just one of those unique opportunities that are very rare where you can do anything. It started off with people doing other things – there are other names on the chair like Sergei’s company, Liquid Motion Design – so I was given a foot plate, which was a template the size of a foot. I thought I’d put some tread in it and I imagined the tread would still be there but it would be dressed in a way to do my initials, which worked out quite well because even if you stare at the foot plates you can’t see it until it is pointed it out. People don’t realize because you take a lot of things for granted on a set; you’re not looking at one individual thing.

MATRIX: What was your first reaction when you saw Geof’s illustration of the chair?

TREVOR: I thought he needed to get help because he was asking too much, but in all seriousness you have to go through that creative stage. The hoses make up a lot of what he drew in that first picture and what we were making was a chair, so we needed to get rid of all that and make a bare skeleton of a chair and then all the dressing came on after. When you see the first sketch of a finished set as dimly lit as it’s going to be shot, you have a lot of questions, which is good; it gives you a good test.

MATRIX: Originally, how many chairs did you make?

TREVOR: Six, and then the Operator’s chair; so there were seven all up. We haven’t made any more Ecto Chairs, but we’ve copied chairs and we’ve had to make fake ones to deal with the different units that have been shooting at the same time. We’ve made six “Son of Ecto” chairs, which are the Command Center chairs where we have taken the same cushion style and we’ve copied the cast look of the Ecto Chairs. They’re not floating, they’re four legged, and they sort of span away from each other so it looks like they’re floating.

MATRIX: How does seeing the first film affect your ability to tackle the huge task of the sequels?

TREVOR: It helps to understand Owen, the Production Designer, a bit better because we worked together before on the first film. Understanding the finishes and the lighting of the sets is helpful so you don’t spend more money and time on something unnecessarily, like the Bug Extractor, which didn’t really get the air time. In hindsight we would have made it a lot simpler… but then we got grilled on the price of the chairs, which have paid for themselves over and over again.

THE SEQUELS

MATRIX: Has your role changed from the original to the sequels?

TREVOR: No, I was doing the same job I am now, the titles have changed, that is all. On the first film I think my title was Leading Hand or Foreman, which was the highest you could go before Supervisor. On this movie, because of the scale of it, they tried to place more distance between the levels and because there are so many more skilled people – Engineers, Steel Fabricators, Laborers, Foremen, Leading Hands and Managers – and that’s what I ended up being on the sequels [Property Manufacture Manager], and the Supervisor is still the Supervisor. Back then I oversaw all of the jobs that were coming in, ordered for all the jobs and did labor allocation, but I was still on the floor making props. At the moment, I’m overseeing all of the sets and not doing so much making. I do miss it a tad, but you can’t do both – it’s impossible.

MATRIX: What have been some of the challenging props you’ve worked on for the sequels?

TREVOR: The working conditions on these sequels have just been fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner [Peter Wyborn, Prop Manufacture Supervisor] to work with for the last 17 months; we basically just took to each other and jumped from one set to another. The quantities of some of the props that will be happening this time around will be quite impressive. The APU itself has taken quite a considerable amount of time from prototyping, construction and then animation, which has been a learning process on set, similar to the chairs and the Bug Extractor. There was only ever one made so it’s going to be hard to visualize the fact that we made one when you see it up on the screen and there’s this war going on. There would have been an APU Department if you had to make more than one because it was such a monstrous project. The ammunition loaders that we’ve made that load the ammo into APUs, have hydraulics and pneumatics involved, the same as the APU. We’ve also done a whole range of endless Sentinels – we’ve brought them to life and made more Sentinels than we care to imagine – there’s an army of them.

MATRIX: Were conceptual illustrations done to show the guts of the Sentinels when they’re damaged?

TREVOR: Yes, in Geof’s drawings; he did very elaborate drawings, but it was impossible to completely recreate that because we didn’t have the money. It’s like the baby in the first film: we made a rubber shell of a beautiful baby, and no one believes that there were pneumatics and hydraulics inside it, as well as cable controls. With the Sentinels, like at the end of the first MATRIX, we had to go in there with plastic buckets and recycled garbage and hoses and pipes, and dress it to look like guts. That was all done in about two weeks, with goop for all the guts. We tried to use the original sketches and to understand that its outer shell is essentially like a tank but it’s like a living being on the inside. But then again it’s computer made, so it’s an interesting idea when someone gives you a brief like that, it sort of freaks you out in a way… you’ve got a couple of cups, a couple of hoses and you’re off! Painting really helps as well – the Scenic Department has been fantastic on these films. We’ve got some people working that department who could make a cup look like a lethal weapon just by airbrushing and painting it! It’s really the whole process; it’s the design, it’s the drawing concept, it’s the prototyping and the manufacturing and then the painting that helps it become a real thing and believable.

MATRIX: How does it affect your work to hand a prop off to the Special and Visual Effects Departments?

TREVOR: We have always done that; although it is developing more these days. The skills of the visual effects team are getting better, but they still can’t quite achieve the perfect model, so that’s why we’re still involved. I took 6 months out between Mission Impossible and another movie to do a 3-D animation modeling training course, so I learned how to do all of that, which has helped me understand why they put dots on people and to understand what they need. It has helped us on these films as well because you have no idea what they’re doing – you see something done with green screen and you wonder why – working together as a team is the ultimate goal. You try and achieve the same thing together, rather than being in separate departments and headlocking. Everyone has been quite approachable on these films, which has been quite good; as big as it is everyone is still able to talk to each other and help each other.

MATRIX: How many Lightning Guns were made for the first film?

TREVOR: Two or three, it was just Cypher’s gun for killing; his little hand gun that was hiding under a blanket, and now everybody has got one, like a mobile phone! Basically, it’s being re-worked for the sequels, and this time around there will be bazookas as well. The bazooka saves the day, in some way. All of the Lightning Guns were the benchmarks then for the style for hand guns. It was good working on the first movie because now you have an idea, as I was saying before, of the lighting and the finishing and the style that the movie is going to be set in. This time around, a lot of the hard work has been done, you know that all the sets are going to be heavily textured and all sort of grungy with exposed pipes and cables and hose. It was easier making guns and extra weapons and single barrel bazookas and double barrel bazookas because we’d already made the Lightning Guns.

It’s all well and good making a prop, but the finishing of a prop is another thing that makes it look like it belongs in the world. Someone has come along and repaired a panel, or someone has come along and because they’ve got a sore hand, they’ve put a bit of tape around one of the knobs because it was easier to use. Little touches like that make it look the part.

MATRIX: Do you look at each piece individually to try and come up with those personalities?

TREVOR: Yes, at least I hope that everybody who works in Prop Manufacture does, but unfortunately not everybody can have that sort of input. I’ve been very lucky. For instance, with the Logos Operator’s chair, I designed the legs and the base plates, and used the original base of the Neb chair, the cushion itself, and the main steel underneath straight from the Neb Main Deck. The difference is that we’ve floated that chair on a steel frame, so we’ve designed the legs so it didn’t have to float out from an inner core, and now it has 4 legs; it’s the same chair but redeveloped. That chair has been on two sets, although you wouldn’t know it. We had to re-dress it for the Command Center Operator’s chair, and now it’s in the Logos.

MATRIX: How many props get recycled?

TREVOR: On these films, with the amount of ships we’ve been on, thank goodness they didn’t want us to make all the chairs! We’ve still made a lot of chairs, and we’re still doing Virtual Control chairs that, towards the end of the movie, you would expect to be a grungy old chair. But no, the Virtual Control chair is a state of the art, pristine pure white chair that is floating on two little straps, which is an adjustable height thing, and dome bases and it has got all this rear projection lighting. They’ll be shot on a stage, but as a simple set construction of a little flat with the 6 chairs in there and the rest is in green screen. The entire set is white so it doesn’t make the model maker’s life any easier – it’s the worst color, white. Anything that is white is double the price.

THE APU

MATRIX: What was the time frame involved for the creation of the APU?

TREVOR: There was a specific team involved from 17 months ago that have stayed on the APU from the start, including Adam Grace [APU Foreman] and Martin Crowther [APU Engineering Foreman]. Basically they haven’t been able to work on anything else, it has been such a big and daunting project – so much labor and materials have gone into making the APU, it’s a pretty impressive prop. Safety has been one of our biggest obstacles to try and overcome, because we have to be able to maneuver it onto the stages, onto the platforms, and in and out of stages to different studios. The boys have been working around the clock because it’s not just staying in the workshop and making this thing look beautiful, it’s being able to make it come together and fall apart.

MATRIX: The first thing you made was the gun because it was needed for a shot done in the US.

TREVOR: Yes, that was a really good prototype for us. It was a prototype because it gave us a benchmark for finishing levels, for quality, and for what was needed. The amount of work that went into the gun would just be multiplied for the body, for the forearms, for the biceps and for the shoulders. That was a really good project because, as small as it was, it basically told us the process we’d need to go through and the size of the thing we were making – because the gun was 3 meters long [9.8 feet]. It had steel armatures inside and the patent was made, there were molds made, fiberglass shells were pumped out, intricate molds were made of all the nozzles and the tips, and all the bandoliers were made.

We made about 2,000 bullets from scratch and machined and painted them. We had to have clips, but we couldn’t actually use ammo and we couldn’t find shells, so we had to make the actual clips to hold all the bullets together for the guns by getting them laser cut and then getting them stamped out and patents made. Making an army-manufactured product in-house was insane, but it basically opened our eyes to the amount of attention we had to spend on the rest of the project. You couldn’t have something like those clips dangling outside of this thing [the APU] 20 feet up on set, it needed to be strong enough to support the weight of the gun as well as people and to basically uphold being shaken around.

MATRIX: What were some of the initial reactions to the size and the weight?

TREVOR: The Art Department made us realize the size quickly by putting up a couple of ply frames in the Art Department of the full size APU and until that point we were imagining where 15 to 20 feet [4.5 to 6 meters] was, and when we saw the actual prints laminated on boards sitting up in the Art Department it was pretty daunting. Basically they had a front elevation and a side elevation and it just looked like a monster. But everyone was excited, everyone wanted to be on the team because we were making this robot! In some way or another, every single person in the Prop Manufacture Department has done something towards the APU; they had to. It really kept us going, the APU just was always just ticking on in the background.

MATRIX: Do you have any backstory on how the APU was created?

TREVOR: Owen keeps telling us to imagine a Ford plant, or a Holden car plant – there’d be a Sentinel production plant and there’d be an APU production plant. These things were mass produced, but they were mass produced by robots, so we had to try to get our heads around that sort of idea. As I said earlier, the Sentinels have a tank shell, which has a cast kind of look. Owen is always pushing the boundaries, which means we’re always pushing as well.

MATRIX: Did he suggest that the APUs were made by the machines?

TREVOR: Basically the materials that were available were similar, so that was how the finishing sort of happened, but I’m not sure how they came about. I’m sure the people in Zion made them, they had a little factory down in the back and they just pumped them out, they had nothing better to do; they were sitting around in caves and flying around in ships.

THE LAST WORD

MATRIX: Will you have anything to do with the miniature shoot in Alameda starting later this year?

TREVOR: Yes, we’re doing 180 miniature Sentinels, 12 of those will be full hero ones and about 140 or 160 will be background. They’ll just be dropped where they get zapped by the EMP switch, when they fall like rain from the sky – we’re working on that project at the moment.

MATRIX: Were you involved with the Matrix phone?

TREVOR: The phones were done before I started, Peter Wyborn was commissioned to do the telephones about 3 or 4 months before we started up the Prop Manufacture Department. That was outsourced to companies around Sydney and they were manufactured here. The phones are fantastic; they’ve taken the original phones from the first film and made them unique, which is great. Hopefully they’ll come out soon and we can buy one! That will be exciting. It’s also great seeing the dolls and toys in the kids’ shops of what we made and designed. It’s actually surreal! Star Wars is the same, like working on Star Wars and going to the toy shop and seeing the guns that you made. It gives you a little buzz, just like seeing your name spit up in the credits.

We’ve actually been asked, for promotional uses for the opening of the sequels, to do quotes for twenty full sized APUs or two hundred 8 feet high APUs. It’s a daunting task; it would stop you working on any other project for 2 or 3 years, but we haven’t got that time so that project will probably just go away.

MATRIX: What is left for Prop Manufacture; we’re only six weeks away from wrap?

TREVOR: Well, first, second and third units are all doing the APU, so that’s still happening. The wheelbarrows are still happening, and we’ve got the Crash Logos set, the Logos Cockpit set, and we’re still finishing off the Logos Main Deck a little bit. Quite a bit of action goes through the Logos towards the end of the films. There’s also Machine City, and there’s Virtual Control… when we finish off and we’re there!

MATRIX: How long have you been on the production now?

TREVOR: It’s coming onto 17 or maybe 18 months. I believe I’ll probably get a second birthday on it, which is going to be bizarre… all these unique things, working on one movie.

MATRIX: Thank you very much Trevor.

Interview by REDPILL

July 2002

CultureMap: What are the challenges involved in translating a film score to live orchestra format and in working with an unfamiliar ensemble?

Don Davis: Well, the scores already existed from the original film, but it had to be assembled in such a way that the orchestra could read them properly, in order and in synchronization with the film itself, so the parts had to be redone and copied again. That was quite an undertaking.

CM: The Matrix Live: Film in Concert debuted in London several weeks ago — you didn’t conduct the orchestra there, but you did watch it. What was it like being a member of the audience during that performance?

Don Davis: The European Film Philharmonic, based in Berlin, has a relationship with the conductor Frank Strobel, and I believe that he got Film Philharmonic in touch with the NDR Pops Orchestra, who performed. He was instrumental in getting the project off of the ground and I’m really grateful for his contribution. So now that the project is here in the states, it’s my turf.

As an audience member, it was really a thrill. Royal Albert Hall is amazing — it’s a historical building, very ornate, really beautiful. Of course, there’s a lot of history there, performances in the past, all that stuff. It was a very fun evening, and it was amazing to see The Matrix screened in a venue like that.

CM: From a viewer’s perspective, did it seem like the live orchestra detracts from the film, or vice versa? Or does it synthesize well?

Don Davis: I don’t think it detracted at all, really. It added another dimension of performance energy that made it that much more of a thrilling experience for the audience. The sound engineers did a great job of mixing sound elements, so the dialogue is all understandable, the sound effects are there and it’s a completely integrated experience.

CM: Why was Houston selected as the location for the North American premiere? And what other cities will this take place in?

Don Davis: I believe that Houston chose us! Houston recently did a production of Lord of the Rings to symphony, and I think that’s how initial contact was made.

The Houston Symphony is a very flexible organization that’s very interested in cutting-edge technology and new media. They have really transcended the traditional role of an orchestra, embracing new trends in sound and music. It just seemed like a natural choice to start here. The symphony is a very flexible ensemble, and an interested ensemble.

From here, a number of orchestras are in the negotiation stage, but I know that we’re doing a concert with Atlanta in February and with Seattle in June. Those are the only two that are confirmed, but I think that we’re going to do a nationwide tour of it.

CM: In your opinion, what makes The Matrix such a lasting movie, so relevant after a dozen years?

Don Davis: I think as a film, it was a really unique achievement. I was thrilled when I first read the script because I had never seen a movie that embraced philosophical ideas and cast them in a way that a mainstream audience could understand and benefit from. I understood immediately all of the references to Plato and Descartes and Schopenhauer. So I was intrigued from the very beginning. I also knew that Christian allegories always do well in film. The archetypes still ring true today. The Matrix is one of those rare films that seems to go beyond its initial release in relevance.

-Via

Don Davis, Conductor/Composer

• March 19, 2013 – 7:30 pm DeVos Performance Hall

More information about The Matrix Live with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra.

MATRIX: What does it mean to be an Assistant Visual Effects Editor?

BRIDGETTE: My day is basically consumed by database work, downloading, and cutting QuickTimes into the edited sequences to make sure they match what John Gaeta is looking for and his requirements. So it’s a lot of checking and also looking to see that the vendors have done exactly what the Producers and Directors have requested.

MATRIX: How do you check that a vendor has done what has been requested?

BRIDGETTE: The VFX Editor and VFX Producers have review meetings with the Directors, and they’ll sit down with the Editor and go through the different shots and come up with ideas of what they want in a particular shot. Notes from those meetings are cycled between our department and the Visual Effects Department, so I have an idea of what they’re looking for. Also, the vendors all have a list of the things that they’ve done on the head slate of a QuickTime, so a lot of the job is just checking to make sure that there are no problems — that there are enough handles so it fits the cut.

MATRIX: Handles — what does that mean?

BRIDGETTE: Handles just means to make sure there’s enough room on each side of the shot in case the Editor moves the cut around slightly. When you’re adding VFX to a shot you might want to change something slightly to get more of a rhythm, a flow, or to emphasize something. The standard we’re working with is at this stage is four frames on each side. Obviously when you get right to the end things will be locked off, so then it’ll be pretty standard and exact, but at this stage we need a little room. Besides that I do a lot of database work where I’m cross-referencing film outs and QuickTimes; so far we’re up to nineteen thousand.

MATRIX: With the cross-referencing there’ll be a shot number, there’ll be a QuickTime number; what other numbers could there be that you have to track?

BRIDGETTE: There are version numbers. We might have been working on one particular shot over a long period of time where we get the vendors to make tweaks, so we could have various versions of the one shot, and that often happens. It’s very important to be very careful about keeping the numbers straight because there could be just a slight difference. Like for example a version number could be SV_1_102_5, and one number difference could be a different shot.

MATRIX: What do you find the most interesting in your job?

BRIDGETTE: Jody [VFX Editor] will sometimes throw some comping work my way, and that’s obviously the work we like doing the best, where we get to play with shots. We’ll comp shots together to give the vendors an idea of what the Editor likes. Usually they know what they want to do, but when you work on something in editing things change slightly. That’s when we’re given frames to play with, usually from the vendors.

A good example: recently we had a very big scene called Super Burly Brawl where we actually had to comp numerous elements — up to eight elements. That was basically checking for the vendors to make sure that they got what was shot and that it all fitted together. So they would take our comp and do the professional work based on our AVID [digital editing suite] comp because the AVID is a very simple tool and limited in terms of VFX.

MATRIX: So you actually took the eight different elements and meshed them together?

BRIDGETTE: Yes, we can do all sorts of things on the AVID, although obviously it doesn’t quite equal a VFX program that costs several hundred thousand dollars. But it certainly gives you a good idea, and you can play around and get lots of really interesting things out of it.

I exported the shot as a QuickTime and since security is very high on these films, the vendor came in — he was in Sydney at the time — we went over a few things, indicated exactly what the Directors wanted, and the QuickTime stayed here.

When the producers and the vendors have a shot in mind they’ll go and shoot the elements that they require to make the whole shot work. And the reason why we got this one together is because we were using encoded lightning and speed changes with numerous elements. So it was a way of checking that the encoding went off on all cameras at the same time, and that they got exactly what they wanted, so when they put all those elements together they’re not going to have any surprises. They know what they want, that’s why they shoot in a particular way.

MATRIX: You mentioned the term “locked off” — could you elaborate on what that means?

BRIDGETTE: Locked off means when there are no more changes. When something is set in concrete and ready to go.

MATRIX: How do you make sure that everything is kept together that is needed to be kept together? At some point someone will want to see version 2 even though you’re up to version 7; how do you keep it all straight?

BRIDGETTE: We keep everything, so every QuickTime of every version that comes in we actually keep within our projects, and we have a way of setting up a library in our AVIDs so we can check through every version. Also, whenever there’s a review of material, notes are made at that stage by all involved and we’ll put that into the AVID so we can track the progression. Because we’re cutting in the most recently approved version, that also keeps us up to date, so we know where we are all the time. We have a three-way management system: the visual, the written information, and the meetings, so everyone knows.

MATRIX: The AVID actually takes written information as well?

BRIDGETTE: Yes, you can write notes; it’s very manageable like that. The AVID is a computer and it works on two levels, which is the written information that you put in and the media that’s attached to that clip information. We also have a color coding system so we know what are film outs, what are QuickTimes, what are temp shots, what are comps, etc.

MATRIX: How many different vendors are you working with?

BRIDGETTE: Numerous, I think at the moment we’ve got about five, which will probably grow. The really cool thing about it is that our vendors are not from one country; they’re from all over the world. That is the really cool thing about technology and visual effects; you may never meet a person, which in our case has happened. Jody [Rogers, Visual Effects Editor] has been having conversations with people in this industry for about four or five years that she has never met but they’re like old mates, and it’s the same for me.

MATRIX: What is your background?

BRIDGETTE: My background is actually editorial so I usually work as the 1st Assistant. Last year I got offered a job as a Visual Effects Assistant on a film called Queen of the Damned and I loved it, it was a really good experience, so I decided from that point that I would like to do visual effects editing. I’ve been fortunate enough to be taken on this film, which has been great.

MATRIX: As someone who has been an assistant in both editing and VFX editing could you talk about some of the key differences between the two?

BRIDGETTE: Basically I would be doing what Allison [Gibbons, Assistant Editor] and Jenny [Hicks, Assistant Editor] are doing here; working with drama and rushes and on that level of the editing process. Where this role differs is that I’m dealing with visual effects vendors and producers.

It’s a different side of the same coin; essentially we all deal with the rushes, but in a very different manner. Where they’re interested in certain things, Jody and I are interested in others. So Jody’s database will be full of what we’re doing with the shot, what the lens is, how many frames it is and who it’s going to, whereas they’re interested in it from an editing point of view, which is what are the key codes, what is the coverage like and whether the sound is OK, etc.

The reason why I’m more interested in this side is because I like comping; I like playing with shots and creating something out of a single shot. That’s what really appeals to me rather than drama editing.

MATRIX: What sort of hours do you find yourself working?

BRIDGETTE: Well it depends on the film. This job has been really good to me for so many reasons and the hours are part of that. I’m contracted to a standard sixty hour week, so I get to go home, sleep, and have a little bit of a life, which is great. That’s not necessarily the case on other films, it really depends how many people they’ve got doing the job. We’re very fortunate on this one that we actually have enough people to do the work. That’s not to say that we don’t do overtime, and at the moment we’ve got a third unit going so that has put a bit more stress on everybody, but I think we’re handling it quite well. We still get sleep!

MATRIX: Have you had the opportunity to read the scripts?

BRIDGETTE: No, they’re very much kept under lock and key. I know as much as I need to as I go on. When I’m working with a particular scene I understand what that’s about and the shots that are involved in that, but on a whole I haven’t read the two scripts.

MATRIX: Is what you need to know for a particular shot communicated to you verbally, or with a page in a script?

BRIDGETTE: Usually verbally. A bit of a difference between being an Assistant Editor versus being a Visual Effects Assistant Editor is that they’re dealing with scenes on a whole in terms of drama and the shots involved, whereas we spend a lot of time looking at frames in one shot. We study the shot making sure it’s got all the elements and connects up with the other shots. Because we are concerned with the effects on individual shots we get to know the film incredibly intimately on that level.

I can’t wait to see the finished films, which is another reason why I haven’t read the scripts – I don’t want to know everything. I want to walk into the theater and be surprised. It’s going to be hard because obviously through the process of working on it I’ve got to know most things anyway without reading the script, but I still think that there are going to be surprises in terms of drama and scenes that aren’t associated with visual effects.

On Queen of the Damned they went back to the States for about four to six months after I’d finished working on it in Australia, and when I went and saw the film it was grand. I sat there going “Ah! So that’s how that turned out! Cool! So that’s what they ended up doing!”

MATRIX: Do you think you’ll stay in the VFX editing area?

BRIDGETTE: I really, really hope so. At this stage, as an Australian, there’s not that many visual effects films being made in this country, and a lot of them are coming from America, which is really, really good because I get more work that way. But I’d also like to think that maybe one day I’ll get to be the VFX Editor. So that’s my hope. It’s a job that is becoming popular in terms of there being more demand for Visual Effects Editors.

MATRIX: Thank you so much, Bridgette.

Interview by REDPILL

August 2002

MATRIX: Can you give us a brief breakdown of projects you have worked on?

TONY: I worked on the Final Fantasy movie done in Hawaii. I started out at Digital Domain doing a lot of work from commercials to games to a few little movie things, then a lot of freelance work, and the Hawaii job was the big one. Besides that, I’ve spent time doing fine arts and graphics, for instance T Shirt design – we have a line going. Beyond that I have many other projects, I’m working on my own comic book and I’m going to try and have a show eventually, things like that. I’m keeping busy creatively.

MATRIX: What is your primary role as an artist on any given production you’re working on?

TONY: It varies, depending on whether they see my skills on a particular show or project better for design, for storyboarding, or for key frame painting. So I sort of cover my ground doing all sorts of things. In Hawaii I was doing creature design in the beginning and that moved onto doing a lot more key frame painting, setting up the mood and lighting of certain shots, things like that. Here I’m doing mainly key frame painting of key shots where they’re having some trouble seeing what it looks like, I kind of give them a map to go by.

MATRIX: With THE MATRIX, what sorts of things are you conceptualizing – the real world or the Matrix?

TONY: All of the above, from the ships to the real world and the other world. There’s a general color scheme that has to be followed, especially for me because I deal with a lot of color and painting, the colors matter from the real world compared to the Matrix.

MATRIX:Are you working from conceptuals Geof Darrow has designed?

TONY: It depends, if his designs are in them, then yes. Most of the time there is some sort of reference in terms of design, but if there’s not I get kind of a free reign to do what I want, and find different sorts of references that work.

MATRIX:How long have you been part of the production?

TONY: I want to say more than two months, but I could be wrong, time just passes by so quickly.

MATRIX: What’s your sense of the scope of the project?

TONY: Huge. Very, very big. I feel like we’ve only just started because we have so much more to do. There’s an incredible story and visuals, just a big, big project to accomplish.

MATRIX: Can you tell us about the materials you use to create your artwork?

TONY: Depending on the particular frame or shot that has to be done, it’ll vary from marker to painting to sometimes digital, especially for shots that require a lot of repetitive things that would be silly to render out over and over. For time’s sake I would do one version and then just duplicate it, but that’s only in certain cases that require things like that. A lot of times it’ll be mainly marker or gouache, a lot of digital painting happens because of certain effects and looks a particular scene requires.

MATRIX: How do Larry and Andy convey what they want to you?

TONY: They’ll have just a very, very loose sketch sometimes, and they’ll try to explain it as best as they can, and we’ll do a lot of reiterations and try to fine tune. When they’re there you talk as much as you can and you try to get as much information from them to go right into the drawing, and hopefully it’ll work. The piece I’m working on at the moment is a fourth version to try to get what the brothers described. It’s getting closer and closer as they’ve been seeing more of them. This is a technique I use, which is just these two tools and that’s it – a ball point pen and a marker. It is a rough, quick sketch technique.

MATRIX: There are so many artists working on this production, all working on different facets with different styles, do you have a sense of how that is all going to mesh together in the end?

TONY: I’ve dealt with a little bit of computer work myself so I kind of know and can see how it’s going to end up, but I actually have no idea in terms of the production, I haven’t seen any of that yet. It’ll be exciting to see it finally come to life with models and acting, it will just look like natural footage. The artists definitely look at each other’s work and kind of see what everyone is doing to keep up with everything.

MATRIX: Do you look at other artists’ work and work off of that?

TONY: Sometimes, sure, inspiration is always hard to come by and here there’s a lot of it, which is good, it keeps you going.

MATRIX: How much art would you say you’re producing?

TONY: Well the large pieces take longer, smaller pieces, obviously not as long, and then the full color, tighter drawings obviously take a lot longer, it all depends on what is required. If the scene needs to be really detailed and tight for them to use as a map, then it would take probably a week, maybe less, but if it’s only just a storyboard rough for them to see the general sense of the color and what it would look like, I can do that in a day or two.

MATRIX: I’m curious as to how this production would compare to other productions you have worked on, such as Final Fantasy, which are also artist heavy?

TONY: I don’t know if it’s the best thing to compare with, but as far as I can tell THE MATRIX seems to be pretty good in terms of management, and working with the Directors directly, and again, them knowing what they want is a huge, huge means to have things progress. I’ve spent a lot of time on other productions where you spend a lot more creative time trying a variety of versions, which makes sense, but here it’s less because Andy and Larry know what they want.

MATRIX: Were you impressed by the first MATRIX film?

TONY: I thought it was great, it really opened up, hopefully, people’s perception of what a movie can be, especially in terms of genre, creating a new ‘90s Star Wars, if you will.

MATRIX: Do you feel that the directors are pushing the envelope with THE MATRIX 2 and 3?

TONY: I think they are, yes. They have an amazing vision in their heads that they know exactly what they want, which is great to work with. Obviously the difficult thing is trying to hit the mark, but because they know what they want and they have such a vision for the whole scope of the film, I think that it’ll come together really nicely. They know exactly where it’s going to go and what fits and what works. Yes, I definitely think so, I think a lot of people will be quite impressed.

MATRIX: Thanks Tony.

Interview by REDPILL

November 2000

BACKGROUND

MATRIX:What is your background?

KEVIN: My background is in industrial model making and prototyping – that’s what I did an apprenticeship in about thirteen or fourteen years ago – and I slowly got into this sort of thing. Initially I did engineering and then advertising models for still ads, then TV ads, then eventually got into what we have here, which is a lot of fun. You get to express yourself a little bit and you get to play; you don’t have to stick rigidly to some of the drawings like you would have to in engineering prototyping.

MATRIX: Do you remember any of your first jobs?

KEVIN: I’ve only been in Australia for a couple of years and I was lucky to hook up with a guy called Peter Wyborn [Property Manufacture Supervisor] who is running the Prop Manufacture Department on this show. He ran the one on Red Planet as well, the Val Kilmer movie, and I got in on that with him. After that he did Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and he took me along as well, which was good. I’m very lucky because he’s a good guy to work for, he tends to bring the same crew with him.

MATRIX: How does Star Wars compare with what you’re doing here, as far as scale?

KEVIN: It’s definitely on the same sort of scale. Star Wars for me was a bit of a dream come true; I was of that generation that when I was a kid I thought it was super. To actually get the opportunity to work on it was a real dream come true, and I was lucky enough to actually say that to George Lucas. So he had a bit of a laugh about that. These films are going to be great; the story is very exciting. The first one was such a huge hit and great look to at, and some of what I’ve seen here to date on the other sound stages and sets they’ve been building, is going to be really good.

AGENT SMITH MANNEQUINS – PRE-SHOOTING

MATRIX: As a Leading Hand, have you been assigned a particular project?

KEVIN: I’ve been with the production since they came to Australia and I am working on the “Multiple Hugo” project that we started about two and a half to three months ago. At the beginning we worked out the quantity of Hugos or Agent Smith dummies we were going to need, and went from there: we broke it down from stage to stage then did a few prototypes, and then got them up and running. We ended up manufacturing a hundred and ten of them in the end.

MATRIX: How did this project begin?

KEVIN: We tried to break everything down as much as possible to see how the actual bodies would work and then we started at the top – the heads. We got this really talented couple, Rick and Charmaine Connelly in to mold the heads, etc. We did three head castings – three expressions of Hugo’s head – a grumpy face, a neutral face, and a happy face. Then we molded hands to replicate the various faces, doing a fist for the grumpy face and a straight out hand for the happy face and so on. We did a couple of early mockups that worked out well and then we decided to run with the whole thing. One hundred of them had to be manufactured, so we got a whole production line together, siphoned a lot of the Prop Manufacture crew to make bodies and arms and shoes and hands. Since Hugo had his molds taken, this process has probably been in total about 6 weeks added up all together, but probably loosely about two and a half months.

MATRIX: Specifically, what was your role on this project?

KEVIN: Together with Pete Wyborn, Props Manufacture Supervisor, we selected a team of model makers, mold makers, prosthetic artists and engineers with specialist skills suited to this particular project. Once we got the team together, it was my responsibility to take the briefs and ideas from the Designer and Pete and produce the various “Hugos” from the inception to the final shooting requirements. This included rain tests with extras, so we’ll have 160 extras and Hugos on the set altogether all singing and dancing, so it should be very exciting.

MATRIX: The skin looks very real; what material is the face made from?

KEVIN: We fooled around with a lot of different finishes to see what would be the best thing to use in a rain and lightening situation. Initially we tried resins and fast casts, but when we lit them and rained on them we found that the nearest thing to skin we could get was actually silicon. The water actually bounced off it like it would bounce off your skin in rain and it reacted to light in the same way because it adds a certain amount of depth; it also sort of moves the same as skin. Inside the heads there is a core of foam to back it up and then we have the Hair and Makeup Department putting wigs on them and then we had Nicola Buck; her job was to single handedly punch all the eyebrows.

MATRIX: Why have you decided to paint eyes on the heads if he’s wearing sunglasses?

KEVIN: Originally, when we molded Hugo’s head he had his eyes closed, obviously, because he didn’t want to get clay in his eyes. Generally, what happens afterwards is that you sculpt the eye in, but because he was wearing sunglasses we felt that you wouldn’t see it, so it didn’t matter. Then on inspection from camera tests we noticed that you could slightly see the slits and whites of Hugo’s eyes so we decided to air brush them in. So now when we put the sunglasses on, you can just make them out, and it makes a massive difference, it really looks good.

MATRIX: Are the skin tones gotten through airbrushing as well?

KEVIN: Yes, with airbrushing, and the skin goes on with the eyes. Each one of these heads was done, all one hundred, and then we’ve got spares as well – we’ve got 110 heads total with the 3 different expressions.

MATRIX: The hands are made of a different material.

KEVIN: They’re made of a fast cast. One of the pairs of hands is actually the original Hugo’s hands, some of the other hands belong to one of the guys here. Simon [Bethune, Prop Maker] volunteered his hands; they were the nearest to Hugo’s hands so we molded his. Hugo is a very busy man so he couldn’t be going around with his hands in buckets of plaster all day waiting for us, so Simon kindly volunteered to have his hands molded.

MATRIX: What was the process of making the Agent Smith mannequin’s body?

KEVIN: The mold shop boys, Keith Rae [Leading Mold Maker] and his crew, took a body cast of the real Hugo Weaving and then they blew lightweight foam into the body molds. Rodney Nash [Steel Fabricator] and his guys in our Steel Department made a steel armature to go on the inside so that the body slots onto his feet. We made his body out of lightweight foam so he is easy to move around and is water resistant. His arms are made out of a soft foam that we attach to the armature inside, so we can just pop them onto the body easily, and we can pop on his hands as well. For extra flexibility we put an aluminum wire armature in his arms so that his arms can bend and stay bent, a bit like the old Bugs Bunny toy you had when you were a kid. The flexible arms also help to dress them; it’s easier than if the arms were rigid.

MATRIX: On set do you see any reason for them to have their arms bent?

KEVIN: What we’re trying to and what we want to do is cover every option in case they want to have a pose that’s slightly different.

MATRIX: Why have you created more bodies and heads than actually required?

KEVIN: I’m probably being a bit pessimistic, but I like to cover myself. When you’re on set it’s pretty full on, so we try to get everything done quick and fast, and if there’s a situation where we do have a little break down, we’ll run in and whip the whole body out and put in another one. Or we’ll take the head out and put another one in, or whatever the offending problem is. The crew run in and out like a Formula One team, replacing all the bits and pieces.

MATRIX: How close will the camera be to the Hugo mannequins on set?

KEVIN: From looking at the storyboards there are various shots, panning, a long shot. I think the camera will concentrate mainly on Neo and the “real” Agent Smith, so I’d say these guys will be mostly in the background. There are elements of close ups I believe, so we’re trying to make the dummies as real as we can in the eventuality that the Brothers decide to do a close up shot; we have to cover all the options.

MATRIX: Could you explain how the puppetry of the mannequins will work.

KEVIN: We’re going to have a row of 50 Hugo dummies, then another row of 50 Hugo dummies behind the first, and behind them again 50 extras dressed in Hugo masks and suits. The idea is that we’re going to get the 50 extras to puppeteer the two rows of dummies in front of them. It is going to be fun considering they’ve never puppeteered before!

MATRIX: Were these extras employed through an agency?

KEVIN: Yes, they were picked through the agency for their size and shape and build… and to puppeteer the Hugos. Because of the two rows of dummies, the extra will more or less be in a position between them and as Neo walks up the street, all Hugo heads will follow him. We have a rig in the back of each dummy that is attached to its head that can turn the head a little to the left and right. That rig will be operated by the extra’s hands – they each have two dummies to operate, one for their left hand and one for their right. The idea is that as Neo walks by the extras have to turn their own heads as well as the heads of their two dummies all at the same time; and at the same time as the other 49 extras turning their heads and their dummy’s heads.

MATRIX: How much time has been allocated for training the extras?

KEVIN: We’ve got a couple of days, so it’s going to be pretty intensive, and on the third day we’re actually going to do it under rain. They’ll all be kitted out and we’re going to dump a lot of water on them because it’s a really heavy rain scene with thunder and lightening.

MATRIX: Who developed the puppeteering system?

KEVIN: Well, that was myself initially and then Aidan O’Keeffe [Leading Hand] and myself put together a fairly basic push pull cable system that we tried to keep as simple as possible. We try to keep everything as simple as possible, because the simpler it is the less chance things will go wrong – that’s the theory anyways!

MATRIX: Do you know how long they’re going to be shooting with these Hugo mannequins?

KEVIN: I believe they’re down for 11 days, although I think that could run to 14 days between second and first unit.

MATRIX: Has Hugo Weaving had the opportunity to see the replicas of himself?

KEVIN: I don’t believe he’s actually seen them all together like this, but we were on set there the other night doing a test and he was beside a couple of them and he was quite blown away at actually seeing these things like himself.

DURING SHOOTING

MATRIX: How have the mannequins been holding up throughout filming under the torrential rain?

KEVIN: They have been holding up really well because all the materials we used were water resistant, and the body is made from a closed cell foam. There’s also an aperture inside him so we can put our mechanism inside as well as drains that allow the water to get out.

MATRIX: How is the puppetry of the mannequins going now that all the operators are in place?

KEVIN: It actually went a lot better than I thought it would, to be honest with you. Getting sixty or seventy extras to puppeteer all these rigs in unison, considering that they’re not puppeteers, which is a profession in itself, is a bit of a feat. We were concerned about that, so we tried to simplify the operation to be as simple as possible. We only had one day to rehearse them – we thought we’d have a couple of days – but we actually ended up only having one for one reason or another, so we just walked them up and down, showed them how the things work, and did a couple of tests. We were lucky enough that they all got it straight away, and it has been like that ever since. For every shot they’re doing what they need to in one or two or three takes. We were expecting it to go on and on because these guys haven’t done anything like this before, in fact I believe it’s the biggest puppeteered rig ever done.

The whole set they’re on is a massive piece of engineering because they’re dumping something like twelve tons of water a minute when they open up all the valves. The Special Effects guys have made an incredible rig. It’s a lot of water so, as you can imagine, the plumbing system here just to get rid of that water and recycle it back up again is pretty massive, as is the size of some of the pipes they’re transporting the water around in. The street here is made of a sort of a latex foam that the boys up in the mold shop created.

MATRIX: What was the most challenging aspect of this set?

KEVIN: The most challenging aspect of this is the amount of water and the electricity everywhere; that in itself is a pretty volatile combination. We had to factor all that in, and also that this has been shot over quite a while and we didn’t want our Hugos disintegrating. Initially there was some concern with the clothing slowly rotting away, so a bit of research went into the materials we had to use. The Wardrobe Department had to treat all the suits so they wouldn’t rot, or go all moldy.

So far we’ve been very lucky; everything is holding up really well, as you can see. It must be coming up to their two week old birthday under the rain now, I think, and they’re still looking all right.

MATRIX: Were you surprised they decided to do this shot practically rather than CG?

KEVIN: Yes, those were my first thoughts – I’m surprised they didn’t CG it. To me it would have been an obvious sort of CG number, then I thought it was going to be a great challenge for us. I’ve got a great crew working with me and we thought it was going to be a lot of fun knocking out so many clones. It has been even more thrilling to see what you’ve worked on for a couple of months come to fruition, and really working well.

MATRIX: Have you found yourself working on other projects?

KEVIN: Yes, the main other prop I was working on before we got into this was the cell phone. On the first one they used a standard Nokia phone available in Australia, but on the sequels they designed their own phone, and I was lucky enough to work on the prototyping of that. It has sort of a rugged and military look to it, and we developed it through to be an actual working phone, which was a lot of fun: going through the prototyping side of it because it actually had to work, and pop up, and all the mechanics inside had to actually work. Maybe they might stick that in a shop someday and try to sell it as an off the shelf phone! Apart from that, we also made rubber ones for the Stunt guys, and all various different types of stand-in phones as it were.

MATRIX: How functional are the cell phones going to be?

KEVIN: They open and light up and all the rest of it, but the key pads aren’t active, although it wouldn’t be a hugely difficult thing to do if they had to do it. In the end we produced 3 actual working hero phones and 3 or 4 open ones and 3 or 4 closed ones, and a collection of rubber stunt phones for the stunt guys to throw around the place.

MATRIX: Can people be excited and look forward to the films?

KEVIN: Most definitely – I’ve had a quick flip through the scripts and I’m just blown away – from the minute it starts, it’s going to be flat out. I think you’re going to be exhausted when you come out of the theater after watching it. It’s going to be really full on and a very exciting movie to watch.

MATRIX: Thanks Kevin.

Interview by REDPILL

November 2001

MATRIX: What is your background?

PHILLIP: I’ve been doing storyboards for feature films for about five years, I started doing commercials and videos first, then got into features. Before that I went to the Arts Center in Pasadena and studied Industrial Design: designing cars, but that wasn’t going to be the thing I wanted to do for my career. I was always very interested in film and just kind of got into it from a cold start. It’s been great, I’ve really enjoyed all my projects and I’ve been lucky to work on some great shows with great directors.

MATRIX:  What are some of the films you’ve had a chance to work on?

PHILLIP: I’ve worked on Titanic, Deep Impact, and Mask of Zorro. Recently I did The Perfect Storm, and just before this I was working with Spielberg on AI, his sci-fi movie; so it’s been a pretty good last couple of years.

MATRIX: Just out of curiosity, when you mention working on AI, is your predilection sci-fi?

PHILLIP: No, it’s funny, I don’t think I’ve done many sci-fi movies, THE MATRIX is one of the few. Most of the films I’ve done would probably be more straight action or period features. I enjoy period work: big, epic story telling. What is great about this project is the brothers [Larry & Andy Wachowski], they’ve got such a keen sense on how they want to tell the story and such great ideas, it makes the project a lot of fun. I think the sequels are going to be spectacular when they come out, they’re going to be really great; I can tell from the sequences.

MATRIX: How long have you been on the production now?

PHILLIP: I’ve been on for, I think, about five months. Every six months you change project and scenery, and get a new location to work at which is nice, it makes things interesting, rather than being at the same job.

MATRIX: It’s interesting as far as project to project?

PHILLIP: Different project, different genre, different film, different group of people. The number of guys who work full time in feature film, either doing storyboards or concept illustration, is actually a very small group of people, probably only 4 or 5 dozen guys who get all the big jobs. So it is a tight community, everyone knows what everyone else is doing – it’s nice in that way too, because you always get information on what is going on and what is starting up. If you’re on a project and you’re finishing up you know what’s coming up, or if you’re in the middle of a project and you’re getting work, you can pass it on to your buddies who need work; it’s a nice group of people.

MATRIX: As a result of that, do you tend to run into people at other jobs unexpectedly?

PHILLIP: Yes, very much so. On this show there are Simon Murton and Darek Gogol and Jim Martin who I’ve worked with on other shows, most of the others guys I’d heard of, but hadn’t really worked with them. I was anxious to work with Owen Paterson, our Production Designer, seeing as I’d heard so many good things about him; the design work he did on THE MATRIX sort of speaks for itself. I think this is the show in town right now that everybody would love to be on, so we’re all pretty lucky to be here, it’s great.

MATRIX: Were you sought out, or did you seek out the production yourself?

PHILLIP: They called a group of people when they were crewing up to submit portfolios, and I was fortunate enough to be asked to submit mine, and I got the job, which was great. For a lot of shows you almost have to be connected with someone working on the show to get advance notice that something is happening, then you can make a phone call or put your book in before everyone else knows, and kind of get a jump start.

MATRIX: Did Larry and Andy meet with you personally before you began work?

PHILLIP: Yeah, I met with them on the Warner Bros. lot when I was finishing on The Perfect Storm. I met the brothers and Owen and they asked me a few questions: they asked me if it was my decision, or if someone wanted me to put arrows on my storyboards, which was very funny. They’re very particular about their artwork and line work and the format that it’s done in, they definitely didn’t want any arrows in their storyboards.

MATRIX: What was your answer to the arrow question?

PHILLIP: Arrows are standard practice in the film industry, they’re used to describe camera moves and shots. It is just the thing that everyone does and is used to reading and understanding, but it’s certainly nothing that can’t be done without; you can definitely draw boards without arrows and they can be understandable.

The storyboards we’re doing for the brothers on THE MATRIX 2 and 3 are very, very detailed with a lot of frames to be descriptive and show the action so it really tells the story. The brothers are kind of maniacs about wanting to see every little detail, every little piece of glass and nut and bolt from explosions and crashes, so you really understand. The effects people, the Stunt Coordinators, the Art Directors, and the Set Decorators can all see what the shots and the sequences are really going to be like; it really helps everyone having everything drawn in such detail. The brothers have thought all the shots through very clearly, they know what their coverage is, and that’s a sign of a good director too, that they can envision the whole thing in their heads, shot per shot.

In essence, these boards are the movie edited because the brothers have already figured out the shots, the coverage, and where everything goes, which is great, it’s brilliant. It certainly makes what we’re doing go a little faster too.

MATRIX: Would you describe THE MATRIX 2 and 3 as being a tame or a small production?

PHILLIP: No, I think it’s definitely going to be a big production. Part of it will be hard to tell because it is going down to Australia, so it’s not like the whole crew is going to be here in the US shooting at Warner Bros., which is kind of how you can judge the show. Just the sheer scope on the level of visual effects and action is gigantic. I think they were saying 15 to 20 minutes of straight screen time for a car chase, which, when you’re sitting in a theatre and watching it, will seem like it is going on forever and ever, it is very exciting stuff. Definitely a big show, very ambitious.

PHILLIP: Everything they’re trying to do with this one is definitely towards a big film and there is so much hype. It has kind of got free PR because everyone has been so excited about the possibility of sequels for the last couple of years, that now that it’s actually happening there is so much stuff on the internet about it, and everyone in town in the film business is already talking about it. When you tell anyone that you’re working on THE MATRIX, their eyes bug out of their heads, they’re really excited about it and what it’s going to be, everyone is interested to know – you can’t talk about it though.

MATRIX: How badly do people try to pump you for information?

PHILLIP: I haven’t had too many bad experiences with people going on and on, egging me about the details. They more want to know about the movie in terms of: Is it going to be like the first one? Is there going to be a lot of action? Is there going to be more action? Is it going to go to a whole other level in visual effects and concepts than the first one? So people want to know more in broad terms like that, not so much in specific story details. I think the first film had such an image of being this big conceptual sci-fi thriller movie that everyone is interested if 2 and 3 are going to go to another level unto themselves.

MATRIX: How much longer do you expect to be on the production?

PHILLIP: I don’t know, probably sometime into the beginning of the year [2001], it’s not really been decided how long things are going to go. I think it’s going to depend on when we get the boards done and where it’s going to go from there.

I do have to say it’s been great on this show, that the brothers love an Art Department, and we’ve got a lot of great guys working here. The brothers appreciate artwork and they really understand how to utilize it: planning out a big movie through pre-production artwork and storyboards, which can save a lot of time and help them find exactly what they want to do. Owen Paterson, our Production Designer, is right up there with them. I think Owen would hire 50 more guys if the budget was there for him to have this huge, incredible stable of people working for him. There’s a really good attitude here in the Art Department, which is nice, not all shows are like that.

MATRIX: In your opinion, is there is more art being generated for this show than is typical?

PHILLIP: It’s probably on the high end of big shows, as far as artwork that’s generated. It’s definitely comparable to the big studio Art Department pictures like Batman movies, where they have gigantic, elaborate Art Departments. Everybody here is here because they are very good at what they do, and the brothers are very specific and picky about the artwork and the artists. It’s a nice thing to be here, it really is.

MATRIX: I know Steve Skroce is doing storyboards, and you as well, are there any other Storyboard Artists?

PHILLIP: I believe Ricardo Delgado is doing some boarding of key frame effects sequences. Other than him, there are a couple of other guys who have been doing some key frame moments of visual effects or action beats in color. For the most part, it has been Steve and myself doing the bulk of the action continuity, straight through boarding of any particular sequence. But there’s definitely a lot of work still to go on this show… basically still all of 3 has to be done.

MATRIX: Have you had the opportunity to see Steve’s work from the first film?

PHILLIP: I’ve seen bits of it from the first film in one of the storyboard books they had, it’s great stuff. Steve is a great artist, he gets so much dynamic action in his work, he’s really great with figures, a great drawing/inking style, and a lot of clarity. What’s good about Steve’s style is that it is very graphic and readable. With a movie like this we have clear-cut action and effects going on in any given sequence, so you need it to be understandable and readable and not too fussy or smudgy – his stuff reads very well. I think that is why the brothers have been specific about the artwork and the storyboards being a particular inked comic book kind of look. It has been fun; the brothers like detail, so this has been a nice opportunity for me to have a little bit more time than usual to finesse the storyboards and the details of the drawings to a slightly higher level than you do on a normal show, where you’re a lot more pressed to get sequences done in a shorter amount of time.

MATRIX: Do you have a sense of how much artwork that would be; a sense of how many pages are going to be created by the end of this?

PHILLIP: Thousands, I couldn’t even begin to guess. I’ll probably have done a thousand or two storyboards by the time I’m done on this thing, and it only goes from there.

MATRIX: Thanks Phillip.

Interview by REDPILL

November 2000