Phil Tippett's Film Props and Special Effects Legacy

everybody's norm from testing and Frank from tested so Frank two years ago you worked on Star Wars The Force awakens with Phil Tippett at Phil Tippett studio at Phil Tippett's - and that's an important thing because I was so jealous when you smith those months there every day you go into work and not only were you working on Star Wars you had exposure to the whole history of Phil Tippett's moviemaking career all the artwork all the props it's just it was everywhere in the shop and you saw things like Kane Robocop and even bins of artwork yeah and in the in the Attic of Phil's house or all these boxes with this artwork and I never like got to look there or anything but now they have all that's a whole bunch of that stuff for auction that's right so we're here outside of a prop store where they're working with folks up to auction off some of those pieces of art some of the movie props he worked on hey I want to chat with Brennan Allen George will take a look at collection and say hi to K&C hide some familiar faces yeah hey Brandon no one can see man good to see it - its nicely back in your warehouse and I see some familiar things yeah a lot of pieces from Phil Tippett studio yeah yeah we're really excited to be working with Phil Tippett putting together the Phil Tippett auction it's running right now and we've got some great stuff from all his films we've got stuff from Star Wars Jurassic Park Robocop Robocop to Starship Troopers all the fan favorites that phil was involved in and many of his smaller projects as well it's a real mixture of you know items representing his career in filmmaking yeah whenever you guys have these big auctions we seize the opportunity to come here to get up close with some of these props and some of these are quite familiar because we've been to Phil to you before sitting before but let's go talk about because this is such a magnificent piece it's Kane yeah full size Kane yeah this was the one that they built one - one for the shots where they actually needed to interact with actors so static it doesn't do anything other than stand here and look amazing but it is the the one-to-one puppet that they built and used on set which is pretty darn cool I chatted with Phil a couple years ago about this and you talked about the puppeting process because Robocop jumps in the back but they have the arms the arms come off and they they they kind of articulate assassin and Robocop digs in the back and pulls out those cold computer parts yeah yeah yeah yeah it's beautiful they didn't build the legs for this though it didn't need him I guess yeah this shoot waist up right I remember Kane was designed so to be completely impractical as a robot okay so top-heavy his legs are are not meant to hold up and wasn't it sort of based on King Kong I remember some of the references that were calling it Kong on the production paper I'm not sure I think that was the inspiration at least was drawing on a Kinkos a stop-motion yeah Russian robot but again this holds up in frame as a full-sized piece well but your other piece Robocop as well so we just got a couple of pieces of it on the display here but we do in the auction have a complete Robocop costume from Robocop - it is screen match this is the chest armor that you see when it gets hit with the Taser and you can see the marks on the chest here we believe that the costume was from the original Robocop as well we're not a hundred percent on that still doing some research we'd like to confirm it for sure but believed to be from the first movie repainted and reused in the second film which is what I've always heard when topping the people at Tippett's do that's right yes you talk about doing a research - I mean you have direct from the source talking to Phil talking from the team yeah where these props come from but then you also have a team here that you guys are screen matching we spent some time yeah yeah yeah a lot of time going through old issues of sin effects and just going through blu-rays frame by frame and looking at things like the markings on the chest here where the taser hit it and saying okay you know what I can see this scratch in exactly the same way and I can see these two paint specs here so yeah that is that exact piece in the shot for sure what strikes me about this piece is the color yes Robocop - I you know in my mind he's blue and silver but in person he's a has a purplish hue to him yeah that very cool kind of pearlescent almost rainbowed finish to it right here but very neat very well done well get the gloves and it is a full suit we have the full suit as I say we just have a couple pieces set up on display here the torso section is foam latex is very delicate as old as it is so we didn't want to dress it on the mannequin but you know it is the full costume with all the armor the helmet I think has the face attached for stunt sequences so they would just put a latex face in there just to cover if a stunt actor was wearing it at some point but how great is that you know Robocop costume and I know that there are other Robocop costumes out there in the collector field and collectors hands I think most of them are probably later iterations like recast or suits possibly from a television show I don't know if I've ever seen offered in the past a movie costume so we're excited to have that one and behind the stunt suit you also have a matte painting and before we start shooting we're scrutinizing this it's one of these things that you have photos of you can see them in books but to see in person there's so much detail about the making of a matte painting that you don't notice yeah it's amazing I mean you pointed out that it looks like San Francisco to you yeah see Sutro Tower right here yeah and so it's like they started off with like a photo of San Francisco at night with the freeway right there but then they're just like drawn in buildings and some of these buildings aren't even real buildings yes made for this this matte painting yeah yeah it's interesting I mean I guess that's economic filmmaking for you why sit down and paint the whole thing you can start with the photograph and as you're saying I mean some of it you can tell is still the photographic elements but some of it is very clearly drawn on as well and then I noticed we have these cuts over here on the left-hand side which I assume are to run some kind of light some kind of motion maybe simulate a freeway behind the artwork yeah it does it goes along the freeway but nice thing about this one too is it's a matte painting on board so some of the matte paintings you see in the pass or on glass anything on glass obviously highly delicate highly fragile a little bit frightening if you're putting it on your wall in Southern California where we have lots of earthquakes but a board map painting you can actually display without worrying about it too much so it's kind of neat it's a great piece of art and speaking of art you know this is in frame in the movie but there's lost a lot of pre-production pieces Phil did work on Star Wars where you guys got from Star Wars yeah we have some good stuff from Star Wars I mean some of the real highlights of the auction my opinion are the flat lots the paperwork the production ephemera the photographs Phil just had boxes of this stuff he told me a story he said we were looking through the materials for the auction he said to me every time I finished a movie I took everything that was around and put in a box and these are those boxes and we got to go through all those boxes and pull out the material and find the stuff for this auction so you know in there we found things like Phil's original concept sketches for the hollow chess monsters from the original Star Wars the chair yeah and how cool is that this is a character that they actually made and used in the film you can see it's got Phil's label but he put on there at some point and there are a few of these you know there were a number of pages of sketches some of which were realized built actually using the film some of which were not built for the film and were just discarded concepts but all kind of in the same design thing I just really need to see and then from Empire got tontons this one's labeled Tom Tom but doesn't even look like a tauntaun yeah yeah and there's some concepts that he had for tom toms that are even further out than this so I think the tauntaun was one of the major things he was working on in the early days of empire and there are lots of sketches that he did in all kinds of different directions you know I love the fact that he took the time to sort of think about what the skeletal structure of the tauntaun looks like which you know plays into his background his interest in creatures and animals and all those types of things but you can see why as an animator it would be important to you to understand how this character is built so you understand how the character should move and some of the stuff which maybe we can take a look at his notes on animating were fascinating because they're just so over-the-top I mean he studied every detail on as the character walks is the back of it going up or down are the arms moving forward or backward you know what is the timing of the feet hitting the ground all this stuff that you have to think about to get a convincing shot which the audience isn't thinking about but as the animator he's got to sit there and whereas so the imagined Anatomy and also just all the proportions it's like and elevations of Taunton here yet from all your different profiles for the puppet yet again you know hand-drawn original by Phil Tippett so how cool is that what's this guy here this is a casting of the maquette so I think this is probably one of the first three-dimensional versions of the character that they built and Phil had the original mold for the maquette so this is a more recent casting that was done out of that mold I think a couple of years ago they were doing castings for shop displays what a sculpt you know what a character the tonton I think is just one that really just works in that universe and then as we move along film history Mad Catz were also then used to have animators and computer artists design be the models and so you have stuff from starts with troopers yeah we've got some great maquettes from Starship Troopers obviously phil was heavily involved in this project Tippett studio produced all the effect shots for the film did all the animated bugs and the bugs were designed by Craig Hays who was a longtime collaborator of Phil Tippett's and they built these maquettes I think a to have on set as a lighting reference or to show people involved you know this is what this thing's going to look like when they didn't have full versions around although I know ad I did build some practical bugs but also just as reference models for the animators as they're working to be able to pick it up and look at this thing spin it around and see how it works is this warrior here or static or I see pins here it is our take you know that's a good question I have a feeling there's some motion in the legs but maybe not a huge amount and then in addition to the warrior we've got the flying hopper and the brain bug all the brain bugs awesome yeah that's afraid yeah ha Wow all that detail so much attention eg Oh for the artists painting this stuff on Star Trek troopers is something he did after all so famously Jurassic Park Jurassic Park yeah Jurassic Park didn't have stop-motion dinosaurs but Phil Tippett famously worked on a lot of the pre productions that's right part of the production makes it to this auction yeah yeah so as you're saying Phil did the stop-motion animators which you can watch on YouTube they're fascinating they're awesome and these are a couple of the models that played in those animatics you know these are the jeeps that were terrorized by the t-rex flipped upside down all that sort of thing I think they're made from Tonka trucks you know they probably went down to Toys R Us and got some Tonka trucks they cast them in the wheels and did foam latex wheels I assume so they could have the t-rex chomp on it or something like that I just love the way the logo Jurassic Park is hand painted on the side there you know which is all it needed to be for an animatic but those animatics obviously were crucial to Spielberg and the digital animators and I am planning out the shots and figuring all that and then Phil was also supervising the digital animation you have a one job yeah one job that's right supervisor and a famous meme that came out of a that's right and you know there's there's a huge amount of Jurassic Park production material in the sale so you've got original storyboard binders from the time and you can tell they're his working copies you know they've got little handwritten notes on them everything has been sorted out here by seeing number we've also got things like a dinosaur creature reference Bible here which has got the different sketches for all the characters which I think we're done at Stan Winston studios that just would have been available to to him as a reference as they move forward yeah literally labeled each of the physical dinosaurs that were made and then the notes that went along with you know where this dinosaur where the puppet was where the full-size ones was in in that day in production yeah and the approval process was and yeah and finished yet it was so much fun to sit down and go through the boxes of this stuff because we just had you know three or four boxes it said Jurassic Park and they were just packed with stuff so you're pulling things out and it's just like what is this you know it's really walking through the history of the making of that movie and stuff like his script within would logo on the cover and his name in the corner I mean how cool is that you know just a little piece of movie history there we love getting up close with the physical props but a lot of that informational like history in the bynars so much information there yeah if you're a fan of those movies you could sit down and spend hours with it you know and I did to some extent but uh well I just love hours today but would you mind sitting down and pulling some that material yeah yeah you want to see some more of it yeah I'd love to let's do it let's take a look all right IRA Brennan so what have you pulled from the archives in the collection we pulled a few highlights and there's a lot of highlights in this collection so it's tough but yeah here's some fun ones and I've got a second pile here as well just some of the really interesting Oh flat Lots missed auction photographs hand-drawn artwork printed artwork storyboards just production ephemera real histories of these films and you've gone through taking these out of the boxes individually inventoried catalogs studied yeah every one yet for the purpose of the auction yeah I mean that was the first step in the process was really just sorting the stuff and you know Phil had it broken down by film but then we had to go in and kind of say okay this fits well with this this fits well with that and put it all together all right let's take a look at some highlights yeah absolutely so this one is an original sketch you may recognize this guy from the cantina sequence flat top alien which I think was built as a hand puppet Wow so this is a hand-drawn sketch piece of concept art with just studies around it just doodles yeah I mean you can tell it's totally just a working sheet of paper who knows what this all relates to down here just whatever they were thinking about working on at the workshop at the time you know 40 years ago here's one which phil has labeled as a design preliminary for the chess set so I don't think they made anything quite like that although it certainly has the vibe is that I come to hollow chest monsters creatures in the front and back yeah some of it may be relating to Star Wars some of it maybe not um these guys sort of look like some of the you know chess chess pieces that were walking around on their hands and then on the back you've got a little doodle here of breda oh yeah which they didn't make here in the US that was done by Stuart freeborn's crew in the UK but obviously they had it around at some point and somebody was sketching it so I loved that the aesthetic you can tell from the history of Phil's work and Star Wars to troopers even the stuff he's working on now mad God has a lot of the same style yeah definitely definitely I mean this would be another example of that right a very typical eacher design and this one says what cantina not made 76 cantina with te e and a that's fine okay yeah exactly that works Wow here switch movies for a moment - these are hand-drawn concept a keys out actually because a few pages in here these are hand-drawn concepts for ed-209 okay oh yeah and I believe these are by Phil as well and you can tell they're kind of early because you know the characters got a different look here it doesn't have that sort of cockpit like front to it yet and you know he's made notes on here like some sort of facial point face Cyclops so he kind of had it as a single eye in the center right accessories like the radar tracking but you can tell if the feet very much med 209 yeah that design but from just from all different angles like I love because you're getting a look in his in his thought process and it was brainstorming well that's right yeah is it a bug face what's school yeah and a lot of this stuff I don't think it's ever been seen or published or anything you know so it's really being seen for the first time in this auction and if you're a die-hard Robocop fan how neat to see something new after so many years there is a more familiar at Sean I yeah I think I think these are storyboards you know pencil outlines for storyboards I don't know whether Phil would be the artist on these or or someone else I know there was a dedicated storyboard artist on Robo two who did a lot of work these might relate to that just another sort of early loose concept there Fred - oh no mm-hm now with pieces like this this roll femoris stuff where they never made it on screen you may have seen if you're lucky some of the stuff in movie magazines or behind the scenes videos like is it going back to Phil is it going back to his team how do you find out the story time and how do you go about your research we certainly were asking questions of Phil you know also just getting out the sin effects magazines and reading there's a lot of information that has been printed on some of these things in the past this one is just a folder of printed copy artwork designs from Empire you know he's not hand drawn but still vintage copies from the time I think there's 10 or 12 in there different pieces of concept art relating to the walkers let's see what else we have here this is another cantina character this is a sketch for one by Lane liska that they didn't wind up using and here's another one from Phil Tippett they didn't line up using this guy is very obviously at the cantina cause he's got the beer going these are some sketches for hammerhead and these are more like technical diagrams or working out the mechanics of it but you can see here the side profile of hammerhead and then all these little diagrams are kind of relating to the the mechs yeah the tie bar mechanism to run the two eyeballs up at the top of the head so from Empire these are this is a stack of notes on animation there are so many handwritten notes about animating tontons you know head and neck large frame same legs there's all this kind of stuff whereas he was working on the shots he was making notes to himself on legal pads and it's a real just history of animating the characters and shows you how much effort went into it which i think is crazy I mean there must be 20 pages in there and you can see more of it online but there's there's so much thought that went into that stuff yeah thoughts about as a as I move like how to accent a movement of the foot or where the head turns and and I'm amazed I saved all this stuff yeah yeah yeah it really saved everything these are different build sheets for creatures and Return of the Jedi so Phil headed the creature Department for Return of the Jedi you can see they've listed here who's doing what you know Phil Dave Carson even Strom Quest was one of the mechanical guys and they're marking out the schedule here you know what days does it have to be done by Phil at desert so this is when he's at Buttercup Valley shooting I've never seen any of that stuff before here's some photos that I would say were taken in the UK of the actors or maybe doubles in costume that went over to Phil to be used in the creation of the miniature characters that they did to ride on the tauntaun here unpublished stuff I've never seen look at the staff there in 1979 Black Falcon Limited which is one of the Lucasfilm companies for a time it's taking all manners you know take this out now and go through there's a lot to look at that you can spend a lot of time on it this is really fun too these are tonton animation cycle sheets so this is showing you that's just original mode on it but this is showing you the different phases of the movement you know and what it's going to look like in profile you can tell there's very subtle changes in the way the riders legs are sitting on this and you know look down here at just the cycle of the the tauntauns legs and all this stuff that he was trying to work out and study so that he could then match it with the physical model and you know that's just one page there's there's six pages of those hand-drawn talent on outlines in that lot so if you're a tauntaun fan there's left to sink your teeth in to read there's so much stuff here we've just scratched the surface now you guys have also taken a task of cataloging photographing and skating much of this ephemera that's right yeah I mean there's almost 500 lots in the auction there are many photos of each lot there's a lot of content to look through if you're interested in bidding on something if you're a fin it fills work I would definitely encourage everyone to get online check out the auction it runs through October 21st and there's a huge amount of interesting content in there that's never been seen before or thank you for having us here I just great just to see this stuff in person scrutinized details but I'll be going home and checking out that lot there's so much stuff do you have stuff from Dragon heart gets Kane's brain from Robocop to all the stuff for the auction and it could be yours so check it out website is professore comm props are TOCOM slash auction and you can find more of our stuff on tests calm until then I'll see you next time

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 180,073

Keywords: Tested, testedcom, movie, maker, film, movie props, collection, phil tippett, special effects, jurassic park, star wars, starship troopers, robocop, cain, costumes, costume, prop, auction, sale, original

Id: UhbOaBVSedE

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2016