-But... why, Captain? -Because, Alan, I've got a lot on my plate! The inconsequential viral ads everyone knows
are fake aren't going to debunk themselves. I'm really not good at public speaking. It's easy. Just sit right here. Look right into their eyes and... Talk like you're certain they care. I'm off. [electric motor buzzes] But I don't even know what to talk about! -Just let your imagination take flight.
-[intro music starts] I'm sure you'll navigate your way to something. [mechanisms click and buzz] [metal thud] [Alan] Flight? Navigate? Hmm. Navigate. [Alan clears throat] Every now and then it's good
to get away from the f-fake you know, viral... videos and... look
at the effects from movies... from big movies because-- And the people also,
the... the artists who create them. And, um... even if you don't know
about visual effects they're fun to learn about
because they're just plain cool. And also it's like "school". The title is two words at the same time. [triumphant theme from the film plays] [static noise cuts off music] Sometimes a movie is objectively good and sometimes it's subjectively amazing because you saw it at the right time
and were the target audience. It ignited your imagination,
shook you with possibilities. As far as I'm concerned,
Flight of the Navigator is such a film. It's a classic tale. You know: a boy has a
crush on a girl, gets kidnapped by an AI spaceship
from another galaxy, returns eight years later
having not aged a day, becomes the subject of intense study
by the all-powerful... NASA, manages to escape their clutches, reunites with the spaceship, which needs navigation data
it stored in his brain, and goes on a joyride around the world, never even thinking about his crush again! If that doesn't sound awesome,
then you weren't a kid in 1986. And that's on you. But as a... kind of adult now, I admit, the unusual tone of the movie
may have partly been an accident, a result of two companies pulling
in two different directions. For the American audience, Disney
wanted heart-warming family drama. For the international market, PSO needed
less dialogue, more action-driven spectacle. And somehow, against all odds, Despte a bunch of similar genre movies
failing at the box office the previous year, The director, Randal Kleiser, pulled it off. He made a film that leaps effortlessly
from wild flying chases to heart-to-heart chats, to moody musical interludes,
composed by Alan Silvestri who had just finished scoring
another little film called Back to the Future! But I don't want to talk about
the Synclavier system he used to make an entirely digital score
on this movie or how it was Sarah Jessica Parker's
first feature film role, what lessons Paul Reubens' performance
as the voice of Max teaches us about future
first contact scenarios, -- [Max chuckles like Pee-wee Herman] or how the young lead actor Joey Cramer,
went on to face some serious life challenges. You can check out trivia blogs or insightful crowdfunded
documentaries for that. The Captain would probably focus on how when the turkey is thrown down
in the music video David is watching, there's an insert of it hitting the floor, but in the song's official music video
that shot isn't there! But I'm here to talk about one thing. The ship. And all the artistry that made it feel real.
[mysterious motif from the film plays] The look of the hull alone might be
the biggest flex in the history of sci-fi vehicle design. It's iconic and recognizable,
but not easy to reproduce. No fan art I've seen ever nails the shape. But that's understandable.
The film's own promo art can't get it right. What the heck is that? Even this painted poster by Rich Davies for the 2019 limited edition
Blu-ray release doesn't have exactly right proportions. The wingspan's too wide,
the hatch is too small, and there's a weird extra dimple,
come on! It's as if you have to obsess about it
your whole life, trying over and over, to even get close. I guess that's because the design
isn't the product of any one artist. Edward Eyth is credited with designing
all the sci-fi elements in the movie. After all, he's also a concept artist
who's contributed to the futurist aesthetic of a little movie called Back to the Future Part II! But on Navigator it was
production designer William Creber who first envisioned an otherworldly
vessel, inspired by shells, Randal Kleiser came up with the idea of it
being metallic and able to change shape. Some of Eyth's initial concept sketches
were then refined as clay sculptures by designer Daniel Gluck, and the work of finalizing the look
and making the 5-foot maquette that would be used as reference
throughout the production was done by sculptor Jim Casey! It was a group effort, is my point. And it didn't stop there. Steve Austin, a... yacht builder...
and his team constructed a giant fiberglass mold
that was hauled across the entier continent to a company in Florida which used it
to build two identical-looking full-scale 20-foot-long ships. One was a sealed, lightweight version,
at 700 pounds. Let's call it Ship A. Ship B was a 1450-pound open-door version, complete with an aluminum mockup
of the interior and a big load-bearing post through the center,
for anchoring to a crane. They were built in Florida because...
well, that's where the movie was set and mostly filmed. [static noise] When I first moved to America as a kid high on my list of places to visit was
Disney MGM Studios where both ships were put on permanent
display after the movie came out. Like many people, I have home video
from the studio backlot tour, going by those majestic things.
I made sure to check them out every time I was at the park.
[alarm beeps] Uh-oh. [loud electric zap]
[Alan yelps] [loud electric zap]
[Alan grunts] [exhales] I guess this isn't about me.
Let's stay on topic. Why did they build the ship
full-sized, anyway? Well, this helped a lot with realism. Almost all the scenes where the ship
hovers close to the ground were shot using the two full-sized props. Ship A was featured early on,
when it's transported into the NASA hangar, discovered there by David,
and then begins its escape. They hung it on a single, thin aircraft cable, counting on the folds in the surrounding
plastic drapes to disguise it. You can kind of spot it sometimes. Here, as the ship starts to turn around,
it's being spun, still hanging on the cable. And a few hand-animated optical
energy arches make things more epic. In scenes where the door is open, Ship B was supported by an enormous
truck-mounted crane attached through a cut-out hole
on the port bow. This custom-built, one-of-a-kind crane was made by special effects supervisor
Jack Bennett and could swing the ship up to 32 feet,
and support the weight of the actors inside. Its shining moment is in the gas station scene, when the camera is mounted on a second
Titan crane to capture a dynamic landing. Later you can actually see
the Bennett Crane truck in the shot, disguised as a practical vehicle
in the background. Pretty sneaky. Having a real ship that holds up
in closeups and wide shots gave a lot of directorial freedom, but Kleiser didn't abuse it. We barely even catch a glimpse of the ship
until half way through the film. Prior to then, the director took time
to build up anticipation and set up various story elements. Although, you know... even as a kid,
I felt it was weird that the whole plot about liking
Jennifer Bradley never got resolved. [static noise] I mean... he should've seen her again
at the end of the movie somehow and had the courage to
strike up a conversation, just like his dad taught him.
[alarm beeps] Damn it!
[loud electric zap] [loud electric zap]
[Alan sighs] Ok, the giant ship is fun and all,
but at some point they had to actually show
the thing flying, right? And if you've heard anything about
Flight of the Navigator at all, it's probably that it featured
early computer animation. It was the first movie to use reflection mapping
to depict a realistic, metallic 3D surfce on film, at a time when portable data storage
devices maxed out at about one megabyte. How? The task fell to an ambitious
Canadian company called Omnibus Computer Graphics, one of the first digital animation vendors. They mostly worked on commercials
and TV intro graphics, but eager to expand, the bought up
two American CG companies, opened a facility on the Paramount lot, and purchased a one-of-a-kind machine
called the Foonly F-1 from another established
computer tech firm, "Triple-I." They had previously used it to create
some of the iconic stylized visuals in Tron. But Omnibus wanted to push it
all the way into photorealism. This was beyond even the most powerful
desktop computers of the day, like an SGI IRIS workstation,
which Omnibus also had. Only a supercomputer would do. The Foonly was part of a messy arrangement
of huge cabinets, patched together, requiring specialists like computer wizard
Dave Sieg to run and maintain. There was no off-the-shelf
modeling or animation software. There were barely graphic interfaces. Everything was pretty much run
through command line. To build a digital replica of the ship,
the Omnibus creative team, which included Jeff Kleiser,
the director's brother, took sculptures of both the slow
and high-speed versions and drew a matching set of points on them. Then cross sections were
digitized with a stylus on a 4x6-foot Calcomp tablet. 3D scanners or even digitizing arms
weren't a standard yet. Those points had to be put back together
in the computer. A utility, which would eventually
be put into PRISMS, the predecessor of Houdini software, helped connect the points with smooth splines
that then defined the surface of a triangle mesh. This wireframe shows up throughout the first
half of the movie on computer screens, when David's brain is analyzed. Both versions of the ship having
the exact same topology made it possible to blend
from one to the other, a principle that's still a major part
of 3D animation today. But for shading, these days we use
sophisticaded ray tracing algorithms to simulate the behavior of light
and depict reflective surfaces realistically. Back then they had to rely
on a much more basic technique. [old news reel fanfare] If you wrap an image around a 3D object, it looks... like an image
wrapped around a 3D object. But if you assume the image
is on a sphere around the object, check how the angle of the faces on that sphere
differs from the angle of the faces on the object, in relation to the camera,
and distort the image accordingly, it looks like a reflection. Might sound simple, but back then,
things like this had to be figured out and coded for specific computers
from scratch. At Omnibus this was done
by a guy named Bob Hoffman. Once a few tests proved
the technique would work, Jeff Kleiser joined the production team
and gathered video footage at all the locations during the shoot
and second unit photography. Stills of this were stitched into
approximate environment spheres and used for the reflections in each shot. It took some trial-and-error to match
the color and tone of the film footage, but it worked! [triumphant theme from the film plays] Just one small problem. How do you put it in the movie? Adobe Media Encoder wouldn't exist
for another quarter century. The TRANEW software used
for rendering on the Foonly had no anti-aliasing. It couldn't smooth the jagged pixel
edges in the rendered images. But it rendered them at whopping
6000x4000 pixels, which was higher than
the resolution of the film recorder. So the smoothing happened naturally
when it was put on film. Even though the ship usually
filled a small part of the screen, each frame took around
20 minutes to render. And with a washing machine-sized
hard drive of... 50 megabytes for the system, and another striped pair for data, there was only enough space to hold
two of these high-res images. So once a frame finished rendering, -[metal clang]
-It was sent directly to a PFR-80 film recorder, basically a high-quality CRT screen
interfaced with an old Acme animation camera. The recorder would expose the image
onto a film frame, in three color passes, then delete it from the buffer forever
and advance the film to the next frame. Completing a shot this way could take days and there are horror stories
of opening the magazine at the end to find the whole film roll
jammed in the camera! But by all accounts, this didn't happen
on Flight of the Navigator. Even after a successful render, all you had was a strip of film
with the ship animation. The computer couldn't be used
to combine it with a background. That kind of stuff was still done...
optically. It meant also rendering
a matte of the animation, slapping that against a print of the background
and making a copy onto a new strip, which left an unexposed area
in the shape of the ship. Then that was laid against
the full-color ship animation and printed again for the final composite. That's the simple version. To create realistic hotspots
on the shiny surface, they had to render an extra
highlight pass. Sometimes a hand-animated shadow
was also thrown in by compositors, although it's... well,
nothing to write home about. The real test for Omnibus came later,
with the "time storm" sequence. At the climax of the movie, the ship
travels through another dimension, requiring full-screen CGI. Facing much longer render times
and a looming deadline, it was clear the Foonly
simply wasn't fast enough. So Dave Sieg worked out a deal with a friend
at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, to let them use the CRAY XMP, then
one of the fastest computers in the world, able to render the frames
in a fraction of the time. In a recent retrospective, Jeff Kleiser
shows some test footage of the sequence, which makes the final result
all the more impressive. [sci-fi storm noise rises] [noise stops] But here's the thing... This ship, right here... is not CG. [ominous music] It's a model. [chuckles] A miniture. Let's take a moment to talk about
visual effects journalism. For as long as effects
have been part of movies, producers and studios
have been crafting... misleading narratives around them
as a promotional tool. [Kopelson] We used an actual railroad. This was not miniatures,
it was not trick photography -- [dramatic music sting] [Alan] These days there's a prejudice
against "too much CGI." So studios love to pretend their
upcoming blockbuster was crafted by hand,
with models and puppets and love. And that computers were barely involved. Reporting on the massive digital work
that was done on top of all that is... discouraged. But a while back, the trend was opposite. CGI was the new, revolutionary
storytelling tool, so if you used it in any capacity,
your film's effects were "done with CGI." But out of the 61 optical effects shots
in Flight of the Navigator, just 18 used computer animation. The rest were done with... well, just about every other technique
available at the time, but chief among them...
motion control miniatures. This was the standard way to get
sci-fi vehicles flying for many years and Captain Disillusion has
talked about it before. Models were shot in stop-motion,
only not by hand, but on robotic supports, which could repeat pre-programmed
motions exactly, multiple times, making it possible to capture different
aspects of a shot as separate passes. Motion blur was also possible
by moving slowly during longer exposures. In fact, that's how you can tell which
shots were motion control in this movie. Just look for the blur. CG animation couldn't do that yet. Although they tried to use some
double exposure tricks in compositing to approximate it. [Helen] Jeff! [Alan] For those of you
more familiar with visual effects, -[static noise]
- alarms might be going off about now. "How could they've possibly shot motion control
with that smooth mirror surface?" You're right to be skeptical. The Cinema Research Corporation
motion control crew, headed by effects cinematographer
George Muhs, had to hack their way around
a ton of unique challenges. For one thing, the ship's seamless hull made it
impossible to hide any attachment points on it. Instead, they used five different ships, three slow and two high-speed versions, each with a different mounting point,
away from the camera view. The IMC motion control rig,
appropriately nicknamed the Cruciflex, travelled on a 40 to 60 foot track
that could lift, slide and rotate the camera, and control focus. All kinds of sweeping moves were possible. The ship model would either be
on a simple c-stand or sometimes on a separate
model mover base, but mounted on the reverse side
of the roll axis so the ship's hull wouldn't reflect it. It did, of course, need to reflect some
approximation of the environment in the live-action plate. But unlike with CG, the solutions here
were as low-tech as it gets. Muhs bought two white cargo parachutes
from an Army surplus store. They were draped around the staging
area and acted as light diffusers with a vague appearance of clouds. This worked for most shots. All the hotspots from the lights
were carefully flagged off and instead, a single ENH projector bulb,
shining through a top hole in one of the parachutes,
was shot in a separate pass, simulating the sun. That way, its intensity could be
controlled in compositing and even blinked on and off
to imitate cloud breakup. And instead of the traditional black,
light gray cards were often used behind the model in the beauty pass,
so the reflected tone could blend with the rest of the environment. And then there was the challenge
of matte passes. See, normally you could backlight
a model over a bright backdrop or overexpose it on black velvet
to create a matte. But neither approach worked with this
giant, shiny Christmas ball. You certainly couldn't blue-screen it.
[chuckles] That would be a disaster! Instead, after every other pass
of a particular shot was done, model wrangler Mark Wolf
spraypainted the ship with Nestle Streaks 'n Tips white harispray! This diffuse white version
was filmed for the matte, then the white layer was washed off, requiring only minor touch-ups with
the same chrome bumper spray paint used on the full-sized ships, and the model was ready
for the next scene. For some of the wilder aerial maneuvers,
they had to get really creative. The vertical takeoff and landing outside
the hangar was set up sideways, with a wooden board attached
to the camera platform, simulating the ground. Complete with a post-it note
to stand in for the yellow jumpsuit of a background actor in the footage. As the camera moved away,
the "ground" stayed with it, giving a realistic falloff to the reflection. To get the lighting pass of the nighttime
approach into Ft. Lauderdale the crew laid a black cardboard sheet
with color gelled holes, lit from below, and some white Christmas lights laid on top. In the last shot of the Beach Boys
sequence of the the Everglades, the camera base gragged a blue cloth roll
with painted clouds, providing the reflected sky in the water
reflecting in the bottom of the ship. Then the model was filmed again,
rigged upside-down to provide its own reflection in the water. For the dreaded "time storm" shots,
they bounced light from a huge sheet of foamcore
and a crazy tapestry of color gels onto the bottom of the ship in one pass and the top in another, to imitate the chaotic
inter-dimensional CG environment. On some of the more complex
nighttime shots, they even combined multiple
lighting passes in-camera by rewinding the film and shooting
across the exact same frames to save on compositing steps. It's amazing what natural nuances you get
for free when working with physical models. And not all of them needed
motion control. This one seems to have been used
in the underwater scene. A few of these specialty shots
were handled by Fantasy II Film Effects, a company with a rich history
of adding magic to movies. Its founder Gene Warren Jr. was one of
three generations of effects artists. The studio included an 850,000-gallon
tank for underwater work. There they dressed a minimal ocean floor
set to surround the ship model. It's obviously really there. It's reflecting the environment perfectly,
moving with motion blur. So at first I thought maybe they
suspended it on these wires and simply yanked it up for takeoff. Except... the miniature is buoyant, aggresively so, So then I thought maybe they
did the opposite and held it down by the wires,
through the floor, then cut them, causing it to shoot up. But its trajectory seems controlled, pushing in stages, going forward
and banking to the right. Maybe I got it all wrong and this was another
motion control shot. But we already know there were limitations
to how cleanly they could composite those. And other than the separately filmed,
hand-rotoscoped bubbles element, this looks flawless. There are no mounts or rods
or wires that could be obscured! Plus, the motion control guy literally
told me they didn't work on this! I don't... know that to think! -I just... I can't... I just...
-[tense musical pulse builds] -[dramatic music sting]
-Tell me your secrets! [clears throat] I’m not a hundred percent sure,
but I think this same model might have also been used in the scene
where a guy sees the ship in his rearview mirror. It was probably just
puppeteered across on strings, as a sort of forced perspective gag. Speaking of forced perspective, there’s even more to unpack
in the hangar sequence. It’s when the ship becomes the focal point of
the story, so they really had to step up the effects. We already know that the transformation
and departure were CG, the vertical takeoff and landing
were motion control composites, and the U-turn inside the hangar
was the full-sized Ship A on a cable. But what about the triumphant
exit through the blast doors? You might assume that this simple
close-up is a full-sized ship too, but let’s think about it practically. Ship A is designed to be suspended on a cable and Ship B can only be swung
around in an arc by a crane. It would be super impractical to rig up
either of these huge props to move perfectly straight forward
for just a brief insert. This is a miniature
rigged close to camera. Well then, this has got to be a full-sized ship
being pushed out by a forklift, right? You can kind of see a support
hiding in the dark right there. Nope. This is actually the same miniature, combined with a classic in-camera
effect known as the Schüfftan shot. Along with may other practical
effects on Flight of the Navigator, it was masterminded by
visual effects supervisor Peter Donen, son of respected director Stanley Donen, who did, you know, this thing. [jovial musical score plays] The ship model is only a few feet
away from the camera, so whatever rig is supporting and moving it,
extends in front of the building. It’s covered beyond the edge
of the blast door by... a mirror. Okay, but exactly what
is this mirror reflecting? Maybe it’s aligned perpendicular to the wall, showing the part of it that
continues behind the camera, with the two extras there,
looking the opposite way? Well, then the highly directional
morning sunlight would be hitting them completely differently,
and obviously not match. No, the mirror is actually reflecting...
the very spot it’s covering up! This production photo clearly shows
a second large mirror set up to relay a clear view of the area
behind the on-camera mirror onto it, like a periscope. Of course the perspective is shifted slightly, but the distance and the pattern
on the wall help disguise that. By lining up the first mirror exactly
with the edge of the blast door, and using a neutral density filter
on the rest of the frame to compensate for the loss
of light in the reflection, Peter Donen achieved a nearly
flawless composite in-camera. -[David] Wow! Must be nice to go home from the shoot
with the effect already done. Although, if the hanger exit was the fastest
produced effect in Flight of the Navigator, the most time consuming
might 've been the steps. They float securely in mid-air and you can
guess how this was done in-camera. Each step was supported by a thin rod, angled just right to be hidden
from the camera by the step itself. Other than a few hero shots though, they had to cut a lot of corners
with this throughout the movie. It’s not perfect. But the way the steps form
couldn’t be improvised. Part of the hull liquifies,
revealing the entrance, while the melted excess
solidifies into the steps. And this was achieved with… -[happy chime]
-Good old stop-motion animation. Artists at Fantasy II sculpted
dozens of individual carvings depicting the melting action frame-by-frame. I know that because...
here they are! [drum roll] Genuine, hand-painted resin. [sniffs] Mmm, 34 years of visual effects history. This was one of the first elements
shot at the start of production. But during principle photography they decided
to change the number of steps the ship had, so all this had to be redone from scratch.
Can you imagine? Hey, let’s reanimate it ourselves
to see what we can learn! [upbeat synth music from the film plays] [music crescendos] [spacey melting sound] [metallic clicks] The door shape starts flowing in a straight line, then pulses with waves until individual
blobs break off from top to bottom. And because each step finishes
forming in sequence, the last few sculptures are
recycled across them. It clearly took incredible skill
and patience to craft this, but, once the replacement series existed,
it could be shot repeatedly to match whatever live action angles
were captured in different scenes. At the gas station, you can actually
spot these square peg supports within the rotoscoped boundary of the steps before the matte-painted spiral
patterns fade on to cover them. Gene Warren, Jr.’s one complaint was that
the time crunch prevented his team from sculpting a different
animation for the door closing. Instead they ended up just running
the opening sequence in reverse. Hey, what’s going on... there? What’s with this funky matte line? Well, let’s think about it practically again. You’ve got a full-sized Ship A,
which is sealed, hanging in your shot. Then, as the superimposed
animation of the steps begins, you need to change it to Ship B,
which has an open hatch. But how do you swap one
3400 cubic foot prop for another, line it up exactly, and not disturb the multiple
chains hanging off it? You can’t. Instead, you have to use
Ship B the whole time, and make it look like it’s sealed at the start. But how do you do that in 1986? Well... you paint it. And I mean paint it,
with actual paint. Founded by effects cameraman, Bruce Block and artist, and Titanic enthusiast, Ken Marschall, Matte Effects operated out of a room built
in the corner of a sound stage at Fantasy II, where the duo produced sophisticated
matte work for a ton of movies, including Flight of the Navigator. Some of it was rig removal and touch-ups. In that first door-opening shot,
Marschall needed to paint a sealed and open versions
of the entire bottom half of the ship, with closely matching reflections to the real one so they could be seamlessly intercut. In this scene, the area that contains
the crane arm supporting the ship, was replaced with a painted patch of the sky. Matching the color and tone
of footage is challenging even for modern day matte artists
using digital tools, but imagine trying to judge the colors
from a strip of film on a light table, painting the element with
acrylics on black cardstock, filming that, developing the film,
checking how well it matches, then going back to make
adjustments on the painting, and repeating the whole process
until you get it right. Not to mention sometimes having
to paint with altered colors to accommodate the quirks of
interpositive film stocks and save steps in the compositing
process to preserve quality. The guy was kind of a genius. The most striking matte work
on the movie though, was done by another
cameraman and artist duo, David Stipes and Jena Holman. Holman painted the vast 4x8 foot
photorealistic panoramas seen when the ship flies up into the stratosphere
and other exotic locations. These stunning, intricate paintings
hold up even in extreme close-ups. For some scenes, they were captured
with motion control at Cinema Research, but for others, they were shot real-time
on a makeshift rig built by Stipes, with spins and dolly moves to simulate the aerial maneuvers seen
on the ship’s view screen. And that view screen was... real. Really there, I mean. Other than an angle at the end of the movie,
which was clearly picked up as chroma key, with Joey Cramer wearing a funny wig, everything seen inside the ship
actually existed as it appears. This seems to be a recurring theme
with this production. Anything that could be staged for real, was. [static noise] Some of the financing for the movie came
from a Norwegian production company called Viking Films, which meant
that money had to be spent in Norway, a country known for its stunning mountains,
glaciers and coastal fjords. So naturally, after wrapping up in Florida, the production moved there to
shoot all the... spaceship interiors. From the first moment David catches
a glimpse of what awaits him through the door, we’re seeing Norway unit photography. Even the largest studio in Oslo
couldn’t accommodate this huge structure, with 150 feet
of horizontal throw required for the view screen’s
rear projection system. So the production found a massive
abandoned aircraft hangar on the outskirts of the city and
soundproofed it just for the shoot. The set itself was built back in Burbank by the scenery fabrication company,
Design Centers, and shipped disassembled
all the way to the Norwegian capital. It was a series of modular
metal scaffolds supporting the shape of the cabin
with levels above and below for various transformations
and the rigging of Max. The alien patterns on the walls
were vacuum-formed out of transparent UVEX plastic
as individual panels. Each was then vacuum metalized
from the back so bumps and scratches during filming
wouldn’t damage this chrome coating. The coating worked like mirrored sunglasses. It looked opaque when lit normally, but direct light from the other side
could shine through. This is what really gave the ship’s
interior its other-worldly look. It was intricately lit through the walls, the colors and patterns changing
with the mode of operation or the mood of the scene. You can see the difference this
made in the sequence where Max powers down and only
the projection screen or sometimes mockup paintings
bounce light into the cabin. But my favorite interior effect
happens early on when the ship changes shape
for the first time. And it has nothing to do
with the mechanics of the set. [David] Uh-oh. [Alan] It might be the most literal use of a dolly zoom in movie history. The space is supposed to be
distorting, so it does. Also there were puppets. Max was made of the same =
UVEX panels as the walls, but they were covering sophisticated
chain and cable driven mechanisms in a steel frame, engineered by David Goldberg
at Design Centers, and puppeteered by the duo
of Tony Urbano and Tim Blaney. This master and apprentice were
no strangers to making robots come alive, having just come off another iconic ‘80s
comedy sci-fi project, Short Circuit. [Number 5] Whoa! [mumbles] [cow moos] [Max] Moo! Max was hung from a trolley that
rolled back and forth on a gantry, which in turn traveled on tracks
along the top of the set. Pushed and pulled with planks operated
by a couple of grips on this X-Y rig, the puppeteers rode in the trolley and controlled
Max with levers and squeeze triggers. There were also other variations
of Max’s body: a heavy hand puppet version
for appearing from below, A minimal stunt version
for traveling along a wall, And even a marionette for some
of the exterior location scenes. Tony Urbano was
a virtuoso marionette…tist. Max’s intricate eye was achieved with
a couple of interchangeable heads. One used a simple bundle of
fiberoptic strands that transmitted light from an illuminator
up on the trolley with the puppeteers, all the way down through the arm
to the frosted glass dome of the face. The other head used a $25,000 dollar
ultra-fine fiber-optic projection system, purchased from an optics lab. It could transmit crisp, high-res images from
a film projector to a special lens in the face. But it wasn’t flexible enough
to be snaked through the arm, so it set up statically for a handful of shots
the first and last time we see Max. The fiber-optics look great
in the dim ship interior scenes, but they were no match for
the bright sunlight of exteriors, or even the artificially lit
fake exterior door inserts. So during this whole conversation between
David and Max amid the cows, Max’s face is actually an optical composite. Footage of what seems like a pattern
playing on the advanced fiber-optic rig was double exposed and painstakingly
match-moved onto the face dome in about a dozen lengthy shots. Luckily, the spherical shape
and the chaotic pattern made the rotations of the head irrelevant and the match ended up looking so convincing that I for one didn’t notice it was
a composite until... literally today! Urbano and Blaney also handled the alien
creatures David encounters on the ship, including the adorable Puckmarin,
whom Blaney voiced. [Puckmarin emits buzzing laugh] [Number 5 guffaws robotically] Now, the creatures get a bad rap from
the fans sometimes and I’m not sure why. I guess, they’re jarring to see in the midst
of all the high-tech visual effects. and some of the puppets are kind of basic. -[eye ululates]
-[Alan] The giant eyeball was just a prop rental from CBS Studios. Most of the others were built by special
makeup and effects artist, Laine Liska. He took his time, so the puppeteers
didn’t have a chance to examine or rig the puppets
until arriving in Oslo. Not happy with some of the overly bright
paint work, they had to redo it on location. They also fabricated an extra
character from scratch and I think it’s the coolest one -- the slime worm that has a cold. Made out of packing material,
it was generously coated in Prell hair lotion and... KY jelly. -[David] Gross!
-[worm slurps] [Alan] The wide shots of the creatures
were filmed in the interior set with Urbano and Blaney giving some
general movement to most of the puppets at once. But a separate insert stage was built
where the pair performed each individual creature in close-ups. So don’t tell me it’s not impressive.
This took real skill! I mean... fine, if I had to pick
the dodgiest shot in the movie, it’s probably this. But I prefer to focus on the positive. To me, the best effect in the entire film happens when we’re given our
first glimpse of the entire ship. -[dog barks]
-[mysterious theme from the film plays] I’ve seen this moment so many
times over the years and I always assumed it’s another
obscured perspective shot, like at the gas station, with the atmospheric fog hiding the
crane truck in the background. But let’s think about it practically
one more time. This is the front of the ship and we know the hole in Ship B
for attaching the crane was in the front left section, so it should be visible here. Well, in fact, it was. And it took a lot to get rid of it. First, a motion control
animation stand at Cinema Research was used to match move a matte
in the shape of the hull to rebuild the edge. It was given about the same density
as the deepest shadows in the ship hull. Then, hand-drawn smoke was animated
to fill the upper right area of the background, hiding the crane arm. Finally, another less dense pass of smoke was animated flowing on top of everything
to blend the elements together. The only remaining clue is a tiny
misaligned wedge at the start of the shot. It’s hard to appreciate
the difficulty of this in an age when artists can do far more
elaborate things on their laptops for fun. In fact, it’s always bugged me
how they had to use Ship B here, plugged up with a clearly visible hatch. I’m just gonna fix it real quick. And... there. The world has changed. Every effects company I talked about
has either gone out of business or faded into dormancy over the years. Omnibus famously over-expanded
into 30 million dollar debt and shut down, affecting almost 150 people. I kept looking in on the practical ships
as they decayed on the curb of the backlot tour. Eventually, one was repurposed
as the roof of a refreshment stand. Then the whole tour was demolished
to build something new. Much like the Port Everglades power plant
where those first glimpses of the ship were filmed. [loud demolition explosions] [concrete crumbling] -[static noise]
-The iconic candy cane striped stacks are gone forever, replaced by a "next-generation
clean energy center," which... I guess is good. Flight of the Navigator
is not a perfect movie. It’s got a few... outdated elements. [Max] Hey Blimpo! Oink oink!
Too many twinkies, ha-ha! But there’s also a lot of warmth
and spirit, and the earnestness with which
the story is told wins me over every time. I can still feel how scary it is
to walk through those woods, to be trapped,
to step into the unknown, to rebel, to break free. It probably won’t surprise you
there’s talk of a modern reboot. Like the original, it’s been stuck
in "development hell" for years, with various people slated
to write and direct, including at one point,
Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow. In a 2015 interview he hinted that the story
was going to be "about brothers," which, you know, sounds okay if you don’t remember the plot
of the original film at all. The brother relationship arc was brought
to a pretty satisfying conclusion already. Personally, I like to research the weak aspects
of a movie for reboot potential. For example, that Jennifer plot hole? I came across this Japanese promotional
brochure from when the movie came out there. It’s got lots of cool stills and production photos and buried among them is this image: David, in the waterfront setting
at the end of the movie, talking to a girl. Could it be that the resolution to that story
actually existed but was cut out? I wanted to know more. So I dug up a production script.
And guess what? There is a scene of him
talking to a girl at the end. Only it’s not Jennifer, it’s the twelve year old
version of Carolyn McAdams, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character whom
David met as an adult woman. That’s crazy! There’s also a whole subplot about Max’s alien masters intending to destroy him
because he screwed up the mission. So much is left unexplored. What are the Phaelonians like? What happened to the Puckmarin, an invasive
alien species left on Earth for fun? What was David’s life like
after this traumatic experience that only he knows really happened? Did he eventually pursue Carolyn? And did Jennifer find that weird? Was it a cosmic disruption
of the space-time continuum? What if Jennifer, the token crush
of the original movie, were the central character of a new story
that also started in the relative past. You have a new, slightly older
female Navigator from the 1990s winding up in the 2020s for some reason. Sarah Jessica Parker and Howard Hesseman
could reprise their roles, not to mention Joey Cramer himself who’s rehabilitated
and ready to return to acting. I say reboots are over! Sequels are the new reboots again. It’s worked for other ‘80s properties. Of course, you’d need the right director. Someone experienced,
but not too old and jaded either. Someone with a devoted online following, well versed in visual effects and in directing young actors. Someone who’s been creating sci-fi
and comedy content for over 20 years. Someone with encyclopedic knowledge
of the would-be franchise and a passion for revitalizing it
if only given the chance! [Captain D] Hey! I'm back. What’s going on? I... I'm explaining-- -Are you trying to get another job?
-No, I was just-- Hey, we’ve got a verbal contract pal. Get back to your intern station! Go! What are we talkin’ about here? Flight of the Navigator, huh? -[outro music starts]
-Oh, yeah. I know all about that movie. It’s where they used computer graphics
for the first time ever. Says so right here in this Blu-ray booklet. Also that it was done by a company called
"Omnibus Computer Animation." That’s what it says. Ooh, that’s a really good drawing of the ship. Hey, remember when he was weightless
up in space or whatever? You could totally see a big pole
holding him up. Looked so fake. The whole movie is basically a rip-off of ET. Now that’s a good effects movie. The puppet was so cool. Much better than the puppets
on Flight of the Navigator. Anyway, is that enough? You can
edit this into something, right Alan? [chuckles] Flight of the Navigator. [laughs] What a dork.
I'm gonna gush here, but I love this film so much. Lots of memories watching and rewatching this on VHS in the late 80s / early 90s, think I wore out the cassette tape dreaming about being David. Just something so unique and futuristic about the ship effect. And that soundtrack gives me goosebumps, particularly this track.
Really amazing to see the lengths they went to in those early days to achieve effects we almost take for granted now. They seem to have used every trick in the book! Full-sized props, miniatures, motion control, matte painting, rotoscoping, stop motion, puppetry(!) and of course the early CGI.
Thanks Captain D (and Alan) for taking us behind the scenes. And amazing how well this film holds up!
Wow, he really outdid himself this time. I've never quite been able to wrap my head around how compositing and effects were done in the early days of computer graphics while everything was still done on film, and this explained everything so clearly. That anecdote about how they'd scan each rendered frame onto film and then delete it because they couldn't store more than 2 frames at a time was wild!
And the effect where they hid the rig holding the ship with mirrors was so cool!
Most people don't put into their 10min video the effort that Alan puts into 5 seconds of his 40 minutes video
The star of Flight of the Navigator, Joey Cramer, just did an AMA a few weeks ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n193p2/i_am_joey_cramer_from_flight_of_the_navigator/
aight wheres the petition to let Alan direct FotN2
man, i like this guy so much and i can't quite explain it. he's like the cool science/maths teacher i wish i had in middle school or something.
I'm all for Alan retiring the Captain D look and doing more videos like this. I understand that must difficult to be doing this act for years now, I love his videos and the character doesn't need to stick around.
40 minutes?!? Yeah no way I'll watch the entire thing...
40 minutes later wow, can't believe I was kept engaged the entire time.
The sheer amount of flexing captain disillusion does in these videos is magical. Like i don't know anything about effects an what not (should on account of my hobby in photography) so most times i completely miss him doing something awesome but like the comments clue me in. :P