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PERRY HAROVAS. MARK SMITH.
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: June 14, 1997.
Meeting Site: Barnes & Noble, Nanuet, New York.
Official Attendance: 39.
Meeting Program: Talk and Demo by Producers at Digital Drama FX Company.
Notes:
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 1997 Philip J De Parto
The June meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held on Saturday, June 14, 1997 at Barnes & Noble in Nanuet, New York. Effects Supervisor Mark Smith and General Manager Perry Harovas of Digital Drams, a computer Special Effects company, were the featured speakers at the 8:00 PM meeting.
Gary Blog led a discussion of Science Fiction on Television at the gathering of the Final Frontier at 6:00 PM. The discussion concerned both the current and upcoming seasons. Turnout was small but enthusiastic.
Shortly after 8:00 PM, Philip De Parto introduced Mr Harovas and Mr Smith of Digital Drama. The two person company was founded 2-1/2 years ago by our guests after they became dissatisfied with producing in-house films for corporate America. Much of the dissatisfaction came out of having to produce work that was far less impressive than they could have done because of the conservative mentality of the corporate suits. Whenever they were invited to pitch ideas, management invariably settled on the most trite and cliched.
The company has done effects works for the Roger Corman movies BLACK SCORPION and NOT OF THIS EARTH, as well as the thriller, COMMANDMENTS, and the sequel to CASPER. They are currently doing pre-production work for a live-action film based on the computer game, Doom.
Their experiences in breaking into movie effects work would have sent most people fleeing back to corporate America. Their first gig was with film legend Roger Corman on BLACK SCORPION.
Perry Harovas flew out to LA to be on location. When he arrived at the site, which was in a very bad neighborhood, he discovered that the shoot had been canceled because rain was expected. He was told to go back to New Jersey and come back two weeks later.
Corman will go to any length to keep costs down. The Corvette in the picture looked good, but it often didn't want to start. Th Porsche was held together by silly putty bonding and tape. They had to sand and paint it to make it look presentable.
Corman who, "makes lots of money by being very cheap," reused their effects for the movie's sequel. They were neither paid nor credited for their work. When asked if they had threatened to sue, they shrugged and said that it was their first movie and they were well aware of Roger's reputation.
They had a very different experience in NOT OF THIS EARTH. This was not the Traci Lords remake, but a later one. They had a first time director who was not very clear about communicating what he wanted done. Eventually, they realized that his previous work had equipped him to execute or modify ideas which were presented to him, but not to develop and articulate a vision of his own. Once they realized this, they were able to adapt by presenting him with ideas in a manner he was used to and they were able to get rolling.
It was on this film that they had their most tedious work. A mattress placed for a stunt was in the background of an effects shot. The filmmakers did not realize that this would be a problem. They thought that it would just be cropped out because of the differences between filming and projection ratios. They were wrong. Perry and Mark were able to clean up the part of the mattress to the right of Rutger Hauer by cloning the grass on the left and automatically pasting it into every frame in the scene. Unfortunately, part of the mattress was behind the actor and came into view in a different length in each frame as the wind blew his shirt. They spent several weeks fixing 90 frames by hand and becoming very familiar with Rutger Hauer's butt.
They talked about the difficulties of being based in New Jersey while the movie action is in California. Directors are in the habit of driving over to their effects people and going over things in person. This was not a problem with COMMANDMENTS for which they produced a tornado, but it did come into play with the sequel to CASPER.
The people behind CASPER plan to alternate making feature films and quick, cheap, direct-to-viedo works. The videos will serve to keep the franchise alive as the more elaborate flick is made. Digital Drama prepared the most convincing effect, but lost out because the director wanted to be able to work with someone local.
It was not a complete waste of time, however, because they were called in to produce the opening credit sequence. When they saw the rough cut, they were enraged because their work was not listed in the closing credits. This was ultimately taken care of but it did get someone in the audience to question, "Let me get this straight. You want a credit for doing the credits?" Mark replied, "Yes."
Each of the partners has his own strengths. Perry Harovas usually does the more mundane stuff and is technically proficient in making it seem realistic. He also does things like drawing the spaceships. Mark Smith has the wilder imagination and is more likely to have created any of their effects which look like something you have never seen before. He also handles the scripting duties.
They freely answered questions about how they created individual effects, and what systems and software they used. They aslo explained a number of technical aspects about how movies are made.
One interesting thing they said was that in the new STAR WARS movies, George Lucas is attempting to revolutionize how films are produced. If I understood them properly, traditional movies are shot with scenes out of sequence. After the film is developed, it is studied. If necessary, a scene may be reshot weeks later.
Lucas is using computers to examine the film the same day it is shot. If something can be corrected at that time via the computer, it is fixed then and there. If not, the scene is reshot the next day.