Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m delighted to welcome you here to the second of our and final of our Science Week lectures for 2008. Discover Science & Engineering, in association with the Science Gallery, are bringing together some leading speakers during Science Week to share their experiences of science and technology. Anyone interested in special effects is in for a real treat tonight and we’re delighted to welcome Gerry Johnston who has worked in film for over 35 years. And the effects that he has created have featured in hundreds of film and TV productions including Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Our MC for this evening is Dave Fanning and as I’m sure you’ll be aware, he’s no stranger to movies. He’s a name synonymous with movies and music and throughout the nineties he presented over 400 editions of The Movie Show. He currently hosts his own radio show on RTE 1 and in addition to that he hosts The Last Broadcast on RTE 2 TV. So I’ll hand you over to Dave Fanning now.
Thank you very much indeed, Cathy. I just want to reiterate what Cathy said. I tell you what, there’s a paragraph here, I’ll just read it out and then I’ll go straight into this film I have behind me here because it’s great, I’ve seen it. Gerry Johnston, affectionately known as Boom-Boom Johnston, okay I’ll stop, is the director of Special Effects Ireland, based in Ardmore Studios. And if you read his book - which tells you every single thing you ever need to know, it should really be called ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’ but it isn’t because that title was taken by somebody else in the past. Basically he’s been going since the 1960s. He’s been doing all this kind of stuff, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Michael Collins and a bunch of other movies as well you’ve mentioned. He could have gone abroad, he did many times but he could have gone abroad to stay and he probably be a trillionaire by now if he had because he was the main man in the gig. But he stayed at home; what a moron. But anyway, Gerry is here and he’s going to be talking to us a little bit later on about all this. But first, as I say, he’s got this thing going here, which is basically Gerry in pictures for about 10 minutes. Let’s take a look.
Pascal Scott
My name Pascal Scott and Science Week has given me a wonderful opportunity to get behind the scenes in what is probably one of the most fascinating areas of the filmmaking process: special effects. Who better to tell us all about it than a man who, for the past 43 years, has been involved as special effects director on some of the largest movies ever made, and who has recently published a book appropriately titled Lights, Camera, Dynamite: The Adventures of a Special Effects Director.
Voiceover
Special Effects are tricks of sight and sound, mostly achieved by combining creativity, technology and imagination to create the illusion of reality in films, TV or on stage.
Crew Member
It’s my new tummy tucker.
Pascal Scott
Gerry, how are you?
Gerry Johnston
Pascal, you’re very good for coming, thank you very much.
Voiceover
By its very nature, special effects is a hazardous business and, as a special effects supervisor, Gerry must demonstrate health and safety standards, and ensure the safety of crew and actors. Fire safety is a priority, both in the workshop and on film sets.
Gerry Johnston
Health and safety is a priority at all times, right? And that’s why we have fire extinguishers covering the set and fire blankets and all sorts. When I think we need a fire engine to cover the set as well we bring it in; it’s good for insurance as well.
Pascal Scott
Mm-hmm.
Voiceover
Fire can be one of the most dramatic effects on film.
Gerry Johnston
What happens is, gas comes into this; we have a container or a bulk tanker; gas comes in and we can throw it out and we see the pressure and then we send it through the lines, ignite the lines and all you see is these gas flambos and we just light them up and we can throw, bring them up or down on these valves. When we need extra ‘voom’, like ‘voom’ to come up, flame to come up; we just increase our pressure.
As regards the trough over here, what we use, we use troughs and what we call firebars as well; we put them in windows, doors, in buildings, on sets; hide them behind anything like that where there’s flame needed and that’s controlled again by the likes of manifolds like that.
Pascal Scott
Giving the appearance of a house on fire.
Gerry Johnston
Giving the appearance of a house on fire.
The knights over here, again; simple enough. The cylinders are on the very back and what we do, we pressurise them and each time we fire off, which is maybe about a kilo or two of gas, it ignites and then replenishes itself straightaway. And every time I press that button, a flame comes out of those guys.
Voiceover
Creating special effects is both an art and a science and the workshop is a science lab, an engineering platform and an art studio, all rolled into one.
Gerry Johnston
This is an edge we use for engineering. This is our killer[?] drills, also engineering
Voiceover
Gerry’s workshop is a virtual Aladdin’s Cave, filled with odd-looking machinery, gadgets and gizmos.
Gerry Johnston
This here is my first little smoke machine, it’s gas and a little vapour goes through here which is a smoke juice and it just comes out the end here, a little flame and it heats up. So that was the first one I ever made.
These are our box, basically Second World War which we used in Private Ryan. These, all these things here. Our toolboxes.
And then over here, over here is our rams, air rams.
Voiceover
Air rams are used to lift mechanical rigs, like the rig bearing the sword rising from the lake in John Boorman’s film, Excalibur.
Gerry Johnston
This other one here is used for when you’re in a fight scene and in the fight scene it sparks. The two, the two swords crashing.
Pascal Scott
Oh, it’s actually wired up?
Gerry Johnston
It is wired up yeah, it’s wired up; we have it wired up here and when the other one hits the other one it’s like a positive and negative; when they strike, sparks go off.
Voiceover
An effects workshop will include scissors, a sewing kit, dust masks, all sorts of adhesive tape, nuts, bolts, piano wire, glue, different fuels, gas lighters and, sometimes, even an explosive grenade.
Gerry Johnston
You’re holding the pin in; nothing happens and then a little thing will fire down and create the explosion. It’s packed with explosives. So I screw off the top. Now, I don’t tell the actors this; it’s where I keep my petty cash. This here is sort of like you know it’s a baton and that. Sorry about that mate. You’ve got to be tough when you’re in special effects.
Gerry Johnston
We can go like slowly, or we can like machine gun.
Voiceover
Pyrotechnics is Gerry Johnston’s forte. Pyrotechnics covers anything that burns, smoulders or explodes. Here Gerry demonstrates a model aircraft exploding. The effect must look good, yet be safe for actors and crew.
Gerry Johnston
These are all little squibs. You know they’re quite dangerous and they could do you, blow your fingers off your hands. This here is a little flash like a ricochet bullet hit that ricochets off metal; we use that particular one. These particular ones here we use for bullet hits on the actors. These are plates that go on the actors. We have it padded at the back as you can see and what we do is we put the blood bag over it and then we put one of these little ones underneath it or we can put one of them underneath it.
Voiceover
Inside this blood this blood bag, there’s more than just blood. It also contains bits that look like fragments of bone and torn flesh. Creating reallooking wounds on people involves working closely with actors.
Gerry Johnston
We’re just putting the plate on here with the blood bag. So we put that around there and it’s like a Velcro pulled around there and then what we do is, when that’s around the body, wherever, the back, the arms, whatever. We put then this plate. Goes on after that and that’s a chest plate. Be for your back, or side or whatever. And then the bullet hits plates like I showed you earlier which goes on like so. Goes on there and that protects the body.
Voiceover
After pyrotechnics, the next, most common effect in film is atmospherics. Atmospherics involve the creation of rain, snow, fog, mist, wind and smoke, each creating a weather condition or atmosphere.
One of the most important aspects in rain scenes is depth. If rain appears in the foreground only, it looks artificial. And so, rain towers must be placed in such a way as to cover the whole area in the shot.
Pascal Scott
That looks very, very realistic.
Voiceover
Usually the effects department is called upon to create a snow scene in mild or even warm weather. To dress a large area, foam is sprayed over the set from large delivery hoses. Sometimes a street scene or a sauna or a factory scene might call for steam. For scenes involving vintage steam trains or streets that have vents in the sidewalk, steam machines are used.
Gerry Johnston
This is a steam boiler. This is purely just used for steam for the likes of planes, trains, boats, laundries, steam coming up out of the ground or whatever it is, right. It’s more or less a standard boiler. Now what we do is we adapt it to suit our business and that. So what we do is put it on a trailer. And you have to really sort of keep an eye on here all the time because steam and water become vaporised more or less can become explosive. Here we have a small little wind machine and we’re going to put some smoke through it to create a haze all together. So I’ll just turn on the machine here and then we usually press the smoke through it here.
Voiceover
In atmospherics, smoke plays a major role and smoke machines are used to create fog or mist.
Gerry Johnston
I’m just going to cut little holes in it.
Voiceover
When required to cover a large area, the smoke is pumped by small wind fans through a plastic tube perforated by hand called lay flat. The lay flat can be concealed in undergrowth in a forest for example thus enclosing the set so the smoke will not be affected by changes in wind direction.
Gerry Johnston
That goes all the way around the set, yeah. Smoke anywhere around the place, you don’t have to worry about it, you can ring the whole set.
Voiceover
Smoke is also used for lighting effects. For instance, rays of sunlight coming into a forest canopy. Indoors it is used to diffuse lighting, to highlight shafts of light coming through a window. And very often large volumes of smoke are needed to create a smoky atmosphere inside a burning building.
Voiceover
The technology, tools and ingredients of special effects have been created in the real world by physicists, lab technicians, engineers, bio-chemists and photographers. Film makers have adopted these inventions and the special effects technician must be a jackofalltrades: a carpenter, an electrician, an engineer, an inventor and a magician. Because most of what is designed and fabricated is suitable for use only in the movies.
Crew Member
Lads, we have to wrap this up; are ye not ready?
Gerry Johnston
You know, if I had a gun…
Pascal Scott
That’s not a problem.
Crew Member
Come on. Jesus!
Dave Fanning
Do you know, I’m glad we had a look at it like that because it’d be impossible to start talking about that kind of thing without having a look at it so at least you’ve seen what happens there in the cow shed. By the way, just as a matter of interest Gerry, that last quote there from Stephen Spielberg, what’s he referring to exactly? Is it the fact that digital effects took over for so long? And would I be right in saying that they’re kind of maybe going to the background a little more and you’re coming back to the forefront?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah well I think as the actors always prefer to be on sets whether it’s acting stuff or not. And lucky enough as we felt we were going to be redundant there a couple of years ago. But I think it’s all sort of coming back to the physical effects on the set.
Dave Fanning
As much as blue screen and green screen and all the rest are great, they want to know what they’re motivation is sort of thing. Like, ‘Hang on sorry; who’s attacking me?’ You know?
Gerry Johnston
Well this is it. I mean you can get the actor on the green screen. And then after the second take they’re beginning to wilt and they want to know what’s around them because it’s just a purely green screen.
Dave Fanning
There’s a million ways we could start this because I tell you what, we’re going to do questions and answers a little bit later on as well. But we just want to go through some of what Gerry does. One of the easiest ways to do it is simply to mention the movies he’s made. But you do go in the book by the way just about your childhood and how you grew up and all the rest of it. You mention your family, you mention your kids and you mention a lot of other private stuff as well. But just on the actual work and what we’ve seen there, if we could go back exactly 40 years. I’m not going to stay there necessarily. 1968; could I say that was the start, do you think of what we might call an Irish film industry that, to be honest, has gone in fits and starts and might just be in as bad a position now as it was 40 years ago?
Gerry Johnston
Well it was even then, I mean back in the sixties there was more feature films coming into Ireland and they were all fairly big blockbuster films. At the time, you know they were all in their 15to 20 million which was quite a lot of money then. But, like over the years it’s, we’re going as you say fits and starts and studio closing up and starting again. And, you know as I can’t see, unless there’s going to be an injection of the government to put money into the studios as well and the industry, we’re not going to go anywhere.
Dave Fanning
It’s not going to happen is it?
Gerry Johnston
It’s not going to happen.
Dave Fanning
It’s not going to happen in the next five years.
Gerry Johnston
No. Definitely not.
Dave Fanning
Let’s be realistic.
Gerry Johnston
Well hopefully the upturn of the world economy, whether that helps it in that way I don’t know. But we’re sort of like; we were up the top of tax incentives there a few years ago.
Dave Fanning
Yeah.
Gerry Johnston
Now we’re at the bottom of the scale and the rest of the countries in Eastern Europe have gone up in the, they usually sort of now come in and give you a package. And that could be anything to do with the government, different departments. Very important.
Dave Fanning
I just want to go back to some of those movies you mentioned there. Taking them all in a kind of a thing. There’s an awful lot of them to do with First World War or fighting in the air or, you know, little small planes crashing and all the rest of it which is a little bit of what we saw there. I mean for instance there’s the Blue Max, there’s Tiger Lily and there’s a bunch of others that go on and on to Zardoz and Ryan’s Daughter etc. Of all those, you did an awful lot of those kind of World War 1 kind of movies. Did that help do you think say Blue Max in ’66 and then said ‘Well your man did Blue Max let’s get him in again for this’ and suddenly you had four or five without realising you had a resume?
Gerry Johnston
Well then, I was lucky then because as you say sort of back in the sixties I mean most of the films were all First World War because planes, the First World War planes were here. So it was great for, we even had the film called Zeppelin was being shot in England and part in France. And because the planes were in Ireland they decided well you know to come over here and do some shooting. Well if the planes weren’t here at the time we wouldn’t have got a lot of work out of it. But then, after that then we sort of like, it became then like Second World War stuff. And that went through to, started going through to the seventies. And then all of a sudden it was all different films after that. And the first big one I did since, a picture called Mackenzie Breaking Underground back in the seventies. We did a lot of Belfast, all that stuff, we did all the Belfast stuff. But the big film we came back to which was great to work with especially my first time working with Stephen Spielberg was on Saving Private Ryan.
Dave Fanning
Okay, well you did mention Zeppelin there which like shows you just how dangerous your job can be. Did you not like, four guys died on a plane making that movie.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah well I spoke to, that particular morning, most of the pilots go in and have a briefing every morning. And one or two pilots used to, came in this particular morning and they were asking me, you know, ‘What’s the drill for today?’ I just said, ‘Well you need to talk to the rest of the pilots because that’s not my job.’ But my job basically was to load the plane up with what we call fire pots which is a black smoke bomb which creates a bit of fire as well. And that, when the camera director was in the helicopter, there was a lot of helicopter dog fighting, the director would say, ‘Okay dive to the pilot.’ And these planes used to take off like, they used to carry about 20 feet back behind them, like a football. And we’d call this a burst in and then when it went into a dive the camera would be in apposition that the pilot would explode this bomb at the back.
Dave Fanning
Black smoke.
Gerry Johnston
Black. A big fireball would happen and block out maybe the plane. And then a lot of black smoke and you’d see guns firing which we had to make up as well. So we’d have all like we were using at the time for the gases, oxyacetylene which is highly volatile especially on aircraft and that. And so we had to weigh everything on the aircraft. There was stringent, you know, health and safety on that because these were like timber box, you know that could just go up. I mean most of them were sort of timber and bits of metal, you know so we had to be very careful even when we were doing the bullet hits on it and that. But it’s lucky enough we never had any accident or anything like that on it.
Dave Fanning
No but it did happen in England. Wasn’t there a part of the film made in England where it did happen?
Gerry Johnston
It did. Yeah, I mean the planes took off that particular day and that was, unfortunately something happened with the helicopter and the plane and they crashed into each other. And it was an awful death for them.
Dave Fanning
I’d say because there’s a lot of danger and everything you do in the book. You don’t talk much about the word insurance.
Gerry Johnston
No, I mean everything today is health and safety, insurance, insurance. It restricts a lot of our work as well.
Dave Fanning
Okay, but you do talk a lot about Hollywood stars. And there’s an awful lot for instance, even of a guy of your age who is coming into the business and you’re, half the time you don’t know who half of them are which I think is brilliant. You kind of go, you’re meeting this guy, you’re in a hotel and you’re sitting there across having a meal and it turns out to be David Lean. And he calls you over for a meal. Did you like when did you discover this is the guy?
Gerry Johnston
Well there was a particular guy used to work for the, Curran, he used to work for the government and he was the first stop shop kind of you know, you went to him when you came in and he said to me about, he rang me and said you know, ‘Young Johnston; get down to Dingle, set up down there the production and also as well as your own effects’. So I went down and I was staying in a place they’d just finished called the Skelligs Hotel in Dingle. And I used to go out for the day, you know and try and organise things for the film and that. And I was on my own and this guy was passing me one day and he said to me, ‘Are you on holidays?’ and I said ‘I am’, like joking, I said to him. And I said ‘No, I’m working on a movie’ and he said ‘What’s the name of it?’ and I said ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. And he said, ‘Well, would you like to come over our table?’ he said, ‘My name is David Lean.’ So he introduced me then to the writer, Robert Bolt, the producer, Sarah Miles and that. And I must have said the right things because I was living on lobster and wine for the next couple of weeks.
Dave Fanning
Had you seen Lawrence of Arabia? Had you seen Doctor Zhivago? Had you seen The Bridge on the River Kwai? Three of the biggest movies ever made by this guy.
Gerry Johnston
No, no I didn’t at the time. I didn’t know who this guy was, you know. So he was very courteous and he brought me over as I say and I was fascinated when they started talking about scripts because I knew nothing about scripts at that stage.
Dave Fanning
I mean there were books alone on just the making of this movie and the difficulty of it and like the madness of just how difficult the movie was to make and David Lean, task master and all the rest. One of the things was, he wanted the storms in the west of Ireland and there were storms every single year in Dingle except this year.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, it was the first time in 50 years they never had a storm. So what we had to do was, we had to bring in aircraft engines and we had to make up what we call big wind machines for to create the storms. We had to make up what we call these hoppers overhead which they’d maybe hold about three or 4,000 gallons and release them. And that’d be released near the camera, hitting rocks and that and also the wind machines, smoke going through it and everything. So, we did that and then they went off to shoot one or two in Africa. And it was fairly tough because we didn’t realise at the time we were going to have to create the storm because it just happened there was no storm.
Dave Fanning
So you had no idea you’d stay down there as long as you had to. What was Robert Mitchum like?
Gerry Johnston
Robert Mitchum was - he was a man’s man. Always joking and hard drinker and loved the parties. And he used to - he stayed in this particular Bed and Breakfast.
Dave Fanning
Gregory Peck or something was it?
Gerry Johnston
No, that was, I stayed there in that. But he stayed in this place and people used to ring up and Robert Mitchum would take the bookings and joke with the people.
Dave Fanning
So a good joker, yeah?
Gerry Johnston
No, I stayed in a place, there was a guy I met down there, a famous guy. He was a publican guy called Tom Ashe. And I didn’t realise but he was related to Gregory Peck. And I was staying in a place which I wasn’t happy at the time and he introduced me to two of his cousins. They were deaf and dumb at the time and they showed me this place and it was a beautiful place upstairs. And I didn’t realise that until a few days later, that I was staying in Gregory Peck’s place in Dingle. These were his two aunts that he used to call on.
Dave Fanning
Which you were able to tell him about years later.
Gerry Johnston
Which I worked with him later in India and we built up a rapport and we’d a great time. It was called, was during the Second World War, it was called the, oh God I can’t remember it. It was all to do with the Second World War anyway. The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse I think it was called. And I worked with Gregory there for a while. Then we met back in Ireland, he was back in Ireland too and then I never seen him after that.
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