For somebody who has supervised some of the most memorable visual effects in film history, Richard Edlund is a pretty down to earth guy. By talking to him, you’d never expect that this North Dakota native not only works on his car, but has also won four Academy Awards for his work on the original "Star Wars" trilogy and "Raiders Of The Lost Ark." Edlund is not egotistical, where he could be. After all, he’s worked with some of the biggest creative talents in the history of Hollywood moviemaking. Who? George Lucas. Steven Spielberg. Ivan Reitman. The list of people is as infinite as Edlund’s considerable accomplishments. From visual effects at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), to running his own company, BOSS Film Studios, he’s certainly got a well-rounded resume, to say the least.

Edlund is not only known for his visual effects excellence, but is also known for building state-of-the-art equipment for the big screen. Through BOSS, he developed the ZAP, a super printer for compositing visual effects shots in the 65mm format. And a number of films with his imprint utilized 65mm for shooting footage. During the heyday of photochemical visual effects, most work was performed in the VistaVision or 65mm formats. The larger negative area of VistaVision (8-perf 35mm) and 65mm allowed for clearer duplication through the act of compositing. But with the evolution of computer generated imagery (CGI), large format film has been used less. However, some films still utilize the bigger frame. Thankfully, old habits "Die Hard."

Working as hard as ever, Edlund was gracious enough to take time to visit with From Script To DVD at his Santa Monica, California office in February, 2002. Edlund spoke about his work in visual effects, his days at ILM, running BOSS Film Studios, and his work in 65mm.

Famous Shots

William Kallay, From Script To DVD: Can you tell our readers how they can find some of your signature shots in various films?

Richard Edlund: Well, the opening of the Ark in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" [1981], of course. I was in charge of doing that whole “Wrath of God” sequence at the end with Joe Johnston. The opening shot in "Star Wars" [1977], that’s a significant one. Let’s see, going back…the Marshmallow Man walking down Broadway ["Ghostbusters," 1984]. Blowing up the Fox Tower in "Die Hard" [1988]. Let’s see, a couple really good ones. Making four Michael Keaton’s in "Multiplicity" [1996]. That was a damn near perfect project.

FSTD: One of my favorite effects in "Raiders" occurs during the “Wrath of God” sequence. How did you come up with the “Nazi” lens flare effect?

Edlund: I’m sure Steven [Spielberg] was looking for a signature effect, something that had not been seen before. We were portraying the “Wrath of God” where He shoots this lightning through all these actors playing Nazis. When I was preparing to go over to London for the movie, after we had storyboarded the sequences, I had these harnesses made up which had asbestos pads in the back, and then they fitted over the shoulder like a sandwich board. And in the front, there were these little Halogen spotlights. And in the back was an FF33 flashbulb. These were flashbulbs that were built for high speed cameras, like the Fastax camera in the ’50s. The flashbulbs lasted about two-and-half seconds. They looked like a 150-watt lightbulb with a magnesium foil inside of them. So we put those in back of the shirts of all the Nazis. Each Nazi had this rig on, and then they had a wire going down their pant leg to supply power to the lightbulb. They also had a flashbulb hanging in their back. Then we scored their shirts, so that the light would come through when the flashbulb went off. Each actor had a little plunger in their hand, because I didn’t want all of the flashes to happen simultaneously. We gave them slight counts, so that they would go off sporadically, but all within a few seconds of each other.

FSTD: Everybody on the set must have needed sunglasses.

Edlund: These flashbulbs were like the sun. I mean, they’re incredibly bright! But that would give us a nice point source for a flare that I wanted to get. I had done a lot of animated graphics in the early ’70s with Bob Abel, so I’d experimented with lots of ways of creating lens flares and modifying animated artwork. I came up with a machine that had a mandrel. On the end of the mandrel was this little wheel. It was about 1/4 of an inch in diameter that would rotate at a high speed. By going back and forth on a path on a piece of glass, it would polish a little groove into the glass. So I created a filter that had a number of these grooves in a fan shape. When it was put on the camera, it gave me a flare that had an arc. So there was this arced flare that resulted from this filters, which I’ve only used for "Raiders." I still have it, of course—the “Wrath of God” filter. So all of sudden when you saw the “Wrath of God” begin, we animated those shafts of lightning through the Nazis. I think it was John Van Vliet who may have animated that. Because this was at the end of the movie, and Steven is one hell of an act to follow, the climax had to be climatic. It was a hell of a lot of fun to do that sequence. I’m still very proud of it.

FSTD: You should be. It’s an incredible effect and an incredible film.

Edlund: Dougie Slocombe was the cameraman on that. He’s just a great guy. Poor guy now, he’s practically blind. He’s had retinal problems. I know right after "Raiders," he had a detached retina, and I was worried about it then. That was twenty years ago. He’s in his eighties now, and he just received the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award this year.

FSTD: "Raiders" was an excellent production from script to the final cut. By looking at the final picture, one would think that it cost an outrageous amount of money at the time.

Edlund: The interesting thing about that movie was that it was that George [Lucas]'s attitude was this is a “B” movie, and he didn’t want to be spending a lot of time like doing ten takes on a scene. In other words, he’s shooting three takes, not ten. And if you don’t finish the pages you have for the day, you tear them out and make it work somehow. That’s the way they made movies in the ’30s and ’40s. They were cranking them out. This irked Steven to have this kind of pressure on him. I think it added to the verve of the movie, and it has kind of this rambunctious kind of attitude -- the whole movie does. I think part of it was because of that production pressure.

FSTD: And it has held up so well over the years, too.

Edlund: Definitely the best of the "Indiana Jones" movies.

Beginning With A Thing

FSTD: How did you become involved with visual effects?

Edlund and Irvin Kershner working on "The Empire Strikes Back" [1980]

Edlund: I got interested in movies when I was living in Japan. And before that, in high school, I was the photo editor of the yearbook. I also shot still sports pictures for the L.A. Examiner on weekends. I was a real accomplished photographer. I had a high school photographic teacher that was kind of a nerd, but he was really great! He taught photography and physics. We had to mix developer and he explained the functions of the different elements of the developer and optics. I really had a great background in photography in that one class. Plus I had a darkroom in my garage, always. I always loved photography, because it’s an art that’s reachable through gadgets and technology. I’m kind of a gearhead on one-hand, but I love composition, images and photographic problems—the art of photography problem. Visual effects is probably the most complicated and difficult area of photography. That’s what drew me to it, I think. When I got out of the Navy, I went to USC School of Cinema at night, and I was working during the day. But after awhile, I thought, you know what, I’m just going to get a job in the movies. So I started beating the doors and I got a job with a guy named Joe Westheimer, who became a mentor to me. His company did opticals, titles and inserts and special effects mostly for TV shows, but we did some features, as well.

FSTD: Which television shows did you work on?

Edlund: I worked on "The Outer Limits" and the original "Star Trek" -- those kind of shows. "Wild, Wild West" was a big contract deal. We did inserts. They even used my hand in all the insert close-up shots in "The Addams Family."

FSTD: You mean “Thing?”

[laughter]

Edlund: Thing. Because I happened to be there, right? They’d set up these close-ups, Thing would have to light somebody’s cigarette, or point to something or shift the car or something, you know? So we’d set up these shots and use my hand.

FSTD: Did you make any of your own films during this time?

Edlund: Yeah. In the late ’60s, I became a hippie and a rock-and-roll photographer. I was a working hippie, so I did photo sessions with rock-and-roll groups. I also did 16mm shorts, kind of “pre-videos.” I’d film the Ventures out on the dry lakes, edit a two-minute song that had about two hundred cuts in it.

FSTD: Didn’t you work on some commercials during the 1970s?

Edlund: I did. I met a guy named Bob Abel. He was doing streak photography and animated graphics. I started shooting stuff for him. We did a couple of commercials that were famous at the time.

FSTD: For instance?

Edlund: It was the 7-Up Bubbles commercial that had these real fancy, pulsating, flashing graphics with star filters. Then after about a year-and-half, I heard there was a movie called "Star Wars" being set up. I talked to John Dykstra about it and agreed to come on as a part of the core group that did "Star Wars."

FSTD: I’ve heard stories about the humble beginnings of ILM.

Edlund: We started out with a big empty room with a card table with a phone on it. We had to build the whole system up and then shoot "Star Wars!"

Using VistaVision

FSTD: When you started with ILM, were you one of the crew that actually went out and looked for the VistaVision cameras at the time?

Edlund: Well, I discovered the VistaVision cameras when I was at Abel’s. I was trying to get Bob Abel to buy that printer, because everything we were shooting at Able’s was in the camera. It was extremely complicated. We’d do shots and we’d get these standard

Edlund works on the AT-ATs in Empire

animation count sheets and tape them together. They would be about four feet wide, five count sheets across. There’d only be like seventy-five frames shot. So I’d shoot all day to get three seconds of film.

FSTD: When you got the VistaVision cameras for ILM, was there a reason why you leaned towards those instead of 65mm cameras?

Edlund: There were a couple of reasons. "Star Wars" had 365 shots planned. I think it turned out to be more like 400 shots at the end, or 420. I just looked at my storyboards the other day and there were 428 storyboards.

FSTD: Wow.

Edlund: That was a hell of a lot of shots. VistaVision was a really good format for that movie. Because the film goes through the camera sideways, the camera can actually be smaller in profile. It is actually more useful for model photography, because the models are very close to the lens. In order to do that number of shots in the time that we had, we decided to use really small models. The X-Wings were only about 18 or 20 inches long. The Star Destroyer in the opening shot was less than four feet long. So with 65mm, there’s more resolution and more acuteness on the screen. You’d have to build bigger models, and that just wouldn’t have worked. And besides, Doug Trumbull was snapping up the 65mm equipment, because he was working on "Close Encounters" across town while we were doing "Star Wars." The reason you go with a large format in effects is because in the pre-digital days, you had to dupe. So none of the shots that wound up in the movie were original photography; they were all duplicates; they were all composites of multiple elements put together on an optical printer. And if you didn’t use a larger format to acquire your images, then the shots would look “dupey.”

FSTD: Did you have any idea that there would be so many advances within the film industry, just based on this film? For instance: box office, sound technology, visual effects, and marketing, to name a few.

Edlund: Well, it was a great historical point. Ironically, the reason we were able to do "Star Wars" was because of solid-state circuitry which had been invented for the space race. Space Race technology made "Star Wars" possible.

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