Born in the Bronx, I attended New York's High School of Music and Art, then graduated from the School of Visual
Arts in 1976 with a BFA degree in film. With a love for film and special effects, I headed west.
A month after arriving in LA, I had the opportunity to visit the Star Wars visual effects set in January 1977, where I met George Mather, the unit's production supervisor. They were just finishing production, but I stayed in touch with George, and a year later he was co-producing Galaxina, a space comedy starring Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy Playmate who was killed shortly after filming was completed. George hired me as the motion control coordinator, but at that time, there were very few computer controlled camera and model rigs, so everything was done by hand. We had a very old Mitchell Standard (#300), a hand-cranked gear head, and a track made from an old airplane wing. We would lay camera tape along the track bed, and put marks on circular cutouts attached to the gear head cranks. A little primitive, but it worked. Later in the production, we attached the first Tondreau motion control computer to the track and camera. |
A short time after Galaxina, I met James Cameron at one of George Mather's now famous poker games (
I didn't play ). Jim, who was the art director and second unit director on Roger Cormans Galaxy of
Terror helped me get on as the effects camera operator. The unit included Robert and Dennis Skotek, Ernie
Farino, Don Jackson, Mark Sawicki, and Allan Apone from Makeup and Effects Labs., all now some of the top visual
effects creators in Hollywood.
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Over the next few years, I went from effects cameraman on Saul Bass', The Quest to dozens of
effects commericals, to the supervisor of visual effects on Metalstorm 3D. When we started
post-production, we needed someone to do the 3D rotoscoping, and our 3D supervisor John Rupkalvis recommended Tony Alderson. We got to be good friends, and did 7 or 8 more films for Empire Pictures
together.
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We then put in many years at Gene Warren's Fantasy 2 Effects, on such great films as, Killer Klowns
from Outer Space, Near Dark, Flight of the Navigator, Fright
Night and T2.
During that time, I also supervised the effects on Get Smart Again, Beastmaster 2, Skeeter and a string of films for PM Entertainment. |
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In 1993, using Tony's Amiga 2000, we completed about 30 shots for Cyber-tracker, our first all
computer effects show. At that time, a 1GB hard drive cost about $1,500. We've all come a long way, haven't
we?
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