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00:00Stephen Hopkins and I have had a very long working relationship. It's 40 years now. But
00:23lost in space. I remember Stephen called me one day and basically told me what our next
00:28project is. And yeah, off I went. We're just on the same pregnancy and I guess I take some
00:41pleasure in pulling his rabbit out of my hat.
00:55Yes, it was early days of CGI. I remember I did cut through an island a couple of movies
01:05before that. And whenever we had like an oil tanker on the horizon, you know, I assumed
01:11we'd just have to stop and wait until the oil tanker, you know, took two hours to get out
01:14of shot. And that was the first time I heard, oh, don't worry, we'll just paint it out. So
01:20I was just on the edge of finding out. I was amazed how much that, how many problems could
01:26be solved this way. So something as effects heavy as lost in space. As I say, it was early
01:35days and it wasn't like I had pre-visors to work from. And to some extent, that was, it
01:43was, it was a challenge to create interactive lighting, to create plausibility when you didn't
01:51know what it was interacting with, what the background was going to be or what piece of
01:55fall ground. So that in itself is a challenge.
02:11In my whole film career, I was pretty much exclusively Panavision. So the production was serviced out
02:17of Panavision in London. And I'm almost certain I used the C series lenses, C series anamorphics.
02:26You've got to understand what genre you're working in and what, what expectations come
02:30with that genre. So you construct a style of photography that, that, that suits. It's funny,
02:37Steve and I almost define things by what we don't want. All right, so we exclude everything
02:44that we don't want and then we kind of work out what's left. A huge challenge on the film
02:51was that Steve and the wonderful, wonderful production designer, Norman Galwood, rest his soul,
03:00had a design dictate and that was no right angles. And the implications of that were huge.
03:08If you look at the film, basically apart from the floor, there are no right angles.
03:14All these curved surfaces, the construction of it was massive, massive, massive. And where
03:26you see there's light behind the walls and between where the walls meet the floor, we couldn't
03:35light it conventionally. So all of that is neon, custom made neon lighting. So we had two neon
03:44trucks outside the stages on standby. Because if a piece of neon got broken, they just had
03:52to make a fresh piece, make a fresh curve. So the amount of neon in, in that set, in those
04:01sets was huge. And well, another, another factor, the robot. We see shots of the robot travelling
04:11down, what was the other ship called, Proteus or anyway. Well, that, that freaking robot
04:19weighed tons. It was full of hydraulics, electronics, you know, wheel motors. The sets, the set floors,
04:29everything was made of steel. And again, no right angles. So constructing stuff that can
04:37take the weight of this robot, all with, with, with curved lines. That's just one of the challenges.
04:45And I remember looking, another one is in that, that big same long corridor set. I think the
04:52set was, oh God, how long was it? Well over 100 feet, 140 feet maybe. The method of construction
05:02construction, that Norman used, that Norman used, first they build a, a, a scaffold frame, and
05:09then put, what do they call it, wood, lath, and, to mould in the shape, then the plasterers
05:16come, and plaster over that. So for that big shot down that long, long tunnel, we basically
05:25had to design the lights into the set design, because they had to be built in, plastered,
05:30and, uh, and I think we put, was it something like, they were all 10Ks, remember they were
05:3710Ks? And we may have had 30 going down. So these had to be built into the structure,
05:45uh, plastered in, and it was three or four months after we designed it, that we actually
05:53kind of saw it with the lights on. Thank God it worked. And remember, we were on stage,
05:59it was in July, in, uh, in London, and the old, old stage is at Shepparton. And I remember,
06:08up high in the perms, the, the high part of the stage where you do the rigging, the handrails
06:14are telling me, I went up there just to test it, the handrails were too hot to touch. So,
06:19uh, yeah, huge amount of heat. Do yourself a favor, don't evolve. Charming. The Dr. Doolittle
06:30without his face. This could be a creature from that alien ship. Yeah, but this little
06:36guy's no pilot. Looks like a child. It was a lot more separate then. Uh, special effects super,
06:46I think was Angus Bickerton. Uh, but look, because Steve and I, you know, we, we met and
06:53started doing music videos and commercials in the, um, in the early eighties in Australia.
06:59So, you know, I was very familiar with blue screen, green screen and stuff, and you just,
07:04you just have to make an assumption you're going to put something interesting where the blue screen was.
07:09But, uh, in those days, you, it was only something you'd be aware of after the fact.
07:15Film control!
07:16Film control!
07:23Uh-oh. The scene where they, they open the blast shields and reveal that they're flying towards the sun.
07:29All right. William, William Hurt, again, God bless him, rest in peace, William, uh, said to me,
07:37well, Peter, you know, when, when these blast shields open, you know, how, how bright is it going to be?
07:44And I had to say, William, I, I don't know, it's my first time flying out of control into the sun as well.
07:50At that point, I was, I was interested in, in the overexposure.
07:54You know, on film, we all bring it down and, you know, we sort of skate that fine line between darkness and absolutely nothing.
08:03But no one had sort of played with overexposure, and I was, uh, that was going through my mind, shooting that scene.
08:11And in the end, I was reasonably happy how that turned out.
08:15I don't think there was any backing. It was just, there's such a wall of light that it just such wildly overexposed everything, it washed everything out.
08:24Um, yeah, look, with current, you know, CG technology, it'd be a lot, lot easier.
08:31And in many cases now, of course, you can have the effect beforehand.
08:35And you can actually see in camera what you're getting, rather than just sending it off to post.
08:42And months and months later, they show you what they did with it.
08:48Robot, do you remember me? Do you remember what I taught you about friendship?
08:57I need you to help us now, Robot, because we're friends.
09:01Logic error. Friendship does not compute.
09:03Just forget logic. Act with your heart.
09:06The balance needed was that, yes, it's sci-fi, but it's also, you know, the family in space.
09:15You know, it shouldn't have looked gritty and grungy and dirty.
09:19You know, it needed the wholesomeness about it.
09:21Uh, and, yeah, I mean, I think basically that was my sort of understanding.
09:28I mean, I tried to make it as interesting as possible, but still, you know, be sort of family friendly.
09:36I think, as I remember, the most difficult thing was the pace of shooting.
09:42As I said, the robot had hydraulics, electronics, raw electricity.
09:49Um, if anything went wrong, and it did very, very often.
09:55I mean, it would take hours and hours to fix.
09:58So, I mean, the average day we may get a shot before lunch and maybe two shots after lunch.
10:06That's anything involving the robot or, you know, the puppet.
10:10And won't be tired if any of the cast had to go to the bathroom to get them in and out of those suits.
10:17You know, a bathroom trip could be an hour.
10:21So, yeah, the hardest thing was just a lot of waiting and waiting for other things to happen.
10:27Carla Fry was the producer, and I knew Carla and worked with her before.
10:33So, she was very understanding, and sometimes she would come to me for an explanation, you know,
10:38as to why time was lost and stuff.
10:40And, um, no, Carla was very, very supportive.
10:45Uh, interestingly, you know, Bob Shea, who owned New Line at the time.
10:49I guess when he saw the dailies, he said,
10:52what's all this, what's all this family stuff?
10:55Uh, he said, I thought I was doing a space movie.
10:58And, as far as I know, Bob hadn't even read the script.
11:01He didn't, he didn't know it was a family in a space movie.
11:05The main thing was integrating the effect shots into the live action shots.
11:21And, again, during posts, these shots were only coming in in dribs and drabs.
11:27So, a lot of the time I was just waiting and I'd get a call, you know,
11:32and new shots come in, can you come down to the lab and we'll, you know, trim it in.
11:38Even now, I don't want to get too technical, but I asked when I'd do a film with effects,
11:44that the effects come in on what we call alpha channels.
11:46So that I can fine tune and colour correct the effect and the live image independently of each other.
11:55In those days, it was just an overall.
11:58Look, I remember in the early days of writing long memos to producers,
12:04recommending doing a digital intermediate, doing a DI.
12:08And there's, oh, you know, that's an extra quarter million dollars, right?
12:12And for, this was really the early, early 90s.
12:16And I had a fight for those DI's in those days.
12:20And now, you wouldn't do a film without it.
12:22Oh, oh, the suits.
12:34You know, the glue in the suits would often come undone.
12:37And I remember the trouble we had to get the highlights, you know, into the seams.
12:42This is before LEDs.
12:44I mean, now it would be so easy.
12:46You could just go down to Target and buy the bits.
12:48You know, you'd have your space suit.
12:50But I think there was a separate costume designer just for the suits.
12:56And I remember just the world of trouble we had to get those illuminated scenes to work,
13:03to be bright enough, to have the right colouration.
13:07So again, in the middle of the scene, you know, maybe one of those sections comes undone.
13:13Or, you know, the light goes out.
13:16It's a retake.
13:17Flights of fancy have rot.
13:22I used your hyper engine to build my time machine.
13:28Okay, robot, put him down.
13:30Affirmative.
13:31Look, I found a lot of the effects frustrating and not up to the standard that we would expect today.
13:40So for me, a lot of the effects were distracting rather than contributing to the story.
13:45And look, you know, it's impossible for me to look at a film that I've done with any objectivity whatsoever.
13:54You know, maybe 20, 30 years later I can look at it with, you know, reasonably objective eyes.
14:00My fault in the millennial wars, Major.
14:04Survival is a soldier's game.
14:06We both know that.
14:07This civilian four will lead us straight to hell.
14:10The cast were interesting.
14:15Gary Oldman, prior to that, had had the worst reputation.
14:20Gary was a wild man.
14:22Gary had just directed his first film, a fantastic film called Nil by Mouth.
14:28Now, having had the director's experience, Gary was the first on set every day, more than happy to do retakes.
14:39Nothing was a problem.
14:41Yeah, changed him.
14:43Changed him.
14:44Gary is fantastic.
14:45He just has so much talent that, you know, if there's two people standing there, Gary would just sort of give of himself.
14:55Completely opposite of William.
14:58William is extremely reserved, extremely method, has to understand impeccably everything he's about to do and why,
15:07and only when he's ready to do that will he allow you to roll the camera.
15:13You'd meet Bill on the set in the morning and say,
15:17Ah, morning William, how you doing?
15:19And he would tell you, for 10 minutes he would tell you.
15:28I've never met such a natural-born director as Stephen, and, you know, when I first met him on a music video, I remember coming home and thinking,
15:37wow, this kid's amazing, he's got the stuff.
15:52And that stuff extends to understanding budgets, dealing with producers, marketing people, actors, physical production problems.
16:04He, he's just born to direct, and, you know, I have complete faith in him, and fortunately he has, you know, complete faith in me.
16:16So, yeah, that's how he handled it, because he had to, and he did.
16:24For the most, I've, I've learned to disassociate from the box office results.
16:29You know, for me, I do my work, do the experience, I make the film, and how it fares after that is so much out of my control,
16:38that I do everything I can not to get attached to that.
16:41Uh, ultimately, you know, it's, it's a life experience.
16:47I, you know, I know for other people, it's a device to create income for a studio.
16:53Uh, but from my perspective, no, it's a life experience of committing wholly to a project and doing your best for it.
17:01And then, walk away. Good luck, you know. I did my best, and now, now it's in the lap of the gods.
17:14Coming in too hot. I'm going to try and slow us down.
17:18Coming in too hot.
17:20You
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