In the beginning...

I came from New Jersey and went to school at Cal-Arts in Valencia, CA. to study film. I was always interested in special effects and had been doing little 8, super 8 and 16mm films when I was a kid, starting around when I was 7 years old.

Why did I go to Cal-Arts? My parents had given me a book published by AFI (American Film Institute) that listed all the schools offering film courses and lists of their equipment. Cal-Arts at the time had an amazing amount of equipment: optical printers, animation stands...equipment that is now outdated and essoteric compared to today's needs: the computer.

Cal-Arts was affiliated to Walt Disney andit seemed like a great jumping board at the time. In fact I did get to do intern study t Disney through Cal Arts in their optical Dept. Meeting such visual effects luminaries as Art Cruckshank, Eustace Lycett who ran the Disney effects dept at the time. At this time, I remember they were finishing up the film about a football kicking mule named "Gus" and the original "Freaky Friday" with Jody Foster.

I especially liked hanging out in the optical printer room where Phil Meador worked. Besides being a great wealth of stories, he had an original animation card of the ID creature from "Forbidden Planet" that had been drawn by his dad, Joshua Meador, the man who did the animation effects for "Forbidden Planet." I kept thinking he would say "Pete, you're always staring at that piece of art, would you like it?" No chance that would ever happen.

A movie by the "guy who made American Graffitti..."

Back at, students were talking about a movie that was being made by the man who made "American Graffitti" and that it had a lot of special effects work in it. Since this was what I wanted to do more than anything, I put together my "demo" reel which at the time was a collection of 16mm clips of tests and effects that I had done. Remember, there was no DVD or accessable home video format at the time. All the clips had to be assembled with this splicer that glued the pieces together.

I called and asked if I could have an appointment to show my reel and went to Van Nuys to a wherehouse and met with John Dykstra. Dykstra had a 16mm projector in his screening room and I ervously threaded it up and ran it. During the "presentation," every splice fell apart. Because of my technical problems, Dykstra was not impressed and just stared at me bewildered when it was over. This is when I said "I will work the first week for free and if you don't like my work, you can get rid of me and owe me nothing." That worked, and I was hired.

I was put in the "roto" dept headed by Adam Beckett who had been the star animator at Bob Ables company in Hollywood which was famous for glitzy, "neon" glowing commercials such as he dazzeling 7-up commercial (we see the light). The department was responsible for animating the lasers, (at the time) explosions and garbage mattes which are those somewhat visible boxes you see around the original spaces ships flying in space when you watch one of the first three Star Wars movies on television.

Adam was animating the explosions, which was the original idea for how space ships would blow up. Since I was an avid collector of Castle Films (small edited versions of feature films in 8mm and 16mm, remember, no video market yet), I had a copy of a film entitled "This Island Earth" which had been produced in 1957, perhaps the last film actually filmed in the Technicolor 3-strip process.

In "This Island Earth" there were many space ships blowing up and they had accomplished this by shooting explosions agains a black backdrop, then double exposing them over the space ship to blow up. I brought this idea to Adam who looked at the movie and rejected it immediately. At the time I was dumb founded as to why. However, in retrospect and ignorant of political realities, Adam realized that if they used that method, he would be out of a job animating the explosions and have to do the grunt work like everyone else. So the idea was shelved.

Many months later when George Lucas finished shooting the live action in England and came back to watch the progress at ILM in Van Nuys, he sat in the screening room and was treated to a Tie ship coming toward camera and blowing up. The blowing up of course was animated and very cartoony. When the lights came up, George turned to John Dykstra and said "You know, there is this movie entitled 'This Island Earth' where explosions were photographed against black and composited over the space ships."

Suddenly, Adam was out of the job of animating explosions and was convinced that this young 17 yrd old punk working is his dept on his first job (me) had somehow contacted George Lucas and told him to check out "This Island Earth." After that point, Adam was always made at me.