Preserving VHS tapes in a cardboard field for 5 years, dragging them throughout the nation from Minnesota to LA to Northern California — usually in checked baggage or the again of a pickup truck — isn’t precisely a recipe for bettering the already questionable picture high quality of half-inch magnetic tape. The footage seemed simply plain terrible. As my AVID observe periods morphed into lengthy, late nights chopping the whole lot of Skate Warrior, I used to be consistently questioning whether or not the trouble was warranted. We have been children after we shot it, and it confirmed. This was going to be a horrible movie.
If I had completed Skate Warrior in school, on tape, with the extremely restricted submit instruments accessible to me on the time, it could have been a powerful, “how the hell did you do this” accomplishment. Years later, lavishing this sophomoric albatross with the identical VFX sources I used to be utilizing on a Star Wars film was solely going to make folks ask, “Why the hell did you do this?”
However the busier I’m with my day job, the extra intensely I pursue my aspect pursuits — and I used to be very busy certainly in these days. So throughout breaks from animating Naboo Starfighters, I picked away on the over 130 Skate Warrior VFX photographs, utilizing ElectricImage and After Results, between 1997 and 1999.
I stored all of the information on that single 5GB arduous drive.
And Then I Was… Accomplished?
In 1999, I “completed” the movie, together with a greater rating than it deserved by Mike Berkley, and sound design by Final Birthday Card composer David Levison. I one way or the other secured permission to make use of two songs from a ska band, as a result of it was the ’90s. I even shot the “skate sequence” that I at all times envisioned for the opening of the movie, in San Francisco, utilizing my brand-new VX1000 DV digital camera.
Skate Warrior was finished. I used to be about able to render it.
After which I left ILM, and took my 5GB drive with me.
And put it in a field for 20 years.
