Still of the Tangri Capitol building.
© FonCo
MORAV and The Rise of Robots
By: Pat FerraraDate: Thursday, June 14, 2007
“Everybody loves robots,” simply states Fon Davis. “I remember thinking in the early 80s that right around the corner I’ll have my own.” Unfortunately for Fon and many other enthusiasts (myself included) technological innovation is a sluggish mistress. But the former Industrial Light & Magic model builder may still be on to something here. From Pixar’s recently announced WALL-E project to this summer’s fourth of July blockbuster TRANSFORMERS, there’s no denying the fascination that surrounds our mirrored mechanical brethren.
Since Nikola Tesla invented the first ‘modern’ robot in 1898 and Czech writer Karel �apek coined the word itself in 1930, the dubious HALs, loveable DATAs, and identity-shattering Replicants have captured our imaginations and stolen the spotlight of SF cinema. Despite their numerous (and almost inherent) ties with the genre, however, few stories take a realistic look at how these artificial beings will really enter our world.
That’s where the MORAV comes in, or Multi-Operational Robotic Armored Vehicle. Resembling an “Abraham tank” more than anything else, these clunky behemoths are the next wave of combat military vehicles. The brainchild of model maker Fon Davis (STAR WARS, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, STARSHIP TROOPERS, etc.) and his close friend Grant Imahara of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, the MORAV series follows a complex tale of political intrigue, military coups, and nothing short of all-out World War III combat… with giant robots.
Although still a concept in progress, MORAV is helmed by some of the best VFX personnel in the industry including DP extraordinaire Pat Sweeney (ET, STAR WARS, PotC, HARRY POTTER, etc). Mania was lucky enough to track down both Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Davis over the phone and talk to them about their inspiration, the project, and their wholly unexplored approach to shooting robotic visual effects: with real robots.
Mania: I know you’ve both done a lot of work ranging from STAR WARS to TERMINATOR and I just have to ask what got you guys into visual effects?
Pat Sweeney: It was kind of funny, I didn’t really see myself going in this direction. I started out like a lot of people just making my own stuff growing up and taking classes in high school and college. When I got out of school I pretty much hoped that someone would call me up immediately to direct their film, but surprisingly that didn’t happen. What I found out though is that VFX offers a great opportunity to do very creative and imaginative work. If you can’t be in charge of your own film to me this is second best. You get to have so much input creatively doing visual effects that I jumped into it shortly after the original STAR WARS and have ridden the wave this far which I’ve really enjoyed.
Fon Davis: My foundation was actually formed when I went to see STAR WARS (laughs). I was 7 years old and that was the perfect age to get hooked on something like that. I think it motivated a lot of people to go into visual effects because it was one of the first movies with full-blown effects and also had a lot of books and magazines that showed how they did it. Interestingly enough in the 1980s they came out with a lot of ‘making of’ books and I saw a lot of Asians making models for the movies over at ILM and I recalled thinking, “They let them do that?” I grew up in a kind of conservative area and there was a certain amount of racism so I thought my options were kind of limited as an Asian. From then on I just kept pointing my career in that direction. I started out doing carpentry, then moved on to model-building and much more from there.
So you were both big STAR WARS fans?
PS: Oh yeah, absolutely. It was so exciting to be around and just getting into the business when the original picture was finishing up. I kind of new from the buzz that it was going to be really big and it was exciting to be connected to that.
It must have been kind of a trip seeing the originals and then getting to work on the new ones.
PS: Yeah, none of us knew if George was going to do any more movies, but then suddenly it was like, “Oh wow,” all these years later we get a chance to do some more. It was a nice surprise.
Fon did you have any formal training in model building?
FD: No, no formal training at all. I had planned on going to film school and getting into production design or something like that but there wasn’t a whole lot of practical education for visual effects or computers back then.
How exactly did you two get your break into the film industry?
PS: You know it’s a difficult thing to get into the business. I started out like everyone else dropping resumes and not really getting that far. Fortunately I have a brother who’s in the industry as well, my brother Mike, and he actually got a job with the guys doing STAR WARS and got into production with them on the original movie. They needed some help so naturally I got the call (laughs). It helps to know someone in the business. They were winding down on the movie and a guy they knew needed some help on a Saturday morning TV show so they recommended me on that. From there once I got into the industry it was just a lot of bouncing around. The funny thing is that I’ve rarely used my resume to get a job, once you connect into a field, you’re in. With visual effects, especially in STAR WARS, was kind of a new change with the development of motion control photography.
FD: Getting a job at Industrial Light & Magic was several years into my career, that’s not the type of job you can just walk in and get. Plus
ILM is a place where people often see you only as what you are when you come in. I guess that’s how it is with a lot of work environments so I was glad I had a lot of experience before being employed there. I actually started out remodeling apartments in San Francisco and it was pretty boring. I’d get a job and replace all the electrical outlets in a house from white covers to ivory covers (laughs). To get into film I just started going to all the set shops in San Francisco and at the time there was only about 8. Whenever I was in between architectural projects I’d just stop by one of those places and hand in my resume. Finally I got to fill in for a guy and it was only supposed to be for a week and I ended up being there for 9 months. Beforehand everyone told me how you needed a portfolio and to this day I still obsess about my portfolio, even though I’d never need it now to get a job (laughs).
Fon Davis of MORAV.
© MORAV
So the two of you met while working at ILM?
PS: Yea at ILM and working on THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. So we’ve known each other for quite a few years. He’s just excellent at what he does. The thing about Fon is that he has a lot of passion and drive and that’s what attracted me to his project because when your time is limited you want to work on things that you know are going to be good.
Can you tell us exactly what you do in VFX?
PS: My credit is basically as Director of Photography but as I was mentioning earlier I’m pretty much running the crew. The supervisor usually has his hands full dealing with all the different aspects of production so on stage I’m pretty much the stage supervisor. I’m a bit of an assistant director, a motion control programmer, a cameraman and operator, a lot of times I do my own video assists, and then I do art direction if necessary and tell the model makers what I need. And oversee the grip and electric crew. I’m a very busy guy and as I mentioned before it’s almost like directing.
FD: What I do evolved into a lot of different areas. I was fortunate in that I was able to bounce around a lot. I’ve been involved in model construction, electrical wiring, all kinds of fabrication skills as well as working with the DP and helping him line things up with computer models, CG, and the practical models we built. The great thing is that I’ve been involved in projects where I go from the design and development stage all the way through construction and stage shooting.
It sounds like you two are Jack-of-all trades when it comes to your work.
PS: Yeah, it’s a great way to learn about the business. When I work on live-action stuff it seems so much more straight-forward. With FX you’re dealing in the miniature scale and putting things into other things that have already been shot. It can be very complex and I think it’s a lot harder than doing a regular movie.
Yeah how does working on a VFX set differ from working on a live-action set? Do you have more or less freedom?
PS: Yea, if you’re working on a live-action set everyone’s position is pretty well defined and they stay within their category and do their jobs. Conversely VFX allows me to dabble in a lot of different areas, it’s not just filming an actor every day or that sort of thing. We get to do explosions, motion control spaceships, we’re doing lots of different things everyday. We’re inside we’re outside, a lot of variety.
Moving on to the MORAV project, how did this concept get cooked up?
FD: Sure. MORAV actually started out with me and one of my best friends Grant Imahara, who’s now currently working on Discovery’s Mythbusters, and we were initially motivated by the show Robot Wars when it started in San Francisco and actually competed with our own robots on the show. For years we never really felt like we could call those things robots because they’re more like glorified RC cars than anything else. In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to see someone build real life robots and I think that’s what killed shows like Robot Wars once the novelty of fighting robots wears off you want to see the robots evolve and become more interesting and they never did. With that in mind Grant and I started designing a bipedal robot. Eventually we had this robot and we decided to take it up a notch by putting it in a show that would be more like WWF wrestling. But then Grant and I started to think of combining the notion of robots with the robot operator’s personalities , then we started to construct this fictional story around them. It turned out to be a great science fiction piece and really took on a life of its own. We started writing a huge chronology of history and all these things around the story.
So this story naturally sort of evolved into a cinematic narrative?
FD: Yeah, we started experimenting with the idea of shooting it as a sci-fi show and decided we would shoot it with miniatures and real robots. Coming from a practical effects background I thought that computer graphics had limitations in this. One of the things I always liked about miniatures, speaking totally biased of course, is that there’s so much you get for free with a miniature than with CG. In working with both it really becomes apparent; with miniatures you get interaction with light, smoke, fire, textures, you get all that for free because something is physically present. So if you have real robots playing the part you wouldn’t have to try to make them look like real robots. Grant and I played around in my garage studio for several months developing these robots and got a bunch of our friends in the FX industry to start working on this video. We didn’t end up finishing it but what we have is now up on our website. It’s not the quality that we were really going for because right now this is all out of pocket but we still really enjoyed doing it. What it really comes down to is that we wanted to see a show like this and no one’s done it yet. We started thinking maybe it should be us doing this show.
How long has the MORAV project really been in the works?
PS: Fon’s been working on it for quite a bit and then about a year ago he had called me in to do photography on the models that he had built and before that we had been talking about how we’d do things. As soon as he started doing this he got immediate interest so we all kind of thought, “Hey this is a fun idea,” and it should take off pretty quickly. But everything takes time to develop in terms of meeting people and getting the project in the right hands.
Is there a lot of creative feedback between you two on the story?
PS: Well this is really Fon’s baby. I certainly have given my input since I’ve been involved, but it’s his thing and he’s constantly been working on it. I’m there for him to help whenever he needs it but he’s the driving force coming up with the great ideas.
Just perusing the website you can tell you have a fully-fleshed out history going along with this story. How long did it take you to write all of it?
FD: Grant and I spent an entire summer working on it, Grant working on the robot technology and myself kind of producing everything else with the rest of the crew. But that was all based on the idea of making MORAV into a TV series. Grant then moved on to do the Mythbuster show which has been really great for him, so I flew down to Los Angeles to try and pitch this to the Sci Fi channel and other venues like that. We always had in mind to turn this into a major motion picture so we’ve cultivated the story around the different mediums we’d like to present MORAV in. The motion picture would be the tail-end of the story and would be the most expensive to make because it centers on an all-out World War III storyline. The TV series would focus on more of a civil war-oriented arc leading up to the robot’s conception while the web episodes, that would be featured online, would introduce the training camp that leads up to the coup.
How did the MORAV comic come into play, which by the way looks fantastic from the preview cells on the website.
Generation 1 model.
© MORAV
It seems like you guys have really digested this story to present each segment in the best medium possible.
FD: Yea, we’ve been trying to. One of the things that have kept me motivated is the feedback. I’ve spent a lot of my own time and money on this and it’s great to hear all the positive feedback we’ve gotten.
How do you think a movie like TRANSFORMERS will affect the fate of MORAV?
PS: I’ve just recently worked on PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 3 and TRANSFORMERS and the latter definitely indicates that people are ready for robots (laughs). Just seeing a little bit of the film and the sequences I’m working on the robots look great. We’re doing all kinds of fun action scenes and stuff for them to crash through. It’s going to be very entertaining and I think it’s going to get a great response from the audience. I was telling Fon, “Man the time is right,” because this thing’s coming out in July and hopefully his project starts catching on.
FD: We’re hoping that that movie might spur some interest. What keeps coming up, even from a friend of mine who is currently writing a children’s book, is that everybody loves robots. And you say that and think to yourself “Yeah, you’re right!” I remember thinking in the early 80s that right around the corner I’ll have my own robot. We always feel like we’re right on the verge of having robots as a household appliance.
So where exactly is the MORAV project now?
FD: I’ve got a full-time job so that really limits the time I can spend on it. You have to pick and choose your battles. I go down to LA two to four times a year for pitch meetings but it’s very difficult to get meetings with people who actually make the decisions. There are so many layers to go through first. Currently our main focus right now is on the comic book and gauging interest for the project. In January we launched our website to see how people respond to it and get feedback and that’s been really really great so far.
When can we expect the first comic?
FD: We are still ironing out details with publishing, but we plan on having the first six-issue miniseries done by this September. If that does well you’ll be seeing a lot more of MORAV. Our writer M. Zachary Sherman will be representing us at Comic-Con in July with more information and free stuff. So come to his booth.
On behalf of both myself and Mania.com thank you both for speaking with us.
If you’re interested in the project be sure to show your support and leave your own feedback at www.MORAV.net. For further information on MORAV check out this July’s Comic-Con, pick up the summer issue of Robot Magazine, or read the “Five reasons we can’t wait to see MORAV” write-up in the June 2007 issue of SFX Magazine.
More From Mania
Navigating THE MATRIX with composer Don Davis
Reloading The Musical Matrix Part Two
(Thursday, May 22, 2003)
Reloading The Musical Matrix Part One
(Thursday, May 15, 2003)
See more related content
