INT: Mike Elizalde

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

The Arrow
interviews Mike Elizalde

On
my last trip to La-La-Land, I was lucky enough to drop by the “Spectral Motion”
special effect shop. In case you’re not aware, they’re the company
who were the leading effects team on Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy”. They
also just wrapped up some work on the upcoming “Blade:
Trinity”. I had the
chance to talk with Mike Elizalde, one of the company heads and here’s
what came out of it.

ARROW: Hey Mike. So from what I
understand, Spectral Motion were always subcontracted.

MIKE: Yes, that’s
right.

ARROW: Now with “Hellboy”, it’s your first gig as
leading effects team on the project.

MIKE: Yes, that’s
correct. 

ARROW: Congrats on that, man!

MIKE: Thanks!

ARROW: So how did the company start up, if I may
ask?

MIKE: My wife Mary
initially began the company as a way to market
model kits. When I first started in the business back in 1987, I was a
sculptor and that’s what I did for several years in the business. It just got to a point where I wasn’t feeling satisfied by doing that
anymore. You know you get handed a design and you’re restricted by
parameters and you’re pretty much doing somebody else’s design with
your time. So what I thought we’d do is sort of migrate in the
animatronics design world because you really get to invent your own
designs where you’re basically told what it’s supposed to do.

But in the
process of delivering those requirements, you also invent new things
and you turn in something that gives a little extra. So creatively, it
was more rewarding. But then we also found that I was missing
sculpting a lot. So what I did is that I sculpted and marketed model
kits and that’s when my wife and I said, “You know, we should really start
our own company to put these on the market so we have a moniker, we
have a name that people will recognize the product by..”, and that led
into subcontracting work in the animatronics,
sculpture, etc… field. That’s how Spectral Motion was first born.

ARROW:
Creatively speaking, did they let you “run with it” on
“HellBoy”? How limited were you?

MIKE: You know we
never felt any limitations. The source material is so rich with
interpretive design already. It wouldn’t be possible to take Mignola’s
drawings and to make those exactly the same as a 3D incarnation
without some modifications just for practical purposes, so you have a
very cool, clean design to work with and start from and then we have a
very deep  pool of artists and technicians that we draw from and
they’re able to interpret things very cohesively. What we ended with
is that Guillermo Del Toro would tell us what we needed to build. How
I started is that I read the script and wrote a breakdown of the
effects that I thought we should build, then Guillermo looked at that
and he agreed on everything I put down except for some minor changes.

ARROW: What kind of changes?

MIKE: For
instance, I suggested that we make puppets for some characters, puppets
versus makeup, puppets versus a guy in a suit and ultimately we broke
it down and found out that some of those things weren’t necessary
because most of the things we wanted to achieve could be done with
just a person in makeup or just a guy in a creature suit so it was
reduced to some degree, not dramatically reduced by any means. We had
a very extensive build list and once it got finalized, I brought in a
design team and we submitted maquettes.

The first time Guillermo
saw the maquettes he was totally enamored, he just loved them so we
were already on a good note there. Most of
the guys that worked on the movie know the source material and are
fans and they knew how to interpret it with a little bit more
knowledge as opposed to somebody that didn’t know the source material
at all trying to figure out what does Ape Sapien looks like.

ARROW: Were you a fan of the source material
before meeting Guillermo?

MIKE: No.
As a matter
of fact, when Guillermo first mentioned HellBoy,  it was during
Blade 2 and that’s when I also first heard the name HellBoy. And at the
time I didn’t think very much of it; that didn’t sound very
interesting; little that I know! After hearing Guillermo talk about it
and when it seemed like he was really considering making a movie based
on these characters I did a lot of research and as a result I became a
fan of Mike’s (Mignola)  work and went and bought everything I
could find. As a matter of fact, last night I read the Amazing Screw On
Head to my son.

ARROW: (laughs) Very kool!

MIKE: Yeah, it was
great. He really dug that! So yeah, we’re very much into his work at
this point in time.

ARROW: What would you say is the ratio in
terms of CGI and practical effects in the film?

MIKE: The number
that Guillermo quoted was 80 percent practical and 20 percent digital.

ARROW: Beautiful!

MIKE: But I don’t
think that’s the case based on what I’ve seen. I think it’s more like
60/40. I think that’s about the right ratio. But Guillermo was very
adamant about using a lot of practical effects and we did. We shot so
many days on that shoot. We were on set, I would say 80 to 90 percent
of the time, throughout the whole shoot. So we did do a lot of
practical and I did see a 2-hour rough cut of the film and our stuff
is very, very high profile.

ARROW: Very kool. What would you say is the
most impressive makeup or effect that you and your team created for
the film?

MIKE: You know, I’m
biased, I really think that every single thing that we put on that set looks really great. I think that Abe Sapien is a very beautiful
visual character. I think people will really remember him; he’s
very elegant, very strong and very smart and the persona behind the
makeup really sells everything, it really comes though. The actor, Doug Jones, did a
spectacular job of bringing the character to
life. Again, it’s very beautiful makeup…nothing like I’ve ever seen
before.

ARROW: Was the character of Abe Sapien CG
enhanced?

MIKE: Yes, he
was. There are some scenes where Abe is swimming in the water and we couldn’t
have an actor in the water with this kind of makeup where we couldn’t
hide the tanks to help him breathe, so we didn’t go that route. So most
of the underwater stuff has Sapien in CG, but there are some
practical dry for wet shots too. There are scenes where Abe is swimming and floating in the water and he looks really great.

ARROW: So he doesn’t look like those CG aliens
swimming in “Alien: Resurrection”?

MIKE: (laughs) No,
no, no Tippet did a very spectacular job. I think the problem with a
lot of the CG is the animators want to put a lot more movement into
something than it would realistically have, so it winds up looking
unrealistic. I think Tippet really pulled the reigns back on this and
he thought, “This has to look real, this has to look exactly like a
real person swimming in the water– which is strong enough to propel
himself that quickly, of course”.

ARROW:
So what’s next for you guys?

MIKE: We just
wrapped up working on “Blade: Trinity”…

ARROW: Nice!

MIKE: We worked with
David Goyer on that. That was a very nice experience, it was good in
several ways. It was good in the sense that we had a very small build
list. The second I got off the plane for “HellBoy”, I was back here
starting Blade 3, no rest period, no break…so thankfully it was a
smaller job and the set experience was great. We shot in Vancouver;
all the people there were just great. Everybody was very impressed and
happy with the stuff that we brought up.

ARROW: What kind of effects can we expect from
that film? Can you give me something here?

MIKE: (laugh) I
can’t. I just talked to New Line because we have a comic convention
coming up and I
wanted to bring some of the stuff and they said “No, not yet”. They
didn’t want to release information and David isn’t talking either.

ARROW: Is it taken further than
“Blade 2”? I
mean, that film blew my mind in terms of effects!

MIKE: It’s
different. It doesn’t have that Guillermo signature to it…it’s a different animal
and that’s all I want to say about that…

ARROW: (laughs) I gave it a shot!

MIKE: (Laughs)

ARROW: Apart from Blade 3 ,anything else on the
horizon?

MIKE: Yes, we’re
talking to 3 different producers for 3 different projects that can be
happening anytime soon. I don’t want to disclose what those are just
yet.

ARROW: You don’t want to jinx it until the
papers are signed.

MIKE: Exactly.

ARROW: Fair enough. Thanks a lot for the
interview, Mike.

MIKE: No
problem,
John.

I’d like to thank Mike for his time and for taking me on a tour of his
mucho impressive shop. Now that’s what I call expert work! ART BABY!

ART! Keep rocking and rolling Mike!
NOTE: Thanks to Joe Venegas



for
making my visit happen.