Tuesday, 4/29/97 Childhood interest in special effects fuels
kids’ movie Tony Gardner’s lifelong hobby proves profitable as well
as fun
By Aimee Phan Daily Bruin Contributor Imagine being a kid and
waking up in a magical wonderland where you are immediately
befriended by five giant talking kangaroos. Oh yeah, and they do
kung fu too. A difficult image to conjure up? For Tony Gardner, it
was easy. It was up to him and his make-up and animatronic
character effects company, Alterian Studios, to bring these
mythical creatures to life in the children’s fantasy-adventure
film, "Warriors of Virtue." Gardner’s interest in fooling audiences
began early as a kid, when he was an amateur magician who performed
magic acts at birthday parties and senior citizens’ homes. But it
wasn’t until Gardner saw the film "Planet of the Apes" that he
became interested in make-up and special effects. "After seeing it,
I read everything I could about special effects," Gardner recalls.
"I got involved in theater and the fine arts and when I was 13, I
got hold of a movie camera and I realized you could combine all
these things and do little effects movies. I’d draft my parents and
my friends to be in these movies and do all the make-up and
effects. And once I got into college, I realized that I could get
paid for my hobby, which was even more exciting because it seemed
like an ideal world; to do the stuff you love to do and have
someone else foot the bill." "Warriors of Virtue" tells the story
of a young boy named Ryan who is transported to the mystical land
of Tao, where he learns valuable lessons about self-confidence and
trust in others through his friendship with the Warriors of Virtue,
a group of meditating, philosophy-spouting kangaroo kung fu
experts. When the Law brothers, four Chinese-American doctors,
decided to create a children’s film that embraced the five classic
virtues of their Chinese heritage, benevolence, righteousness,
order, wisdom, and loyalty, they wanted their central heroes in the
film to be animal-human hybrids. Also wanting the film to be a live
adventure, they enlisted the help of Tony Gardner to help bring
their ideas to the screen. Gardner, whose company previously
crafted make-up and special effects for such hit films as "Forrest
Gump," "Speed," and the Addams Family movies, was up to the
difficult challenge of creating these life-size puppet characters.
"This was the most challenging project we’ve ever done in a lot of
different ways," Gardner admits. "The fact that you’re doing a film
that has to balance between reality and fantasy and that these Roo
characters you’ve built have to stand next to a little kid and look
believable and not silly or goofy. Because if it doesn’t look
believable, that will drag the whole film down." While Gardner and
Alterian Studios have been creating make-up and special effects for
many films and television shows, "Warriors of Virtue" gave them the
first chance and priceless opportunity to get involved completely
in the development and execution of animatronic characters. "We
were involved from the very beginning," Gardner says. "We got to
develop the characters, cast the actors who were going to wear the
suits, work on the characters’ appearances to fit their
personalities, rehearse them, direct them, and perform them. It was
a very collaborative and exciting experience, to help create this
whole world." While the actors inside the Roos would never be
recognized outside their 25-pound costume, Gardner did integrate
some of their facial features into the mechanical heads. During the
building of the prototypes for the Roo-Warriors, Gardner had
decided to keep some of the human features of the actors inside the
costumes visible in order to humanize and make the creatures more
believable. "I chose to use a human being’s eyes for the Roo eyes
because I think the cliche that the eyes are the windows to the
soul is true," Gardner says. "I will fight for the performers’ eyes
all the time because all the expression is there. That’s why I
think the Roos have so much personality." After the manufacturing
of the costumes was complete, the set was moved to China for
filming to begin. Gardner and his crew also relocated to the China
set in order to help operate the animatronic characters. Because of
the complex nature of these animatronic creatures, at least three
to five people were needed to operate each of the Roo characters.
"Some animatronic characters can be completely puppeteered by
people," Gardner says. "But these characters were designed around a
human being so, in essence, one of the puppeteers is inside it.
Every one of the actors inside the Roos controlled the body
language and head movement, but their mouths were mechanically
articulated by puppeteers standing off to the side." Although the
process to bring these complicated creatures to life proved to be
taxing on Gardner’s crew, director Ronny Yu and the actors, the
finished product was a happy compensation for everyone involved.
But while the special make-up did dominate the film’s production,
Gardner hopes that the costumes will be the last thing on the
audience’s mind. "I think when a movie’s well done, it’s easy to
forget (the work put into it)," Gardner says. "I go to films that I
worked on and I’ll want to get sucked into the story. For little
kids, you walk a fine line between what’s scary and what’s
accessible. And from a technical standpoint, we’ve got to make the
audience buy the fact that these characters speak, so they can get
past the effects and get into the movie." FILM: Warriors of Virtue"
opens in theaters this Friday. Related Links: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
presents Warriors Of Virtue