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VK machine possible group project
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andy
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I forgot about opaquing fluid Gene. I think you are right. The time period for it is right on, and I have heard of plenty of prop makers using it since. The look is dead on too. Thanks for the heads up on this and also hopefully resurrecting a great thread that needs more posting in it.

Andy
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joberg
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gene, you can necro-post anytime you want ...thanks for the info btw, I never heard of that product before.
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joberg
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

...as for resurecting the V.K. Project, I will know by the end of the month if I can do it again, but this time with a vacu-form machine (cross you fingers people).
Since we have pics from Bwood and his friend Paul Taglianetti and Nick Daring (maybe Gene has some goodies for us), I'll be able to have something very close to the real deal. Now I'm off to inquire about 3-D printing .

This will be a static prop, either completely built or as a kit for serious builder with the proper tools: the only thing you'll be able to move is the arm, the bellows will be vacu-formed also.
Other things to consider: lighting (the 3 buttons at the front and the eye at the end of the arm). Seeing if a metal rod as well as an aluminium base (holding the rod) could be feasable...stay tuned.
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Bwood
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Press on, joberg. Your spirit is indomitable.
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panaflex
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 8:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Exciting stuff!
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joberg
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks guys...it's in the planning phase for sure; it's the first time I'll tackle a project that big. I'm boring my friend (the one with the vac-form machine) with a thousand questions on how to achieve the best bang for our buck Is it better to vacu-form everything? What about resin (or other mediums?) Level of quality, cost, etc...How many tests do I have to do until I'm satisfied with the result?
I would like to vacu-form the top/bottom of machine and maybe the side, also the bellows and the 2 screen box on top of the machine.
The eye and its other parts should be in resin, rod and arm base in aluminium...plastic buttons (3 at the front and 4 on top of the 2 screen box).

I'm getting pricing for some 3-D printing also.
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BigLoop22
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 2:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For those who want a refresher of the scene, I submit this hazy screenshot:

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GKvfx
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been involved in a couple of attempts to recreate the VK. One didn't get too far due to ...... well, due to the stuff that happens on boards. Another attempt took a weird left turn and turned into a different project altogether (I'll let them talk about it if they wish.)

But we did get some interesting tidbits of info from some of the EEG guys that worked on the thing. Some of that has filtered down already, but I'll sum it up here..........

The case was (I believe), just something they picked up at Apex or C&H Sales and, as such was ex-military or ex-industrial.

The first attempt at the VK fell apart in front of Ridley and Michael Deeley during a review. Since another group of guys, based out of EEG (and sometimes using EEG crew) were building props (like the Vid-Phones, the Espers, the Spinner cockpit, etc), it was thrown to them with a three-day deadline. The Conference Room interrogation were the first interior sets filmed and this caused a whole slew of problems since it included some ambitious Front Projection, this crazy VK prop, etc.....

I had thought that a Halliburton case may have been used to make the base of the VK. The bottom of it has the characteristics of a rounded edge - like they took a top from a Halliburton case and trimmed it down. That was NOT the case. The entire thing - top to bottom - is manufactured in the shop. Most of it is vac-form styrene. It was easy (for them) to cut some MDF (or whatever), route the edges, and then vac-form over that.

The eye uses some found parts from a "box o' crap" they pulled from Apex and C&H Sales, as well as some leftover parts from the first attempt. I think I see some Tamiya parts on there, but need to re-check this. Use of kit parts was minimal, though.

The "tray" that swings out, which I thought came from some industrial dispenser of some sort, was manufactured by EEG.

The bellows were initially motorized and designed to work with a little sound detector that would make them pulsate to the dialog on set. Given the fact that any problems with the VK would tie up the entire First Unit of the show (Ridley, Harrison, Sean, Jorden Cronenweth, etc) Ridley just asked them to rig something simple and reliable. For that, a hole was drilled through all the bellows save the top one. Each bellow was connected to the one below it with a piece of elastic string (or a spring - I forget which), and a rod was glued to the inside of the top bellow. When the operator pushed the rod up, the top bellow moved, followed by the ones beneath it. When the operator lowered the rod, the elastic took up the slack. This required the operator to be under the table during the scene and a hole drilled in the table. It was reliable. But unfortunately, since the bellows were all from the same master, they didn't nest well and they can be seen hanging up on one another as they moved. This drove the prop guys nuts, but Ridley was OK with it.

The rest of the VK was "driven" by a control box with a mass of cables coming out of it and going into the VK. (Not sure if they drilled another hole in the table to conceal this. I'll have to ask.) This controlled the arm as well as the video signals to the three monitors. The main monitor was a color monitor used in television cameras as a viewfinder. (Not the home video kind, but the big $100,000.00 TV Studio cameras.) Not sure of the origins of the smaller ones, but I suspect they are smaller, cheaper B&W viewfinder monitors as well.

The boxes housing the small monitors are just styrene boxes. The monitor tubes were pulled out of their housings and stuck in those.

Here's where it gets tricky. Photos show two vac-form shells for VK on the bench, but ALL the EEG guys claim there was only ONE VK. After all, it was built in three days and that was pushing it just to get the one done. But in looking at the movie, and has been mentioned here, there are clearly two different VK's - the one on the table and one used in closeups. I think we figured it out. Last summer, I cataloged a crew member's BR stuff prior to it being consigned to the Profiles in History auction. In there were a whole pile of photos/slides/transparencies purported to have been taken for the Esper sequence. Problem is, none of it matched up with what is in the film. They match what was published in Cinefex, but they are not in the film (save for one, actually). Turns out this stuff (shot on the first day of filming, while the problems with the Front Projection rig and lighting were being sorted out) DID make it into an early cut of the film. (In fact, you can see it on the "deleted scenes" disc.) Dissatisfied with the footage, Ridley had it all re-shot and re-transferred to video during post production in England. Once that was done, he then re-shot all the closeups of the Esper while in London. This entailed having the Esper unit prop shipped to London for the reshoot. When it was rebuilt in London, some different parts were added to it, changing the look of the thing. Looking at these shots, the VK is clearly visible in front (or part of?) the Esper. This coincides with what one of the EEG crew mentioned to me - they got a call one day to ship the VK to Ridley's office and that was the last anyone saw of it. Years later, Ridley didn't even recall making the request, so the crew member thought the thing might have been intercepted and stolen. It appears that it did make it to Ridley's office, and it did make it to London, Ridley just forgot. (Where it is now is anyone's guess, but my money is that it is in London.)

So what does the Esper have to do with the VK? Since they reshot the Esper, they also probably reshot close-ups of the VK screens. And, in the new Esper sequence, the VK monitors have signals running to them. Since all that footage was likely remastered in PAL format (not NTSC), they would have to have changed the monitors in both the Esper and the VK to get the things to work in London. Not being able to find a Sony viewfinder monitor in PAL, they used the smallest color monitor they could find - but one that was still larger than the original. This required some modifications to the VK shell, resulting in a "chunkier" version that is intercut with the slender version shot during principle.

The last bit involves a bit of supposition on mine and Mark Stetson's part. We figured it out when we were showing him the sequence and he finally realized there were two different VK shells used (or, really, one that was modified).

Hope some of this helps.............

Gene
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joberg
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great story Gene Cool Love to hear those accounts coming from the pro who worked directly on the set/movie.
Yes, for the V.K case, I never thought that if was a found object; if it was, it has been transformed with quite a few add-ons.
When I see Michael Fink working on the V.K (and as you mentioned, in the same photo, the top vacu-shell of another mahcine) I didn't think that if was the same one used in some of the behind-the-scene pics...it was rather confusing.

Now with your imput/info we can finally put that story to rest and concentrate on building that prop
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Birdie
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 5:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great info Smile

I still intend to finish mine, it's become by far my longest running project ever. I go in fits and starts with it - I'll do a whole bunch of work on it, then get depressed with how complex the bloody thing is and toss it aside for another 6 months.

Given the scarcity of builds, I guess a few others on this board are probably familiar with that feeling Rolling Eyes
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joberg
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I hear you Birdie...it's not only the tooling that we'll take a while it's the production of bucks for vacu-forming,(each bellow has its buck), to test real pulls and see what has to be tweaked (how the plastic re-acts, where it could gather and fold and make a piece unusable and therefore costly for me, etc,,,).

Then you'll have the molds for various pieces also (eye, buttons, etc) the 3-D printing, blah, blah, blah.

But as soon as all this has been done, then you get the ball rolling and, hopefully, there will a limited amount of problems.
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GKvfx
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Heh, Mike Fink chuckles when I relate this "research" to him and responds, "We built ours in three days*.........."

*albeit with little to no sleep each night......

Gene
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joberg
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah...but I have a day job and it ain't prop-making
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Bwood
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, that, and also they didn't have the added burden of having to copy anything, because they were creating an original….
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joberg
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Words Bwood Exclamation ...also, my life could be less complicated if I had very good refs...alas, sometimes you have to work with the tools you have Sad
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ridleyville
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 1:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Since all that footage was likely remastered in PAL format (not NTSC), they would have to have changed the monitors in both the Esper and the VK to get the things to work in London.


I can indeed confirm that as i have the masters and mentioned the change of monitors from NTSC to PAL in a previous post and that the VK was lost or destroyed in London on the reshoot.
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kaiburr
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 12:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey all,

My VK project took a sharp left when I managed to fall in love with Syd's original drawing and I thought it would be cool to build the concept model. I do intend to get back to the film VK but coz I was doing the british version, the american version will be a total restart. That said, as many of the elements are shared by both, chances are that there'll be three VK models on my workbench at some point. Sucks to be an addict...

Nathan
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joberg
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looking forward to see those take shape As for mine, pricing is taking more time than anticipated. Next week I'll start the mock-up: first the top and bottom, then the sides (3) and the rear (full of details that one)!
Then the box with the 2 small screens and the baffles at the rear...with the grand finale: the arm with the eye.

Got my work cut out for me Rolling Eyes
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Mr Webber
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 6:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very exciting news J Very Happy
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joberg
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, so I got the pricing(ball-park estimate) and...it's too expensive Shocked Confused (about $2600)! That's with the best of the best materials/options possible.
Now, since it's at the early stage of the process, I'm exploring other options: i.e cheaper construction & materials to put that price at a reasonable level. I wouldn't certainly pay that much for a static prop. Rolling Eyes So instead of using fiberglassing for the main shells, or an aluminium-made arm, etc...I'm going to see if by vacu-forming the main components and strenghtening them will offer the same result.
So, in the coming weeks, I'll make a buck and experiment with various methods, after all, it's a prop, not an everyday used object.
The quantity of people interested will also make a diff in the pricing of the prop (better price to vac-form 20 lids, than 10)

Stay tuned Wink
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