All language subtitles for Charmed Effects.eng

We dug deep into the
bag of tricks on every episode.

We're the dreaded
visual-effects guys.

We were little
mad scientists on that show.

The trick is figuring out
what's a practical effect

and which is a visual effect.

Once that decision is made,
and that's made by the second day,

it's up to the various teams to come
up with a solution on how to do it all.

Every show had its own problems,
and we had to overcome them.

But right from the very beginning,

we were looking at
featurous type of effects to do,

and then trying to figure out
a way to do them

in a TV budget, in a TV manner.

So right from the very first script,
it was tough.

For me, the joy of Charmed
was getting a new script

and seeing what the writers
would come up with.

Because, you know, as each episode
would go by,

as we rose to the challenge,

it would inspire the writers to raise
the bar a little bit more.

We'd get a script and, you know,
two weeks later we were shooting it.

When you were about
to finish the episode,

then you knew, "Okay, now we
have to do the special-effects stuff."

So there was that anticipation.

As you walked
from the dressing room

to go to one of the sets
where you were shooting,

you would see people
would be there working

and building
the special-effects set,

and setting stuff up,
and you would say,

"Okay, we're getting closer.
We're getting closer."

You knew that that was going to be
the conclusion of every episode,

was they were going to do
whatever special effects they hadn't--

The bulk of them that
they hadn't been able to get to,

and so it just became
one big, exciting thing to do

that started from the first day you
got there and just built, built, built.

Till finally you could:

It would be so sad

if your sisters weren't
here to help you through all this.

Billy played a really cool demon, and
the writers wanted him to catch on fire.

So Billy looked at me and said,
“Are we gonna do this visually?"

| said, "Well,
what do you think, Billy?

Let's butter up your arm here,
and we'll start with a little patch."

Next thing | knew, we were buttering
up his whole arm, lighting him on fire,

and there's Billy Drago, you know,
no stunt guy and he's fully ablaze.

And pulled it off just fine.
| mean, he's really a great guy.

The biggest challenges were

we were doing visual effects
in those first couple episodes

that | don't think had been
done yet on television.

There was a freezing episode
in the kitchen in episode two

that took us a while to figure out
how to do, but we did it.

And | think those
were the biggest challenges,

were selling the effects
so that people would think:

"Yes, these are witches and this is
happening" and we were able to do it,

and to do it in a way that stuff didn't
look cheesy and it was believable.

All these gags had been
done before, up until Charmed,

and then we were mixing mediums,
you know, we were mixing

practical effects with visual effects.

And | think that's a reason why
Charmed was so successful.

We had my practical effects
on one end,

we had the magic
of Steve Lebed,

and when you blend the two, like we
did on Charmed, as well as we did,

we were able to get some really neat
footage and some really neat gags.

As soon as | was told we're gonna
have a dragon in the episode,

| just wanted to do it.
To be able to do a dragon

was just like,
"Oh, my God, this is great."

How many chances
will you have to do that?

The director was John Kretchmer.
He understood visual effects

and he understood
what it took to

incorporate a dragon into
the shots that he wanted to do.

And he's very creative about how he
wants to play the dragon in these shots.

One of the initial appearances
of the dragon is outside of...

When Wyatt's in the playpen.

And we had to somehow sell the fact
that he conjured this dragon

from a television show
he was watching.

And it was a huge challenge for
Lebed and his team, because they...

There is nothing harder for
a CGI person to do than to animate

a creature from scratch. Especially in
television, on a television schedule.

- It's almost impossible.
- And so we'd storyboard

all the specific shots,
all the specific actions for the dragon,

and then | spent
the next couple of weeks

doing designs, drawing sketches.

Then it was a process
of going through

and building that model
in the computer

and texturing it and painting it,
eventually rigging it for animation.

That was a really good mix between
special effects and visual effects

in that episode because at one point,
we were on location in Griffith Park...

| had a car coming through the tunnel
with a bomb in the trunk.

So the stunt driver in the car was
to set the bomb off at the right time,

and as the car came
through the tunnel,

the trunk of the car blows off, the car
catches on fire and pitches sideways.

At the same time, I've got
two huge propane cannons

going off to represent the flames of
this dragon, supposed to be going off.

It was huge. The fireball was huge.

| think she's talking about that.

And at the end we had to take all that
footage and incorporate our dragon

into that footage so it looks like it's
emerging out of the flames and smoke.

It was one of the most fun episodes
| had to work on.

We did this one episode,
"Saving Private Leo"

in a parking lot in Canoga Park where
you could look over and see the mall

where people were shopping.

And we're doing fireballs, you know,
40-foot fireballs in the air,

blowing up boats,
and machine-gun fire.

While all this is going on,
I'm just wondering,

"Wow, | wonder what those
shoppers think.

They're looking at this parking lot over
here, and all this mayhem is going on."

Robin Royce, our set decorator,

he actually got this
1947 Chris-Craft boat. It was huge.

We dropped it in the parking lot,
painted it grey, put numbers on it.

I took water pipe
and then welded film cans,

because we couldn't afford
antiaircraft weapons,

mounted it on this boat, dumped
in tons of sand, put in palm trees,

and in four hours,
we shot Guadalcanal.

With the magic of Stephen Lebed
and his visual-effects crew,

we had Zeros flying over, you know,
he put in all the background.

It was just amazing
that we were able to pull that off.

On a weekly basis,
we were pulling the rabbit out of a hat.

There wasn't anything that we
got from Brad Kern's office that--

We never sat down and said,
"Jeez, | don't think we can do that."

I think they were deliberately
trying to write things

that they think that we couldn't do,

and I'd say, "Well, you know what,
| think we can do that one"

and people look at you like,
"You're out of your mind"

and I'd say,
"No, no, no, we can do this."

The biggest effect Randy did was

we blew up the second floor
of the house on-stage,

and it was a huge explosion.

| mean, there was cork and wood
and glass just flying through the air.

It was a very dangerous effect,
and it was spectacular.

- That was amazing.
- As time went on,

we got increasingly better
about knowing

what Production
could and couldn't handle.

So as we were crafting stories in the
writers' room, we'd be aware of,

you know, what they could shoot
and what they couldn't shoot,

and, you know, we'd push them
to their limits, | think,

and they would probably say that we
pushed them beyond their limits.

The wildest script was
"| Dream of Phoebe.”

It involved a magic carpet
and a genie.

Thank you for responding
to my letter.

In that script, there was one line
toward the end that basically said:

I wish to resurrect
the lost city of Zanbar.

| just had to reread that line
over and over again because

| couldn't believe they actually wrote
a line in the script that said

that this city was supposed to
rise from the sands.

There's only so many ways you can
accomplish something like that.

We designed a city. We did drawings
of what the city would look like,

with buildings
and different structures,

and created a small city map.

We went ahead and
built three models,

and basically tried to animate
a city rising up from the sand.

Doing the wirework, for me,
was actually a lot of fun.

It was time-consuming,
but the effect is always so great.

When you see people
flying through the air,

rather than CGI creatures
flying through the air,

people are flying through the air.

Wirework at the time was
kind of new for television, you know.

It had come from Hong Kong, so it was
a learning curve for everyone involved.

Randy Cabral and his guys
were responsible for coming up with

all the ways of making
Prue's powers work.

Any time you can do it for real,
it's always gonna be better.

So they would rig
different props on wires,

or we'd figure out ways
of shooting things in reverse.

And if there was wires involved, things
like that, and we saw those wires,

then we would
paint out the wires

and do whatever it took
to sustain the illusion.

You can take some
of the stuff that we do

and mix it with
Stephen's visual effects

and morph some of that image,
it really creates some really cool stuff.

And from a visual-effects standpoint,
it got harder.

Or, let me say more complex.
Much more complex.

| look at the number of effects we had
in the first episode, which were, | think,

maybe 25 or so. And then | look
at "Bare Witch" which had, | think,

over 90 effects in it.

As the seasons progressed, certain
effects became easier and easier.

Orbing became very easy.

How did | get here?

We found things that we didn't need
to focus on. It became more important

to come up with more efficient ways
to kill these guys.

Finally, by the last season, we were
doing some really radical stuff.

We were doing some stuff
that was just above feature work.

Every day was a special day
on Charmed.

Every episode had its own, you know,
demons or gremlins

that you had to deal with
on a daily basis.

And then just putting it all
together with stunts and effects.

Which was fantastic.

Have a nice day.