Original subtitles

I was introduced to um GMO about three

years ago when he had a screening of

Kronos. A mutual friend of ours, Matthew

Robbins, who's a director, said, "You

two should meet." And we met very

briefly and shook hands. A couple years

later, I got a call from GMO. He asked

me if I would take a look at this

project he had in development. And he

thought that I'd be interested in

getting involved. And I looked at its

short treatment and I was right away

struck with just an amazing opportunity

in the sense that the insect world is so

alien unlike anything that we deal with

on our scale. Originally in the short

film, they were not roaches, they were

scarabs, they were beetles.

And I like that much better. And we had

done some designs. And then somewhere in

the process of the short is when Michael

Phillips suggested cockroaches and Bob

Weinstein grabbed onto it. And I always

disliked it because first of all, the

wings of the cockroach, I thought they

were not that great for the coat. I

wanted them to be black. There's

descriptions of angels in very old

writings where they say the angels are

black as obsidian. And I love that

description. The idea that they would be

shiny and black, you know, really

beautiful but uh sort of imposing and

like a sculpture in onx. And the

cockroach has a really reddish brown,

really horrible. And uh I disliked it.

Once we began to actually develop the

creature, his main concern was is that

we follow science in nature. He didn't

want to just go off on some abstract

tangent and just create some jumble of

stuff just because it was scary.

GMO brought in a lot of real life macro

photography of of real insects and the

edict was to always go to nature to

justify something. There are examples in

our creatures of details and

functionality and physical aspects of it

that go right to a certain type of bug.

We tried to base the design of them as

faithfully on the anatomy of two species

uh manteds and cockroaches. These two

species for many years were classified

very close together if not together,

fused almost, but as enthmology advanced

they separated and I thought their DNAs

would be able to be recombined and and

create the Judas.

He really wanted it to be a distillation

of what that family of insect has to

offer. distill that down and take what

works and make it in the end so that if

you actually knew a lot about science

you'd go geez you know they had the

right number of body parts and you know

that's right that behavior does really

exist in this kind of a creature. So as

a designer that forced me to look into a

smaller area for solutions kind of

defines the pallet, defines the scale of

the undertakings.

GMO is extremely visual and he draws

very well. It was great for me to play

myself off of him and take what he was

talking about and kind of give my spin

and put it back in his court. It was a

very much a volleying. I've never had

such a interactive uh experience with

another person.

We did a set that was called the Bible

that Ty Rubin Ellisonson did and in the

Bible we broke it down into number of

joints. We tried to be very very

scientific about the uh sex organs where

the lungs would be what the shape of the

body would be in order to

architecturally support the larger

structure.

The first time we see the uh young

nymph, it's running around inside of a

little cardboard box. And uh it's

primarily real anatomy of a cockroach,

which we've kind of modified to give it

a more kind of stealth uh evil razor

blade type of appearance. The cockroach

itself is made up of a head, a body, and

a tail. We've taken those things and

given them their own kind of mutation

kind of effect here, which is a larger

head, which can have a more vicious set

of mandibles in it. The body is smaller

and slender and and kind of built like a

a bodybuilder. And the tail has been

diminished quite a bit to just kind of

like a blade. The idea is that it's all

about biting. You know, it just goes

straight from the position in the box,

flies out, and bites the hell out of

Susan.

What we have here is a near final

mechanical test of our mimic hero head.

If you look over here, you can see that

we've got our head moving.

And this is a pretty good anatomical

reconstruction of how a real cockroach's

mouth parts work. The mandible structure

is more preying mantis than cockroach

because I think it's more interesting.

But it's a a mixture, you know. We went

in and we named every piece of those

movable jaws, you know, the palp, the

piece of the man that is a grinder. We

really made anatomical Judas.

Once Rick's sculptors were brought into

the mix, they took these simplistic

designs and really embellished them with

all the detail that they have under

their command as sculptors.

And you can see that when it's closed

up, uh, it's kind of humanlike in its

form. Sort of looks like a thumb and a

couple of fingers there.

But then he's got a nice deadly slashing

and stabbing claw and then these spikes

to do some real damage. Basically, these

things are big puppets and they have a

lot of cables and things, controls

hanging outside of them and people to

operate them and they can be very uh

cumbersome to move. We'll go up to 16

puppets here sometimes to make these

creatures move.

Sue the time.

The mimic is all about death and it I

thought it was advantageous to introduce

kind of a skull motif. Of course, all

the head components have to fit inside

of this mandible set. When the mimic is

trying to imitate a human, it places its

hands over its face like this. And these

exterior portions of the claws imitate

the mouth and the nose and the eyes. So

beyond just designing the the creature

head, we had to design what would be the

human head which was in GMO's mind like

this horrific spectre in the terms of

the 3D mimicry like the face of a man or

light was fundamental. For example, when

Susan is putting together the face, I

have a glow stick moving around

and finally it settles and illuminates

the face the right way. If a mimic steps

into Fifth Avenue at 300 pm,

you know, the army would be there in 15

minutes. But if they are in dark

tunnels, dark alleys under flickering

fluorescent lights and they move really

fast and between columns, you could buy

the illusion. Light was definitely vital

and working with the DP Dan Lston was

vital to make the mimics look good as

much as possible.

the director's vision is important and

so working with GMO was great because we

have a very similar sensibility and he

was able to articulate to me um really

what his interests were. We need to be

fast. We need it to be scary. It has to

be alien but believable. It has to have

a viciousness that reaps quickly.

those key words and ideas. Then I go

back and uh sit down and just start

thumbnailing out ideas. Basically in my

approach is to look at forms uh drawing

insect forms from the real world,

modifying them and so forth until I come

up with like an icon or a a basic design

that I think uh is dynamic.

We came up with a really good stuff. If

God ever plans to do a giant cockroach,

he should put a call to Tai Ruben. You

really figure it out.