Page 62 - Star Wars Insider #177

JOHN DYKSTRA

“THE AMOUNT
OF POWER THAT

THE SYSTEM
DREW WAS

ENORMOUS
COMPARED TO

TODAY’S DIGITAL
TECHNOLOGY.”

out how to make the camera
interface with the motion-
control system, and he had
to coordinate with Don and
Dick with regards to motor
placements, heat issues, all of
that stuff.”

EARLY INSPIRATIONS
Lucas’ decision to form a
new effects company did
not necessarily mean that
everything about the company
had to be new. Much of the 02
impetus to establish custom
tools and workfl ows came
from Dykstra himself. “If there specifically, he adds, “The idea certainly more than the sum of

was anything that my youth was, if you didn’t have to use its myriad inspirations. “There
afforded me,” he refl ects, “it an existing camera, this is the was a huge amount of stuff
was the naïveté to go to the camera you would make.” that we had to borrow from
producers and say, ‘We’re Dykstra’s inspirations for the other environments,” explains

going to build it all from Dykstraflex were several. One Dykstra. “Medical, military… It
scratch.’” With the Dykstrafl ex of its forebears had existed was eclectic. We didn’t have
at Trumbull’s facility, while a lot of time, and we harvested
another had been developed from a variety of fi elds and
by Alvah Miller and Jerry combined it all for our
WINNING BID Jeffress at the University of unique applications.

Lucasfilm’s Pete Vilmur explains how California at Berkeley. Dykstra “The concept of seven axes
he came to own Don Trumbull’s original had met the pair while working of motion that are continuously
mechanical drawings for the Dykstrafl ex, as

seen in this article. on a 16mm film project for the variable but still synchronizable
“Back in 2008, I picked these drawings National Science Foundation. at a variety of speeds didn’t
up from a poorly publicized auction on eBay. “They had created what exist, as far as I knew. If you
The seller, who has a long career in visual essentially amounted to a want to talk about it in terms
effects, but never at ILM, said the drawings
were originally transferred to [John Dykstra’s motion-control camera,” he of patentability, it would be a
company] Apogee in 1977 or ’78. When recalls. “The Dykstrafl ex was design patent, not necessarily
Apogee was acquired by Sony around 1992, really an extension of the an origination patent.”
they transferred again. Sony shut their visual system that Al and Jerry had As for the name,
effects department around 2000, at which

time the seller bought some equipment from been designing.” “Dykstraflex” was in keeping

their fire sale. Don Trumbull’s drawings were Many of the ideas that with the nomenclature of
in one of the boxes, and eight years later, he went into the camera were motion-picture fi lm cameras.
decided to give them a new home via eBay.”
completely new, however, Prior to ILM’s system, there was

and the finished article was a camera at Trumbull’s facility
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