 it's illegal. For another web show it has been six months since we've done a proper web show. Hello film fans it's been a little while hasn't it? We don't want to just rush out any old crap web show so we're always looking to bring you incredible guests and today's guest is incredible. We didn't get the pleasure to meet him in person for life after the navigate but we did manage to interview him over the phone digitally. Thanks COVID. Edward Ice is today's guest on the web show. Tell us some of his credits. You may or may not know the name but you will know his work. He is production designer, illustrator, conceptual artist, storyboard artist for films such as Back to the Future 2, Hook, Flight of the Navigator, Ragnophobia, Captain EO with Michael Jackson. And some of the directors he's worked with, Spielberg for what? Zemeckis, Francis Ford Coppola, he's worked with George Lucas. So I mean you will know his work. You'll see some of his work in the interview so we won't dilly-dally. So excited to get the web show back and running. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Edward I. You've worked according to IMDB as production artist, conceptual artist, production illustrator. If I have that right, for someone who isn't familiar with those roles what does that mean that you do? Well yeah I had a very sort of wide range of titles in the film industry because number one the union often controls the titles under certain titles you can have. The other thing is I just sort of worked in a different function for a variety of different projects. So production designer obviously is sort of the overseer of the film fulfilling their director's grand vision I guess you could say. But the production designer controls the imagery for the film, the sets. Yeah you become the guy who creates the platform to tell the story on. The biggest title you could have in the art department of a film. I've done concept design which is probably my favorite and most fulfilling role because you're just hired to sort of come up with ideas for the visuals for the film. Production designer has the overview. He'll often have several concept designers working particularly on a science fiction film. You know I sit down and I come up with the spaceship and the aliens and some of the sets and what's this planet look like and so much of my job is what I call the what if role. If the director needs a spaceship he doesn't know what he wants it to look like. He gets well what if it looked like this and what if it looked like that and what if and it's to me that's where the real creativity happens because you're just sort of speculating about what could happen and trying to come up with something unique and original. I know when I worked in entertainment the big catchphrase was we need to do something that's never been seen before and even a flight of the navigator when I met Randall and he looked at my portfolio book you know I had done some sketches that were sort of star wars like and some typical sci-fi spaceships and his remark was yeah this is great and it showed him that I could draw and he said but we want to do something different and what can we do with a reflective spaceship and so it became this sculptural exercise and what if it looked like this and what if it looked like that. So that's a lot of what concept design is just filling in those what ifs. So I've done concept design I've done production illustrator which can be I mean that's a union coin term which back when I worked in the film industry met that you were hired to sometimes do storyboards sometimes do set illustrations but for me you know I'm a designer I have a design degree and it meant designing so it was kind of a misnomer because an illustrator is a person that sort of puts other person's ideas on paper and when you're a more of a designer you're actually coming up with ideas and creating the visuals. So there's all sorts of overlaps with those and then storyboards was probably that's what I did sort of like a filler when I couldn't get those design positions and it was still fun and it was still an education and I learned a lot about filmmaking working with some great directors doing storyboards I think that encompasses all the things on IMDB that I'm listed for. So you said that you did a design degree? I did yeah I studied industrial design in college and I was gearing to be a product designer basically you know the person who designs the phones and the luggage and you know anything so I was geared to design for mass production but my last couple semesters in school I saw what was going on in film with you know Star Wars and Joe Johnson who I'm sure you're familiar with who designed most of the Star Wars spaceships and then there's another great designer by the name of Sid Mead who just passed away last year who did designs for Blade Runner and you know so here I am with all my product portfolio thinking how fun would it be to work and entertainment to design you know aliens and spaceships and other planets and other technologies and so yeah I put together a sketchbook with hopes of getting in the industry and by a string of convenient chance meetings I ended up working in film about three months after I graduated. Was there one moment that was the turning point of a certain meeting or someone that you met that allowed you to get into the industry? So I had assembled this sci-fi sketch portfolio to supplement my product work and one of my professors knew the effects house that did the Star Wars, the first Star Wars films that was called Apogee they were in California. He connected me with them and I dropped my sketchbook off a few days later Randall came in discussing the options for them to do the effects for Flight and Navigator and they showed him my sketchbook and we met after that and sort of snowballed after that I was able to quit my full-time job at an industrial design firm and work in film which was really you know my dream. What did you design what were you responsible for on Flight and Navigator? I was initially hired to work on the spaceship and then it became the spaceship the creatures I did some storyboards with Randall, Max the main character of course so yeah pretty much all of the hardware and the robotic vehicle that Joey escapes in Ralph yeah Ralph you know I'm so designed Ralph so yeah all the hardware and characters and it was just a blast Randall's such a great guy to work with I couldn't have picked a better film or a better director to work with my first experience in Hollywood so and there were a few few characters that were I didn't design that were designed by either the effects house that did them or a there was another guy that worked on the film called Lane Liska who has also passed away he was an amazing sculptor so he did some of the characters too. So with movies it always feels like everyone's like trying to hit the schedule and the budget and do you feel any kind of pressure with maybe not just Flight and Navigator but other films you've worked on if you have tight deadlines how do you stay creative and inspired? Well I had the good fortune you know I worked on some pretty high-end films they had pretty decent budgets and the directors were well known so in that case there's still pressure and you still have to meet deadlines and you still have to come up with ideas the creative team or the director approves of so I think the lower budget projects I worked on and the projects that weren't quite as high profile are usually the ones that just required the long days sleep was a luxury and you're putting in long days and long hours so yeah the higher budget films it seems like there's enough padding and they create enough room in the pre-production schedule to enable you to get things done and then towards the end of pre-production you are sort of scrambling and sometimes you get called back in because I was usually the guy that got hired one of the first people and I'd sit down with the director who would just start hammering out the visuals for the film and then often the production designer came in after that after you know some of these elements were already designed and so when pre-production was done unless I was doing storyboards with the director there really was no need for me to hang around during production so I'd typically go on to the next project and you know there's very rare occasions when I was along for shooting or on the set when things were happening so what were those occasions oh let's see I did storyboards on the movie hook and I got called back a few times for that so I remember going to the sets and delivering storyboards the second project I worked on actually I was working on it simultaneously with Flight of Navigator was Captain EO the Michael Jackson theme park ride I would work on Navigator from I'd go to the studio early in the morning like 6 a.m. and I'd work to about three in the afternoon then I'd go home drive across town in LA and eat dinner and then I'd work from like six at night to about 11 doing storyboards for Captain EO and in that case I'd drive to the studio the next morning which is the same studio where they were shooting Navigator and I'd hand over the storyboards and usually the line producer was sitting there in his BMW waiting for me I'd drive in and hand him a stack of storyboards and he'd go right to Michael Jackson's house to review the storyboards so that one was great because they were shooting it while I was still working on Navigator and I was able to walk onto the set and see this amazing set Francis Ford Coppola directing Michael Jackson starring George Lucas producing you know it was a Disney project so you know the fact that I even got to work on it at all is just miraculous to me but it was a great project fun time and just being on the set and watching the dance routines and just watching the rehearsals and things I was working my butt off but it was joy I mean there's not a day that went by that I just just super excited to sit down and you know I was always excited to do that work and it was just you know dream come true Is there one role where you have more input than others presumably with a storyboard you have to work more closely with people or can you be left to your own devices what's your kind of collaboration process Different directors have different approaches so the best example is when I did storyboards with Steven Spielberg on a hook I'd sit down at a meeting with him for often you know sometimes these meetings were going for hours and he would sit down with a stack of eight and a half by eleven paper in front of him and he'd stare at it for a while with his he had this habit of sticking his pinky in his mouth and just stare at the paper and you could tell that the film was playing in his head and that it had already been shot in his head so he was just sort of adapting what was going on in his head and putting on paper so he'd draw a little smiley faces and stick figures that were basically saying okay we start with a close-up on hook and then we move to a wide shot here and then we go to a close-up here and then two shot here and just shot by shot in very crude little sketches showing me what was happening and I would just be sitting there feverishly taking notes and then I'd walk away with a stack of these drawings that he had done and I'd go back and clean them up and just make them more presentable so he was interesting because he knew down to the frame what he wanted on that screen the surprise for me is when I got hired to work on Captain EO I did some design work on that with the effects guys for a spaceship and things but I was primarily hired to do storyboards I was so excited because I thought you know when they told me we need you to do storyboards I thought oh my gosh working with Coppola what an education you know I can just understand how he thinks and how he directs the film and everything and it turns out the line producer handed me the script and said uh so go board it and I said well I don't need to meet him you know the the contrast is Steven seemed to know exactly everything he wanted and occasionally if I had a suggestion I could put it in there but it was you know and justifiably so I mean when you have a storyteller that caliber I'm not too inclined to say hey why don't you just change this shot right here but with Coppola you could tell that he used his storyboards more for like a springboard for ideas I'm in the position where I'm a very visual person obviously so if I read a script and it's written well it will sort of play in my head like a film and I can sort of the shots sort of happen the way they wouldn't have filmed so that's just what I did I sat down and um sketched out the shots the way I thought they'd be done if he liked the shot it was a shot that he thought would tell the story well he'd use it and if he didn't he just shoot it the way he wanted to or whatever the set parameters demanded same thing with design there are some directors like the George Lucas's and the um James Cameron's who just James Cameron's has a background as an illustrator Joe Johnson has a background as an industrial designer and they know pretty much visually you know they're very astute and they have a very clear preconceived notion of how they want to tell the story and what the imagery should be like and then there are um others who have a vague idea I mean the Randall was just chrome you know reflective on the inside reflective on the outside and it just wide you know it leaves a wide open for your own contribution and your own sort of ego investment in the film so that was a lot of fun too but um yeah it's just interesting to watch the way different directors directors work and the contrast between their their methods well for someone that wanted to start out designing luggage and and items of everyday life and then suddenly you're not even really too many years into your career and suddenly you've got Coppola and Randall and Zemeckis and I mean that's kind of amazingly intimidating and amazing and wonderful very much so and very mind-blowing for me because you know three months out of college when you're standing on a set with um Michael Jackson Coppola and George Lucas I'm thinking to myself I guess I must have done something right yeah and I can own the fact I worked really hard in college I put myself through school so I valued every day I was there and I just worked my butt off but the fact is I have one of those fortunate people that always knew from an early age that I wanted to be an artist I wanted to be in the visual arts in some way you know it began as wanting to be a disney animator like so many people in entertainment and then that gradually it just evolved and and there I was working on some great films but but interestingly enough I only worked in entertainment in Hollywood for about uh five years five really solid years and then I moved to New York ended up working for the Jim Henson company which is definitely a career highlighted a creative direction there for nine years almost 10 years well that was actually going to be my next question about Jim Henson what was that whole experience like what was your kind of day-to-day month-to-month role there I've always admired the guys work I mean I grew up on the Muppet show and just thought he was so brilliant the impact he had on our culture I know there was one year when he was always in the top hundred most influential people in our culture it was a time magazine list it would be impossible to estimate the impact he had with you know the Muppet show and Sesame Street and yeah it was a treat to work there but to answer your question what was my day like on a day-to-day basis that's what made it fascinating for me and that's why I stayed there so long is because every day was different like one day I'm designing a puppet the next day I'm designing a set the next day I'm designing a product there were so many companies that wanted to license the Muppet characters to put them on everything from lamps to key chains to underwear you know so you had to control the you know the quality of the puppets and make sure there's integrity to the designs and the things got translated into products at a you know a level that Jim would have approved and appreciated about I felt bad I never got to work with him because I started working there five years after he passed away it was just tragic because he was I mean you can't fill shoes like that that's the guy who he grew up with television I mean he started working in television when television was born he was doing puppet shows for a local news station in DC I think so yeah but to have some part in maintaining that legacy excuse me was just again privileged career highlight and loved every day of it obviously I mean you're just renowned for what you've worked on in film but when you were growing up what films do you remember having a really big influence on you I was an animation guy pretty much love cartoons I'm growing up on the old school cartoons like Popeye and Mighty Mouse and the Warner Brothers cartoons Disney movies just opened the door for me and then someone in high school my girlfriend bought me a art of Disney book I would pay for that book on a daily basis I was just so entranced and thought to myself God to make to sit around all day and make art like this you know these beautiful painting backgrounds and you know animating characters and things like that I just thought that just has to be a dream so that's sort of what got me going but in terms of films that's the odd part I worked in entertainment I got to work in these top films and I don't want to tell you I I'm not uh in fact I felt inadequate a lot of the times but I'm not a hardcore film guy I'm a designer and you know I get in these films and a lot of the other people in the art department will be talking about this director back in the 30s and this film and this shot in this film and most of those films I hadn't even seen I didn't know who the directors they were talking about and I just thought God should I be in this business because I'm really you know it's not about it's about creating really good design and so yeah that's why and that's how I got in those films I came to the table with a designer mentality and an ability to to take ideas from someone else's head and put them on paper or my head and put them on paper where a team could understand what was going on because you can have the best idea in your head you can be the the top director with the most clear vision in your head but if you can't relate it to the crew and the cameraman and the lighting guy and everybody else you're stuck so I made a career out of basically being a a visual translator I guess you call it and when it was my ideas and coming up an idea for a spaceship whatever it was sort of the purist in the sense of design were doing the what is and then communicating them and then when it was taking an idea from a director's head it was more like I often felt like a police sketch artist like so the alien he has a big head or he has a small sort of taking this descriptive aspects of this visual and creating a so you're taking something really abstract and you're making it something more concrete when I found out you worked on a rachnophobia I was very excited so what was your role on a rachnophobia and that was directed by Frank Marshall who is Steven Spielberg's producer as you may know and this is his first opportunity to direct the film himself not only did I do storyboards but I did a lot of design work too I helped design the spider talk about the star of the show and had to be designed did a lot of what ifs on what this spider could look like some of them are pretty fanciful and sort of fantasy they weren't real spiders and some of them are based on real spiders and the final spider design was more the work of Chris Wailas who's an amazing effects guy so that and then some set design I got to work with Jim Bissell who worked with him on several films including The Rocketeer and he was production designer and it became so can you design barn that was a sort of a main set in the film and so some of the set work some of the props and then when it came to storyboards it was just sort of often orchestrating like the basement where the big finale scene happens how do we put that set together and how can we leave room for the camera and choreograph this and so there's a whole lot of work just calculating how the film could be shot and again Frank Marshall became sort of the Coppola style where here's the script goes storyboard it and sometimes he had feedback and I'd changed the the boards but it was kind of fun because he was more open to what do you think you know how do you think this should be shot you mentioned Rocketeer you did some pretty iconic designs on that and that film was interesting because it was one of those films where you know when you're working on any project it's a crapshoot like any film I worked on you know when you're working with a director like Spielberg or Zemeckis you're pretty confident it's going to be a hit but you never know so when Rocketeer came up I read the script and I just thought oh my god this is going to be the next Indiana Jones this is such a cool film and it was based on a graphic novel by Dave Stevens a beautiful graphic novel so richly he wrote it and illustrated it and Disney optioned it to make this film and I just thought this is probably going to be the biggest film on my resume because it just had all the excitement and all the things that would make a good project but in this case it had modest box office success for a number of reasons I think was up against some tough pictures at the time when it was released but it's got this cult following now where there are just hundreds of people out there who are building the rocket packs and doing the costume and the film holds up it's you know it's old school effects not a whole lot of computer generated imagery in it it's sort of one of those films that it didn't have that peak box office hundred million dollar weekend of opening weekend but it's just sustained and it continues and there's always rumors of a a sequel so I worked on the rocket pack mostly because that was the star of the film the heart of the story in terms of it motivated all the characters performances in terms of everybody wanted the rocket pack so it had to be a convincing prop so I and probably did 50 iterations before we finally narrowed it down and it wasn't just me there was a another great legendary concept designer Ron Cobb and Joe Johnson of course had played a crucial part you know it's one of the props I'm most proud of in terms of it filled the role supposed to is convincing as a prop and it also reasonably accurate we had to do something that was accurate for the period which is late 30s but still look prototypical and innovative and cutting edge so I think ultimately it did all those things and that's probably why the film continues to maintain its audience out there you mentioned Zemeckis you worked on back to the future too that was interesting I've worked on back to the future too and oddly enough I never met him I always worked with the production designer it was me and about four or five other guys locked in a trailer we're in a trailer in the universal back lot and our assignment was just just to speculate about what life would be like in the far off distant future of 2015 and that for me was what I was born to do because I'm a geek about futuristic concepts and innovative materials pretty much having just graduated I knew what the advanced technologies were and what was speculated for a lot of the future technology and I was tasked with designing Marty McFly's condo in the future and some of the electronics and the props and we spent a lot of time designing communication devices for people in the future because we were speculating that everyone would have like a the equivalent of a smartwatch production designer thought well wouldn't it be great if everybody personalizes there so women might have like bangles and feathers and things hanging from theirs and men might be you know more stylized and things so I did a lot of a lot of time spent designing these wrist devices which you know if you look really closely you might see one in the film there's a scene where George McFly is in that upside down back brace device that I also designed and he's got one of the watch communicators on you can see it's got a little screen and so yeah that was back the future but never met Zemeckis um I think I was on the set once in uh town square in hill valley so I got to see that but did you get into 2015 and be solely disappointed or pleasantly surprised it's interesting because 2015 rolled around and I get an email from Newsweek magazine saying hey you worked on this film right they wanted to talk to me about the film but we got most of it right I mean the one thing that's pointed out most often is the fax machine where Marty McFly gets fired which I also designed that made it more futuristic but there's a scene in the kitchen and they're wearing these glasses that were you know hinted towards like a VR headset or augmented reality headset or google there was an article online recently about how google glass is so close to what was in back to the future yeah the big screen tv didn't exist back then the big screen tv that Marty gets fired on from his boss just the fact that we got enough right to make it believable and I'm gonna tell you when any filmmaker starts predicting about the future you're taking a big chance and if you ask me to work on like a back to the future for now or I speculated about what life would be like 20 years in the future from 2021 it would just I can't imagine because the way things are changing now it's just exponentially more dramatic than it was back in the 80s so I'm sure that two or three years from now there'd be a technology that no one saw coming that might change the whole face of everything all your sketches design storyboards do you keep everything are they in museums yeah with the exception of a few studios I made a point of having something in my deal memo that said I kept the originals because I had the good the good sense to know that there might be some value to them and I just wanted to keep them for my own personal archives so I did and a few projects like Captain EO the originals were signed off to Disney because you were sort of a work for a higher person when you worked for Disney so yeah but for the most part I've managed to maintain a pretty a pretty good archive of the work I did and over the past few years I've sold most of them most of the portfolios including Navigator and Back to the Future and Hook and the Rocketeer were bought by the Hollywood Art Museum as part of their permanent collection. Was your move to teaching an easy decision to do and is that what you do full-time now? Design is my first passion and teaching has always been my second so when I graduated and they asked me to come back and teach I was I was delighted to although it became hard to schedule it so I ended up teaching on a Saturday but yeah I love teaching and I love the idea of giving back and the most satisfying part is when you see a student's work go from there to there and you know the students that I taught that got jobs not because I taught them everything but because you know they went on to work in entertainment some of them acknowledging the fact that they were inspired by the work I did is that's a big payoff so yeah and teaching right now you know I've got a family and the economy just got sort of weird and the work I was doing between sculpture and consulting work you know when you're single you can tolerate the ups and downs but when you're when you have a family it's sort of compels you to have something more stable and teaching is that but I still you know I only teach half the year and the other half I still do consulting I still do sculpture and I still do my own artwork. What's the biggest piece of advice that you give your students if you had to say one thing to them before they went out into the big bad world? Don't lose touch with your own voice. When you get caught up in the industry and the projects go from one to the next it's easy just to lose touch with your own values and the things that are important to you and if you're not paying attention life takes over and those things kind of fall to the wayside so that's a tough one but I think it really is just important to keep in touch with your own vision. And final question do you feel like teaching and sculpture and your own artwork is your path now? Do you think you'll ever go back to Hollywood or are you keeping everything open? I'm keeping everything open and when those opportunities come and you know you have to turn down that really great film part of me says boy I'm not sure how long I can turn these things down whether they're good so yeah I'm keeping it open for now I'm very I'm very pleased I'm teaching at a great school and I really enjoy the process and I often wish that just the teaching part is the most fun being in the classroom where the students are teaching virtually is equally as engaging and working with young people is always you know exciting and helping them get to the next level but the part that comes with it the administrative part and the grading and the evaluations and all that stuff it's like any job I mean there's a creative part and then there's a more managerial administrative part that probably takes up more time but it's all it's all good and I feel fortunate that I'm now at that perfect balance where I I do design, I do sculpture, I teach, I still sketch for my own gratification and draw for myself and yeah and I learn which is also a big thing for me so to teach that innovation class I have to stay up on what the latest technologies are and to teach anything these days you better be willing to keep re-educating yourself because there's always some new software program and there's some new implications I'm sure you've seen what's going on with virtual sets and virtual productions which is just you know that's some of the most exciting stuff ever and it really makes me wish you know when I saw the Mandalorian and the capabilities of the imaginative visuals that you can do with virtual sets so affordably and so simply without all the post-production I just wanted to do over like you know let me go back to Hollywood now I would love to you know come up with things that are you know because before it would you design something and then there would be drafted and then they would build it and it would just go on for months and then they'd shoot it and rip it all down and throw it away but now you can come up with an idea build it in the computer the same day and go on a set and have this beautiful landscape or another planet or a set all probably not that fast for some of it but the gratification and the the ability to control the imagery and change things to a point where well I'm sure you don't want to go into all virtual production lecture but it's pretty it's pretty amazing and yeah I'm even more excited for students getting out now because the opportunities for creativity and remarkable visuals is just better than it's ever been. Fingers crossed that you do get to share your talents on the screen once more really appreciate you taking the time this has been a long time coming so I'm so excited that we could finally sit down and do this and I just I'm so inspired by you and your career and your talents and just a talent I wish I had but don't so thank you so much for taking the time today I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure and you've got to get to Savannah we've got to do this live next time. Well I think you can all agree that that gentleman knows his stuff and his work is incredible I mean everything you see that he's put here I can't even draw a stick man I try and draw I can't draw anything I'm really envious of people who've got that vision and the ability to bring it to life. My stick figures always look like this because I could never draw arms down by the side. Like me after Christmas my stick figure. Well we're excited for 2022 happy new year everybody I don't know when this will go out but around new year. Hope you have a wonderful new year and please subscribe so you can see all the wonderful interviews that will be coming your way in 2022. Until next time!