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"THE DEVIL'S HANDS HAVE BEEN BUSY": BUILDING AN ARMY OF TERMINATORS
"One of the joys of this film is you get to see all the machines in the lexicon of Skynet," says McG. "It's just like a contemporary military: you've got machines in the water, in the ground, in the sky... It was an amazing adventure just looking at the different Terminators of this world because you want to see the success and failure of everything Skynet tried on their way to the T-800, their most proficient killing machine."
Created from drawings by production designer Martin Laing and his team of art directors, the army of machines that rampage through "Terminator Salvation" came to life under the direction of Stan Winston, the legendary creature creator who designed the original T-800. Sadly, Winston passed away during the making of this film. "Stan confided in me once that he created imaginary monsters as a child to keep him company," McG reflects. "He said he felt like the only kid in the world who did this. Little did he know his childhood friends would come to be the heroes of millions. But most of all, Stan was a good guy who loved what he did. It was a real honor to have had the opportunity to work with Stan Winston. I intend to dedicate this film to his memory."
John Rosengrant, an effects supervisor at Stan Winston Studio, led the 60-member team to create this generation of Terminators, and also oversaw all the special effects make-up. Winston originally hired Rosengrant to work on the first "Terminator" film and became the artist's mentor. It was the beginning of an incredible journey, one that has seen phenomenal advancements in animatronics and special effects over the intervening years.
For Rosengrant, the sheer volume of work demanded by this production required some innovations. "The challenge on 'Terminator Salvation' was to come up with lighter-weight materials that still replicated metal," says Rosengrant. "We used combinations of urethanes and plastics, which were painted using breakthroughs in paint technology to achieve a metal look."
On "Terminator Salvation," the challenge also became creating Terminators that would be logical extensions within the world of the "Terminator" universe. "Because we're in a period prior to the timeframe of the first three films, we had to, in a sense, reverse-engineer," explains Laing. "In the same way that your laptop from ten years ago was thick like a brick and then, over time, got thinner and thinner, the Terminators you already know are the thin laptops and our Terminators are the bricks. They're more primitive in their brutality and bigger in their design."
On top of that, McG had a specific aesthetic in mind that would color the entire film, but especially the machines. "I didn't want a shiny, robotic world," McG expresses. "I didn't want a clean future. I really wanted a distressed future. I wanted a dirty patina on the metal of the machines, like they're a bunch of Soviet era tanks that haven't been able to go in and get painted or tuned up in a long, long time."
Moreover, because the film takes place post-Judgment Day, a full complement of Terminators, many of which were only hinted at in the earlier films, is revealed. "We are in an interim period," says Christian Bale, "In the flash forwards to 2029 that we've seen in previous movies, Skynet has absolute dominance of all the armies of T-800s and Hunter-Killers. But what we're seeing here is the genesis of the T-800. In the present, we've got a lot of T-600s, which are more primitive versions of the T-800, and a phenomenal array of machines."
Skynet's preeminent foot soldier is the T-600, which McG describes as "bigger and nastier" than the T-800, "a `57 Buick compared to a 2009 Mercedes Benz."
A hulking seven-foot-three, rudimentary version of what would eventually become the T-800, with a simplistic rubber skin pulled over the face and rag-tag clothing to hide the endoskeleton, the T-600 "prowls the badlands looking for anything with a heartbeat, an unrelenting machine with a singular focus of killing," McG continues.
They carry a mini-gun, an M203 lower unit, capable of anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute, and a backpack full of ammunition. The filmmakers wanted to design the T-600s as machines that are no longer manufactured but maintain their patrols in the field, battered and weathered, their camouflage mostly lost, damaged in battle, or eaten away by the elements. As Kyle Reese said in "The Terminator," "The first ones were easy to spot."
Created using both rigged and manned puppets in combination with CGI, the T-600s appear in the film in various states of disrepair. "It gives them a creepy, zombie-like quality when you see, for example, the whole lower jaw exposed or areas torn out of their faces," says Rosengrant.
Seen in "flash-forwards" in the earlier films was the Terminator aircraft called the Hunter-Killer. Hunter-Killers, or H-Ks, patrol the skies, scanning the ground below with massive floodlights. Like the T-600s, the "Terminator Salvation" version of the H-Ks represents a more rudimentary beast than what Skynet would eventually develop.
Patrolling like drones in search of human survivors are small devices called Aerostats. These four-foot-long aerial sentries buzz about the land, hunting for any sign of human life. Equipped with digital camera and laser-imaging technology, they send wireless reports back to Skynet, which then sends in the Harvester.
"One of my favorite Terminators is the Harvester, which are the machines that collect the people," says McG. Approximately 80 feet tall, the Harvester resembles a spider, with multiple steel arms and legs extending from a thorax-like body with jointed claw-like appendages for capturing its prey, and multiple camera eyes on long stalks for viewing the carnage. "Its job is to break into any structure where humans are hiding, grab its prey and put them in the Transporters to be taken to Skynet."
But failing that strategy, the Harvester unleashes Moto-Terminators. "Because the Harvester is such a big beast, as it's collecting humans there are always going to be the few that escape," Laing continues. "So, in the same way that a shepherd uses sheepdogs, the Harvester has Moto-Terminators, which are bike-like Terminators that race off after the humans and bring them back. They also have guns and the ability to kill, but the goal is to retrieve escapees and return them to the Harvester so it can put them in the Transporter."
These slick machines are based on the Ducati motorbike, a personal favorite of director McG. The Italian company was approached by the filmmakers and was thrilled to be involved. They supplied four identical hyper-motored bikes for use in filming.
"We had to have credible-looking Moto-Terminators in this picture, so we went to the designers and the whole team from Ducati," says McG. "Ducatis are sleek, powerful, agile machines, so that felt like a great place to start as we created the language of the Moto-Terminators."
The visual effects team was able to overlay the Moto-Terminator look over the practical Ducatis. The production also had a practical Moto-Terminator made in Los Angeles, which was used during filming.
Skynet covers the land with these machines, but for the seas, lakes and rivers, it has developed a unique underwater Terminator called the Hydrobot. Resembling four-foot-long segmented serpents, eyeless but with razor-sharp heads that drill into their victims, Hydrobots respond to sound and vibrations in the waters they prowl. "The Hydrobots turned out to be pretty fun, interesting characters," says Rosengrant, "sort of a cross between a psychotic crab and some sort of sea serpent. They're wicked, vicious things with these pincher-like claws on the front and an auger kind of drill bit. Once that gets a hold of you, you're definitely finished."
These machines were especially challenging for Rosengrant and his team, "not only because of how detailed they were but because they had to work in water, and were going to get punished pretty hard," he continues. "When working in water, most of the radio control devices that you would usually use are out the window; instead you're working with cable or pneumatics. And the Hydrobot needed to be durable enough to be wrestled and thrown around and chucked out of helicopters and punched through things, but at the same time not be so unwieldy that we couldn't puppet it."
They ended up using a combination of steel structures that were kept as lightweight as possible and lightweight urethane parts painted to look like metal. "We ended up getting a lot of extra shots that none of us thought we would get with the practical model," Rosengrant states. "We thought it would have to be augmented with CGI, but we were all amazed by how well it turned out."
Watching the Stan Winston puppeteers working the various rigs, Bale found their dedication inspiring. "They'd practiced for so long, and really got the movements down," says Bale. "With the Stan Winston team, it's incredible to see the painstaking detail they give all their work, their incredible patience, and their complete love for what they do. I love seeing people who are just obsessed with what they do, and these guys are obsessed with building models. They want to perfect what a T-600 really would look like turning its head and attacking somebody. They take it very, very seriously, and I think that's wonderful."
But by far the most innovative of Skynet's creations isn't entirely metal: Marcus, the human Terminator hybrid who learns of his cyborg adaptations over the course of the film.
Marcus's special effects make-up and prosthetics were created by Rosengrant, whose team developed several variations to accommodate the many different conditions Marcus finds himself in, including a full reveal of the interior endoskeleton after his capture by the Resistance.
A combination of large prosthetic pieces sculpted using the latest technology, make-up, and CGI, the creation of Marcus was a complex endeavor that demanded creativity and patience, especially on the part of Sam Worthingon, who spent as many as six hours straight in the make-up chair being worked on by a team of three artists.
The total effect, which McG was able to accomplish with help from the creative team of artisans from every corner of the production, was an iconic vision that truly created a new chapter in the "Terminator" saga. "Every other picture in this series has been present day," the director says. "Our film is a totally new beginning. We show the genesis of these fearful machines; we go into Skynet. We see the CPU that will represent the rise of the machines to a place of complete dominance. It was an incredible thrill for me to play a part in the continuation of this incredible story, which inspired me so much throughout my life, and remains prescient and relevant today."
For Bale, who was able to see footage during production of the Terminators in action, the thrill was equally intense. He notes with a wry smile, "We went through filming thinking we were the leads, but it ain't so in the slightest. People aren't coming to see us. We've got to provide some kind of a story to it, because no matter how great the Terminators and the explosions are, you've got to have a good story or otherwise what's the point? But let's face facts: the Terminators are the rightful stars of the movie. And they're going to blow everyone away."
"JUDGMENT DAY HAPPENED": BUILDING THE WORLD OF "TERMINATOR SALVATION"
The practical challenge for the filmmakers of "Terminator Salvation" was to bring to life an America circa 2018 with its sun-blasted expanses, skeletal cities and both human and Terminator occupants. From finding the ideal locations and shooting facilities, to the fabrication of every physical element, to the type of film stock used to capture the otherworldly vistas he sought, McG worked in close collaboration with his team to create a unified and totally new vision for the post-apocalyptic reality of the story.
To pervade the imagery with a post-war tone, McG and his director of photography Shane Hurlbut shot the film using an experimental version of the "Oz process" in film processing. "We took an old film stock from Kodak and we let it sit in the sun too long to degrade some of its qualities," explains McG. "Then we processed it in a way where we added more silver than you would traditionally add to a color film stock. And we went even further to manipulate that in the digital intermediate to give the film an otherworldly quality that gives you the impression that something's just off with the way this world looks, which is in keeping with the mood of the entire picture."
The locations would also play a major role in grounding the film in tactile reality. "We wanted a big, vast world," McG affirms. "To do that, we needed this incredible diversity in our locations. In this film, we go to the sea, we go to the mountaintop, we go to the desert, we go to the jungle. Added to that, we wanted to capture a world at war; the entire world is involved in this conflict, and we wanted to open the film up and make it feel like a huge cinematic experience in that respect."
The filmmaking team was able to accomplish all of that in one place when they chose Albuquerque, New Mexico, with its combination of sweeping deserts, mountain landscapes and the modern stages at Albuquerque Studios.
"When you're making a movie about an American icon, following the journey of John Connor as he chases Terminators, you want to have that American backdrop behind you," says production designer Laing. "Judgment Day has taken place, so we have a devastated landscape and out here, you literally open the door of the stage and you see these amazing deserts. And Albuquerque Studios, in addition to being a multi-purpose studio, also has a huge amount of land around it where we could build sets."
With the echo of a once-powerful military force living on in the Resistance, the filmmakers turned for guidance and support--not to mention hardware--to the Defense Department at nearby Kirtland Air Force Base. "'Terminator Salvation' is set in a world that is post-Air Force, post-Army; it's just the Resistance," offers producer Jeffrey Silver. "But we figured the Resistance would model itself after the discipline of the armed forces today, so we went to Chuck Davis, who is the coordinator of the Department of Defense in Los Angeles and its motion picture liaison. He introduced us to the Air Force and they just opened the doors to us. We got all the hardware we needed; we were able to shoot on Air Force property. We had just fantastic cooperation because they recognized that in the future portrayed in this film, the military will still be the men and women who protect us, no matter what may come."
The production utilized aircraft and weaponry to reflect the kinds of supplies to which humans could conceivably gain access within the context of the story. "The resistance does have some hardware, so it's not just sticks and stones against the machines," says McG. "They've got A-10 planes, and some older mechanized machines that they use to fight back."
A key military jet that figures into the story is the A-10 Thunderbolt Two (also known as the Mighty Warthog, the Flying Gun, and the Tankbuster). Flown by Blair Williams, the A-10s are one of the best forms of air support the Resistance possesses for taking on Skynet's massive machines. Air Force Captain Jennifer Shoeck, herself an A-10 pilot and the woman who provided guidance to Bloodgood in her role, remarks, "The A-10 gets down in the weeds, gets dirty--low and slow is its main mission. It's a close air support aircraft to aid the ground troops."
Other aircraft utilized by the production, with the assistance of the Air Force and its pilots, were: the CV-22 Osprey, which can fly at fixed-wing aircraft speeds but has tilt-rotor technology that allows it also to take off and land like a helicopter; a massive C-130 Hercules transport; and the HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, a modified Blackhawk aircraft with external gun mounts.
Since not all sequences required actual hardware, the production also created mock-ups and reclaimed junked aircraft, which was put on motion simulators to recreate the flight dynamics of the respective aircraft. The special effects crew, led by special effects supervisor Mike Meinardus, rigged up a gimbal and hung a helicopter from a crane, so the prop aircraft could be moved in a believable fashion from above, and McG could shoot the bottom as it pulled away from the set without any whirling blades.
Because Kirtland Air Force Base shares a runway with a commercial airport, Albuquerque's Sunport, the Air Force offered the production an unused hangar for staging, which ultimately was also modified to stand in as the Resistance stronghold.
In the film, this outpost is comprised of a series of '60s-era missile silos connected by a large underground network of tunnels. "Everything you see in the outpost are the layers the Resistance fighters have set up--to generate power, to grow their own food, to build a water filtration system, to equip an infirmary--stuff these guys would have dragged in from their reconnaissance expeditions and what, realistically, they could have jerry-rigged together to make this a functioning facility," Laing relates.
To research the Resistance base, Laing toured the nuclear fallout shelters beneath Budapest, Hungary, and looked at other post-disaster quarters. "I took a whole series of photographs and came back to create the environment in which the Resistance lives and plans," he says. "These men and women are not only fighting Skynet, but they're also fighting the environment they're in. Every resource is completely depleted; they're just living with the world that they have."
The film's creators spoke to futurists about what would happen with the flora and fauna, as well as manmade objects. "We wanted to get all of that detailing into our movie," says costume designer Michael Wilkinson. "We asked, 'If the bombs went off about 14 years ago and destroyed most of North America, what would be left? What would people scrounge and cobble together to survive, to fight?'"
Obsolete but functioning weapons, recycled clothing, electronics equipment culled from the rubble and reconfigured, ammunition found or stolen from the enemy--these are the limited resources of the Resistance. The design team set about scouring New Mexico, which has long had a strong military presence, for authentic pieces at military surplus yards and from local collectors.
Wilkinson recalls, "McG didn't want the film to look like some far-fetched, fantastical science fiction movie. It's set in 2018, not the distant future; it's just around the corner. So we did lots of research into moments in history that have had incredible meaning in the human psyche, stories of displaced people and apocalyptic tales."
In creating the wardrobe of the film's key characters, Wilkinson collaborated with McG, Laing, and the actors themselves to ensure that each set of clothes would reflect a number of key requirements, first and foremost of which was authenticity. "We created a whole stock of clothes that were from different sources--be it from different armies of North America, tactical and police gear, technical gear, and just regular street clothes--thinking about what clothes people would have after a nuclear war," he explains. "What has survived? What has the army culled together to make their uniform? We were always treading the knife-edge of realism and accuracy on one side, and at the same time, heightening things so we were creating appealing and innovative visuals."
Continuity with the earlier films was another factor Wilkinson considered in designing the costumes. For John Connor, Wilkinson worked in the tiger stripe army pants that reflect back to the clothes worn by the younger Connor in the second "Terminator" film. But beyond that, he kept Connor's silhouette stark. "Less is more with Christian," Wilkinson observes. "The intensity of his performance and his commanding presence tells you who John Connor is. There is a certain neutrality to his look that helps you get to know the real John Connor."
Another nod came in the form of the sneakers worn by Kyle Reese--an echo of the boots he will wear as an adult, as seen in "The Terminator"--which the wardrobe crew adapted with shearling inside and cord laces. "It was really fun, because you're starting with these fantastic, iconic characters and then tweaking them to fit with our vision for this movie," Wilkinson says.
The designer crafted the costume of Marcus, a 21st century Terminator hybrid, utilizing leathers that reflected back to the T-800's wardrobe of choice. "We got an old pair of leather biker pants and essentially destroyed them, just really aged them up, so they had this patina to them, and then we took two leather jackets and patched them together to become one jacket," he details.
Wilkinson also coordinated with the artists from Stan Winston Studio to ensure continuity as his costume and skin give way and reveal his mechanical endoskeleton over the course of his adventures. "We coordinated what would be revealed, and when and how," he recalls. "He has three main looks through the film and each look had to have 10 or 20 versions of the costume in various states of clean, distressed, shredded, matted, napalmed, shot-through, etc." Continued
JUDGMENT DAY HAPPENED": BUILDING THE WORLD OF "TERMINATOR SALVATION"
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