We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (9 page)

Fink wanted to offer Scheffe an assistant job, but it wasn’t meant to be. The budget was tighter than expected and couldn’t accommodate hiring a number two. Scheffe had had fun, and he didn’t regret spending a day or two doing some window-shopping for a movie car without compensation. After all, the illustrator had designed KITT, the talking car for the
Knight Rider
television series, so the opportunity to be back in the saddle working on a futuristic vehicle, albeit briefly, wasn’t a bad way to log some volunteer hours for a major motion picture. But in typical
Back to the Future
fashion, Scheffe didn’t stay separated from the project for long. A few days later, he received a phone call.

“Mike, I just got an offer to work on another film.” It was Fink. “Would you be interested in taking over my job?”

“Are you kidding? Of course.”

“You’re going to have to go and talk to the art department and show them your portfolio. They’d have to make sure that you’re the right guy, but I think you’d be a shoo-in.” Before the
week’s end, Scheffe was at Amblin meeting with Todd Hallowell and Larry Paull. They were impressed, not only by his experience and designs, but also his surprisingly relevant educational experience. Before becoming an artist, the illustrator went to school to learn how to build airplanes, a background that the art director and production designer felt would make him the perfect person to take Cobb’s and Probert’s sketches and realize them into working blueprints that Kevin Pike’s crew could use for the build.

“They wanted to know I was someone who can take responsibility for finding stuff and someone who would respect the feeling of those original sketches,” Scheffe says. “Plus, there were some changes they wanted to make to the drawings. They had the right feel to them, but there were some things that had to be adjusted. Like, could you really get a two-shot, where two actors are in frame at the same time, or was stuff going to get in the way between the driver and the passenger? I took the job and started running around, taking pictures of stuff and sketching what it would look like if we used this or that piece.”

The design of the DeLorean time machine might serve as one of the clearest examples of how collaborative the moviemaking process is. The Bobs wrote a DeLorean into the screenplay, the art department and production designer commissioned original sketches by freelance illustrators, then, before the actual build could begin, the designs were further refined, based upon both the budget and availability of the parts, and with consideration toward the overall functionality of the vehicle during the shooting process. All the while, the clock kept ticking and the cash kept flowing. To further complicate matters, the direction of the final vehicle design could have changed at any point depending on an innumerable number of factors. “If you’re in
commercial art or design, there’s a real delicate balance,” Scheffe says. “If you don’t care about the thing you’re working on, it’s not going to be good. If you put your heart and soul into it, it’ll be better, but if you put every bit of your identity and self-respect, you’re making yourself awfully vulnerable. There’s a balance where you want to be inspired, you want to be engaged, but you also don’t want to take too big a fall if things don’t go well, so you protect yourself. That’s why you make the rough sketches. That’s why you polish things up as things go along. Usually you don’t have a big shock of, ‘Let’s tear this up and start over again,’ because people know where you’re going and you’re part of that process. It’s not done like fine art might be done, solely for the love of the expression that you put into that painting. It’s done because the client has a need and you’re lucky enough to be employed to fill that need and to make whatever changes are necessary. You have to be flexible enough so that if someone changes their mind or changes direction, you’re able to say, ‘Okay, this is a change and I’m going to do it.’”

Once Scheffe’s sketches were done, they became the working version for Pike and his team to use. Three cars were purchased from a local collector, and parts were culled from a variety of vendors. The shopping was divided up, with members of the team showing up to work on a given day with pieces they had found that matched the drawings they had been given. The result, they hoped, would be a vehicle that appeared to be simultaneously haphazardly and meticulously put together. “We had a crew of about ten, fifteen people in my shop that built the cars and made sure they looked good,” Pike says. “It had to look homemade, like Doc Brown made it in a garage. Plus, we had to make sure that the car still worked after we took stuff off and put stuff on—that all the gags worked and we didn’t destroy the
car. It had to move and have functionality for all the effects to help tell the story that they created. The car was unique in that a lot of people were looking at it and coming up with ways it could work. You just can’t put a piece of metal on the back and say, ‘This is going to be the plutonium chamber.’ It has to work. The ‘plutonium’ has to be able to go into the engine somehow. There’s a lot of logistics with each decision that’s made, whether in function or in design.”

Larry Paull visited the shop once or twice a week to ensure the team would make their deadline and to offer feedback on the aesthetics. As go-between, Scheffe made daily visits. “Kevin had a great crew, and of course, they had to suffer with my sketches,” he says. “But they did a great job and everyone had a can-do attitude. I still remember all those people in his shop. I remember the electronics guy, the welders. There was a spirit on that show of, ‘We’re going to make this work.’ People tried so hard, and you can see it. You can really see it in everything.”

The Filmtrix team’s work with the time machine wasn’t limited to the vehicle build. The crew was responsible for managing all aspects of the vehicle’s mechanics, from wiping fingerprints from the stainless-steel body, to replacing dented fenders with pristine ones from the other cars. The A car received the most attention, of course, as it was the one that would be seen the most in close-up shots where the actors’ faces were visible. Throughout the shoot, the C car was systematically cut into pieces to accommodate filming. Consider the perspective shot when Marty first travels to 1955 and hits the scarecrow on Old Man Peabody’s Twin Pines Ranch, where the camera is serving as Marty’s eyes looking out the front windshield of the DeLorean. Because a camera is large and requires multiple operators, it would have been impossible to fit the device and requisite personnel into the
DeLorean’s tight backseat. The only possible solution, to capture the shot in the way Zemeckis intended, was to remove the rear of the car and film from behind Fox’s head.

But for all the visual spectacle of the DeLorean, its greatest achievement may be its vibrant display as it prepares to travel through, and returns back from, time. This was achieved through a perfect synergy of the special and visual effects departments. For an example, one needs to look no further than the scene at the Twin Pines Mall when the DeLorean is first revealed. Getting the time machine up to eighty-eight miles per hour wasn’t the effects team’s only challenge, although, perhaps contrary to what conventional wisdom might suggest, even that cinematic feat required some finagling. Although
Back to the Future
fans have attempted to figure out the significance of Marty having to travel at that speed to transport himself through time, the Bobs are quick to note that the number was chosen for only one reason: It would be easy for the audience to remember. This somewhat arbitrary decision inadvertently created a problem for the effects team. Thanks to a 1979 law set by President Jimmy Carter’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, all cars released after September of that year were to have a speedometer that topped out at eighty-five miles per hour, in an effort to encourage drivers to travel at safer speeds. The legislation was overturned less than two years later, but its legacy lasted in all models of the DMC-12, as production had ceased by the time of repeal. With the magic number that time machine had to hit being out of range, Pike not only replaced the manufacturer’s speedometer with one that went beyond the regulated amount, but added a digital display for additional good measure.

While working on his round of design sketches, Ron Cobb mentioned that he believed the time machine would go out
through the time portal at a burning-hot temperature, but come back cold. To that end, the special effects team lit fire trails whenever the DeLorean was beginning a journey. For shots of its return, the car would have to endure a somewhat complicated process to make it appear encased in a thin layer of ice. “When the car got cold, one of the obvious flaws in design was that the gas condensed in the cylinders of the rods that held the doors up, causing them to sag,” Pike says. “When we loaded it up with ice and made it heavy and colder yet, Michael would open the door and stand up. When he’d go to get back in, the door would sag and he had to be very careful he didn’t hit his head. We had a crew with hair dryers that constantly reheated those hydrogen-filled pistons to keep that from happening. I remember that when he shifted in the car in excitement, he would bang his elbow against the mechanism on the console. It was tight quarters, but it was a time machine. It wasn’t a luxury Cadillac or something.”

Because of the height differential between Eric Stoltz and Michael J. Fox, some of the custom parts added to the car were harder to utilize than they otherwise would have been. For one, when Marty attaches the electrical conductor hook to the back of the DeLorean before the scene where lightning strikes the clock tower, Fox was initially unable to reach the female end of the connector due to the protruding exhaust vents on the back of the vehicle. In order to accommodate their new leading man, a wooden step was fashioned to provide Fox with some extra lift.

After filming each time-traveling sequence, the footage was given to Arthur Schmidt and Harry Keramidas, who would continue editing with Zemeckis’s regular supervision and approval. When Keramidas was brought on board, the two editors looked through the script and decided that they would each take one of the action sequences in the film—the Twin Pines and clock tower
scenes—and work on them individually. Artie chose the mall parking lot scene, while Harry took the other. While Editor A was working on his major sequence, Editor B would tackle the other dialogue-heavy scenes as they came in, and vice versa.

Because both scenes rely heavily on optical effects that had to be added by ILM in post, the sequences required the editors to think beyond what they were seeing at the editing bay in front of them, just as they would have to anticipate how sound effects and an orchestral score would complement the moving pictures. “You have to use a lot of imagination to visualize what those effects are going to be, and how long a cut needs to be in order for those effects to be incorporated into the shot,” Arthur Schmidt says. “Because visual effects and animation are very expensive, you’re always asked to turn over a shot to its, hopefully, exact length with no extra frames. The reason is so that the visual effects people or the animators don’t have to do any extra work that, obviously, is time consuming and also costs money. It sort of requires you to make educated guesses.”

After each editor put the scene he was working on together, Zemeckis and visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston of ILM, who had cut his teeth on the first two
Star Wars
films and the first two sequels to the
Star Trek
film series, would review the footage together. The primary goal was for the two of them to determine where the finishing touches would be added in each frame by the effects house. However, in true Zemeckis fashion, sometimes advice would come from a third party. The notoriously collaborative director believes no one has a monopoly on good ideas, allowing everyone on his set to bring suggestions forth to enhance the project. To that end, when Schmidt completed work on the Twin Pines sequence, the editor was given an opportunity to contribute his two cents into the effects process.
Zemeckis asked Schmidt what he thought should happen visually as the DeLorean traveled through time to 1955. The editor hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever—after all, visual effects were out of his jurisdiction, and he assumed Ken Ralston and his team had the answer to that question all sorted out. Again Artie thought quickly on his feet. “Sparks?” He was trying to imagine it. “Wouldn’t there be sparks?” Zemeckis and Ralston agreed and sent the edited sequence to Wes Takahashi, one of ILM’s animators, with the instructions that sparks be integrated into the look of time travel.

Yet when the finished footage arrived at the animator’s station, the director was still unclear as to exactly what he wanted time travel to look like. Before Takahashi was given the assignment of designing the time slice—the visual effects that appear as the DeLorean prepares to move from the future to the past and vice versa—visual director Phil Norwood had designed a visual look whereby the DeLorean would start to react like a popcorn kernel in a microwaved bag. Three-dimensional cubes would protrude out of the stainless-steel body until the vehicle exploded through time. But Zemeckis wasn’t too fond of the idea. He still didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but he did have one piece of advice for Takahashi: “I just want it to feel like there’s a Neanderthal sitting on the hood of the DeLorean, chipping away at the fabric of time with an ice pick.”

“Well, that’s something we’ve never seen before.”

“I need to have something—some huge event that would then be followed by an explosion and implosion!”

With some clearer direction, the animator studied the DeLorean for clues as to where he might start. He looked at all of the vehicle’s add-ons and thought the ornamental molding around the car might be better if, during time travel, they glowed
a cool blue hue. From there, the animator threw in the kitchen sink. There were comets that shot out and bounced off an invisible plane in front of the car, emitting more neon. He added light explosions and sparks that opened up the time slice until the DeLorean would finally pierce through. Electricity flew and smoke contrails seeped out. Tracks of fire would emerge from the wheels, and then, once eighty-eight miles per hour was hit, Zemeckis’s explosion and implosion would occur. Throughout the process, Takahashi walked the line, hoping to not provide so many effects that the sequence would appear cartoonish, while also not holding back so much that it would lack the excitement time travel would need. “With some directors it’s a lot more challenging,” he says. “You show them fifty or sixty different iterations, and by the time we’d get to sixty-one, they would say, ‘Okay, actually I like the second one best. Why don’t we go back?’ It’s all up to the director. Some you’re attuned with, and they’re a lot easier to please. I lucked out with Zemeckis. On the time-traveling scenes, we were on the same wavelength.”