"If the movies half as good as Ben's wings look...we'll be in good shape."
"Saw Ben in his wings today, brilliant stuff. The articulation is amazing, something to just flat out behold."
"Yesterday, we shot the Golgothan,
and it looked tremendous, Vince Guastini and his team did a tremendous
job."
The challenge of the movie was that they wanted to see angel wings that, first of all, were better than the angel wings in other movies, and that could do a lot more stuff. This was something I had never attacked before.And the competition? Definitely "BRAZIL" and, although I'm not going to put anybody else's wings down, Kevin was not a big fan of "MICHAEL" [the John Travolta film where Travolta plays the archangel Michael] wings at all. He didn't think they moved much and you really didn't get to see them all until, maybe, the end. The advantage with BRAZIL was the person's arms actually fit into the wings, which helped manipulate them. In the case of "DOGMA," we didn't have that luxury whatsoever.
These wings had to not only move, they had to flap, they had to fold, and, I think it's the first time that animatronic wings like these have been made where they can do all those functions in one full set. This is as opposed to having several sets of wings, with each capable of performing only a few of the functions required by the script. The one set of wings did everything," We had two sets of those, one as back-up. Alan Rickman and Ben Affleck had to wear those, and they were very heavy -- about 60 pounds. And then on top of all of that, we had sets of what you might call, 'stunt wings' and 'shoot-em-up wings' and what we called the 'opened, sprung out wings' for when Ben Affleck comes swooping down from the top of a church steeple.
So what mechanism was used to drive the movements? Electric motors? No. Completely cable. They're controlled by operators. We had to make armor, also, for Ben Affleck when he's in the wings. With every set of wings that was on him, even the animatronic ones, there was a certain type of armor that had to go on him to accommodate the harness that went on the back.
And there were more things than angels... We had The Golgothan, also known as Noman or The Shit Demon, who is a character made from all the evil excrement in the world. This is one of the minions that Jason Lee -- who plays the demon Azrael in the film -- sends after Jay and Silent Bob. Jay and Silent Bob are recurring characters in Kevin Smith films. In fact, Kevin Smith IS Silent Bob. Jason Mewes plays Jay. Here they play prophets -- with Alanis Morissette as God!" "The main frame of the wings is made from aluminum -- milled and machined parts. On top of that frame is a spandex type of material stretched over the frame. The feathers on the outer edges of the wings are sculpted and vacuum formed from plastic and individually glued on.
The Golgothan was altogether different. The Golgothan is a suit, about six feet, two inches in height. Bob Panetta, a stunt guy under the supervision of Gary Jensen, wore the suit. Mark Smith was the model for the suit. We sculpted it based on him, but when we did tests, we discovered that the suit was too much of a strain on him and we were afraid he'd have a heart attack and die on us! That's when we went with Bob Panetta. But it's a foam latex suit with a spandex inner suit, with an animatronic, radio controlled head. The thing did have to talk, laugh, smile among other expressions. It couldn't look like a big, rubber suit, even though it's a hard concept to make a shit monster look believable.
But I'm pleased at the way it looked in the film. There's also an animatronic version of Ben Affleck which we did, in which the head and heart would blow up -- which is what happens if a mortal hears the true sound of God's voice. I also had to make a fake George Carlin [who plays Cardinal Glick] that gets dropped out of the sky and smashes to the ground. And I'd also like to thank key crew members Greg Romoundos & Ken Walker, who were responsible for the engineering of the animatronics for the wings that brought my design to life.
I feel they're the best animatronics wings in the history of film; the animatronics were headed up by my mechanics guy Gregory Ramondous. I put many demands on him and his team to have them move they way they did. They had to be the best. Oh and the shit monster was dumb but what a hoot to make and have him perform they way he did. And because working with Kevin Smith is like working with your best friend. He's awesome. He's a free thinker and listens to what you have to say. He's a great guy as well as a great director, and most times his sets are just plan fun, the way a movie should be made. Kevin's cool as shit. I'd walk through Hell with him.
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ANIMATRONIC SUPERVISOR Gregory Romondus
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These models below were the basis for where I took the face for the shit demon I sculpted both of these models in a few days casted them up in rubber and painted them.Which was later sculpted and roughed out in full form in 3 days by artist and friend Sandy Collora there called Machetes or small models to show what the creature for DOGMA may look like. I heard Kevin took these around to his first meetings with MIRAMAX. And one of the girl Executives was putting her finger in the mouth. Scott Mosier the producer first told me this story. Anyway here are to different expressions one for a scream and one the was a neutral or normal expression. We actually built a scream head for the Shit Demon, (AKA GOLGOTHAN) But it was cut from the hospital scene that was cut out. Funny story though we Show Kevin the scream head and he goes why did you not show this to me when we shot at the bar? I was like hey I told Scott about the head over and over. They just both looked at me like I was this dumb flake. Hahahaha Then Kevin turn's and say's to Scott lets shoot this. OH WELL. Still was not in the final cut of the movie. Anyway I hope all this info feeds your need for everything Dogma.
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