My Resume
Let me introduce you to my project:
Title:
Judgement House
Purpose:
A CHRISTian presentation/drama
developed as an alternative to Holloween
Haunted Houses. The
entire presentation is composed of 8 scenes and this
page briefely documents the
design through execution of scene 4 which is a
representation of a tragic
plane crash with no survivors.
The Challenge:
To design and construct a
life size Special FX presentation of the crash scene of a
Boeing 727 aircraft within
the time frame of 5 weeks with a budget of $1500 and
volunteer construction workers
available mostly on weekends.
My Involvement:
I was tasked with the design
and supervision of the construction. I had the
fortunate oportunity to work
with a very talented artist, whose name will remain
anonomous until he approves
of this presentation. He is employed by one of
the leading animation/special
FX firms in the industry. After he announced
our intentions, he was summarily
told that it could not be done. I would have
agreed with them except that
I know that the Lord God could accomplish it and
He was definitely into this
project.
The Race Begins............
On
September 12, 1998 I began the
design. This is the
pencil rendition
done by my good and talented
artist friend, Greg Hill.
Greg worked
tirelessly to help me in
the coordination
of volunteers and then went
on to
orchestrate the actual mini
drama
that accompanied this special
FX scene. Some twenty
actors
performed the same act every
5 minutes for 4 to 6 hours.
For
3 solid weeks I worked on
these drawings trying to
encompass
as much detail as possible.
We felt
that if we could come up
with a
design package of high enough
quality, the can-do feeling
would
develop among the volunteer
crew.The real challenge was
to
design this so that the materials
could be purchased at the
local
Home Depot and then assembled
by amateurs. Turns
out we had a
few pros among us.
A word about the design:
Anyone who has seen a real
crash scene of a true airliner realizes that you would
have to be trained to recognize
any part of the real wreckage. If we
wanted true realism the visitors
would not know what they are viewing.
Therefore, it was decided
to make the wreckage very easily recognizable.
There were some real items
borrowed from salvage yards like one main
landing gear, a tire,
an access door with stair steps, etc. The rest was
constructed rom common materials.
The kick-off meeting was
scheduled for September 26. I
was a nervous as a cat.
I had never designed anything
before that someone else
would have to build. 
Was
I
setting myself up for a flury
of criticism? Would we have
enough volunteers?
Would they be faithful? We were
full of questions.
The Lord brought us over 30 men and
they convinced themselves
that we could do this. Many of
the men were engineers...my
peers. To my relief and
amazement they received my
design with great
enthusiasm. We took off.
The Work begins.......
To manage the work load I we
assigned leaders called captains for each of the main sections.
There would then be a lieutenant
to stand in for the captain should his personal schedule
keep him away. The main
sections were the tail, the cockpit and the body.
The leader of the cockpit section
was Rick Freeman who took great pains
and worked long, late hours to
keep on schedule. This section had the
most diverse of the
construction methods plus alot of
the fine detailed
special effects with instruments
and radar screens.
Rick is the one
smiling at the camera.
The next section back was the
body and all of the parts of the body.
Construction was fairly simple
compared to the other two sections
but it was time comsuming.
Greg is in the the second
picture.
The most complex section was the
tail. It involved quite a bit of math to make
individual sub-structures fit
together. The most fun part to design was the
cones on the back of the engines.
I had to creat a patern that, when rolled up
formed a cone of the right dimensions.
Math works. That's me in front of the
basic skeleton.
The Final Effect.....
This was taken just before the sun
went down and shows,
a little better, some of the
layout.
Here is the same scene as above
in full effect status with
lights on, smoke and drama.
This
is down on the ground level from the same view
as our visitors.
This was one of my favorite spots
to
view the wreckage. Looked
so real!
Another
eerie scene.
This was our live news crew preparing
for a broadcast.
If
you would like to visit the true Judgement House web site click here.
