Small Wonders : Newly Formed Special Effects Firm in Chatsworth Provides Surrealistic Settings for Entertainment Industry

On the top rack of a refrigerator, there’s a birthday party being given for a ham by friends that include a pineapple, cupcake, mushroom and carrot.

In a nearby room, a highway cuts through a 30-foot by 40-foot desert landscape made from walnut shells ground into fine powder. Cardboard and plastic boxes made to look like gasoline stations border the highway, which disappears into a slate-colored mountain range made from foil. In the same room, a white fiberglass space station 8 feet by 12 feet hangs delicately against a sky-blue canvas.

“Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” a Saturday morning children’s program hosted by comedian Pee-wee Herman, will feature the ham birthday party in a clay animation segment. In the desert scene, the driver will come upon thousands of Getty Petroleum gasoline stations in a 30-second commercial. The space station is for 3-D pictures used for corporate promotions.

All these surrealistic settings are special effects made by Hollywood-Tokyo Film Group, a Chatsworth firm that hires out for television, movies, commercials, music videos or industrial films.

The company was founded this spring by longtime Hollywood special effects executive Oliver (Brick) Price and a Tokyo firm, Daiwa Kohbunshi Kogyo Co. Ltd. The Japanese company, which makes building materials, hopes to use the expertise it gains here to help it expand into entertainment projects in Japan.

Price set up shop by buying a special effects unit that was closed by financially ailing Cannon Group. Price would not disclose what he paid, but said he bought cameras and other special effects visual equipment valued at about $1.2 million for much less. He also took over the building’s lease.

His company is one of many competing in the highly fragmented special effects business that is nonetheless expanding rapidly, thanks to development of sophisticated computer graphics. Many major film companies, among them Walt Disney and “Star Wars” film maker George Lucas, have their own special effects personnel.

But Price’s firm has carved its own niche in the special effects world by using miniature models.

Price and his Japanese partners closely guard the financial details of the partnership, but Price said things have gotten off to a fast start, with the firm booking more than $1 million in revenue since starting May 1.

The group works closely with Wonderworks, a Canoga Park company owned by Price. Wonderworks, which builds models and designs special effects, has about $1 million in annual revenue.

Price’s reputation is well-established within the industry. Linwood Dunn, an Academy Award-winning special effects man whose work dates back to the original “King Kong” in 1933, described Price as one of the leaders in creating special effects by using miniatures.

“He builds very good models. He gets involved in some of the other areas, but his specialty is the models and handling the photography of them,” Dunn said.

Price and his workers essentially are free-lancers who bid on projects. Some projects, like commercials, last only a couple of weeks; others, such as the Pee-wee Herman segments, could continue as long as the show stays on the air.

Price’s competitors say his work doesn’t come cheaply.

“He has a reputation for very high prices and very good work,” said one competitor, Florida model builder Edward J. Guard, who specializes in making models used in space museums.

Price’s car models, for example, are often so intricate that they can cost $6,000 to $26,000, or as much as the genuine car itself. But Price argues that it is often cheaper to film a commercial using a model in a studio where directors have more control than it is to shoot on location using real cars.

For example, Price built a model of a Budweiser-sponsored racing car for a commercial. The script called for the car to accelerate from a standing start on a race track.

The original cost estimates to make the commercial were $100,000 for one day’s shooting using a real car. That included rescheduling the driver’s racing schedule, hiring a 20-person film crew, renting a large site for shooting, plus provisions for safety and insurance.

Instead, Price built a radio-controlled model car for $12,000 that was filmed on an indoor set.

Much of Price’s work relies on trick photography using thousands of dollars worth of camera gear. To make clay figures talk, for example, a photograph is taken of the figure, then the figure’s mouth is reshaped. Another photo is snapped. Some 24 photographs are needed per second of film time; the stills are then spliced together to create the animated segments.

For the Getty commercial, to give the impression of a car driving through a desert at night as its driver hunts for a gas station, a $200,000 computer-controlled camera system is used. The camera, outfitted with lights to simulate headlights, as well as a miniature car hood, is hung from a crane that hovers above the make-believe road. As the camera moves forward, it films a scene to make it appear that an actual car is moving down a dark, empty road.

Price, 41, a native of Pasadena, began his animation career in 1968 when he was in the Army. As he tells it, he was waiting to be shipped to Vietnam to be part of a helicopter crew when his commanding officer found him drawing cartoons in the barracks. Price never made it to Vietnam; instead he was transferred to a film unit to make animated educational films.

Later, before forming Brick Price Movie Miniatures, Price wrote books for hobbyists on such topics as model making, modifying real motorcycles and fixing boats. The miniatures company, which operated in the San Fernando Valley, was closed in 1985 for tax reasons.

Price’s new Japanese partners got together because of Keisei Miura, president of Daiwa Kohbunshi. Initially a maker of waterproof building materials, Daiwa Kohbunshi, which has about $100 million in annual revenue, wants to use its involvement in the project to develop entertainment projects.

They include, Miura said, a game called “Invade,” in which players shoot laser lights at robots, and a simulated golf game that could be installed in Japanese amusement parks. The company also wants access to the technology developed at the studio for use in making commercials in Japan, where Miura said special effects graphics are not as advanced as in the United States.

Altogether, Price has about 70 special effects veterans working for him between Hollywood-Tokyo Film Group and Wonderworks. His employees have contributed to special effects on such movies as “2010,” “Star Trek,” “1941” and “Tron,” Price said.

Price himself has contributed special effects to a number of movies and commercials. One ad showed a car model being dipped in mercury, while another showed a car appearing to climb a skyscraper. For the movie “Space Camp,” a film about youths who are inadvertently shot into space, Price designed a replica of the inside of a space shuttle.

Price said he is highly critical of his own work. “I know I’ve done it right when I get caught up in the illusion. If I believe it, anybody will believe it,” he said.

Price’s work is now evenly divided among film and television work, commercials, and museum and special projects such as the laser light shooting game for Daiwa Kohbunshi.

Other projects include a music video for singer Michael Jackson’s new album. And a 24-foot-long trench is being built for battle scenes between spaceships for a new television program called “Capt. Power and the Soldiers of the Future.”

Film director Jonathan Butuel said he used Price and some of his crew to create a miniature prehistoric jungle for a scene in his movie “My Science Project,” in which dinosaur stalked through a jungle.

“They were able to deliver very realistic miniatures. If one thing had been out of scale, it would have thrown the reality off completely,” Butuel said.