Anatomy of the film animatrons

BACK in 1993, creature creator and special effects makeup artist Howard Berger’s heart sank when he saw the digital dinosaurs inhabiting “Jurassic Park.”

“All of the creature guys saw it and said, ‘Oh, my God, we might be extinct,’ ” Berger recalls.

“I had competitors who said ‘We have got to get out of this monster stuff and go into digital.’ I had other friends say ‘We have to fight digital all the way.’ ” He and his team at KNB EFX decided to “just ride it out and see what happens. And we survived.”

These days, says Berger, he and business partner Greg Nicotero are seeing more and more demand for makeup effects and animatronics.

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” for which Berger won an Oscar for his special-effects makeup work, was a perfect marriage of CGI and animatronics, he says. “The CGI augmented some of the practical stuff, and there were cases when the animatronics replaced stuff that was earmarked digital.”

Berger’s animatronic Aslan -- the lion from the “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” -- as well as a Minoboar, one of his hulking part-man, part-boar creatures from the film, are on display at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ exhibition “It’s Alive! Bringing Animatronic Characters to Life on Film.”

The exhibition, which continues through Aug. 20 at the academy’s headquarters in Beverly Hills, features creatures from the heyday of animatronics in the 1970s and ‘80s, including Yoda from “The Empire Strikes Back,” the giant ape from “Harry and the Hendersons” and the Audrey II plant from “Little Shop of Horrors.” It also takes in contemporary animatronic creatures from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” “SpiderMan 2” and “The Santa Clause 2.”

“This is a show that is meant to be interactive,” says academy programmer Ellen Harrington. “With many of the animatronics, we show the mechanisms. We have stripped away the skin to show the cables and wires and operating systems. We wanted to show the technology and the fact that so many people are involved in actually operating these characters. Sometimes it is completely motion-controlled, sometimes there is actually a performer inside the suit. There can be as many as 10 people who operate animatronics.”

Harrington acknowledges that with the rise of computer graphic effects in the ‘90s, many people wrote animatronics off as old technology.

“When CGI became such a wonderful tool, some people went all the way doing things in CGI and forgot the things that animatronics can bring to the table -- a wonderful 3-D realism to characters or creatures. And it allows live performers to interact with characters in real time instead of relying so much on things being done in postproduction.”

Audiences, she says, relate more strongly to an animatronic character such as a Yoda or Aslan than one digitally rendered. “These are characters that people have an enormous emotional interaction to and respond to them if they are really the star performers in the movies. I think sometimes if you have a completely computer- generated character, it doesn’t happen. You don’t have the same kind of immediacy and warmth.”

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Keeping it true to form

BERGER says that initially “Narnia” director Andrew Adamson wanted all the creatures’ heads to be created digitally. “But we did a prototype head and we showed it to him, and he really turned,” says Berger.

It took four or five puppeteers to operate the animatronic Aslan. Berger recalls that when it came time for the young actresses who played Lucy and Susan to interact with the dying Aslan, they made sure the girls didn’t see the operators bringing the creature onto the set.

“We didn’t treat him like a puppet, so when they came on set, Aslan was already moving, and they related to him as real. They just saw there was a lion on the set and it was alive.”

Brian Henson of the Jim Henson Co., which has several animatronic pieces on display, notes that working with puppets and 3-D creatures has its drawbacks. “Computer animation is always perfectly precise,” he says. “Animatronics can never get to be perfectly precise. So there are certain things that are very tough for animatronics, like perfect lip sync and perfect eye lines.”

But he seconds Berger’s sense of the advantages of working with actual rather than virtual creatures.

“I think the problem with computer 3-D animation is that there is nothing there while you are shooting,” he says. “It’s hard on the actors and hard on everybody, whereas with animatronics, the characters are really there. That’s nice particularly if you want your character to have personality and soul, not just be a scary monster that jumps out from behind the door.”

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‘It’s Alive! Bringing Animatronic Characters to Life on Film’

Where: Grand Lobby and Fourth Floor galleries at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; noon to 6 p.m. weekends

Ends: Aug. 20

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 247-3600 or www.oscars.org