Matt Denton: How we built BB-8 for Star Wars

0:00Red carpet BB-8, as it became known, could spin on the spot and it was a beautiful, beautiful feature. Built, I think, two or three hippogriffs, which were hard work.

0:11Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's the Trick? I am your host, Ben Hanlin, and this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And today's guest is Matt Denton, who is one of the best people in the world at animatronics and robotics for the film and TV industry and special effects in general, which is somebody we'd never had on this show before. So I'm really excited to speak to someone like Matt. So a bit of a background just to bring you. Matt was part of loads of films, but in particular, he was part of the animatronics team that created BB-8 in Star Wars.

0:47Ben Hanlin: he's been part of the harry potter franchise making their animatronics there if you go to the harry potter museum in uh down the warner brothers museum you can see his works there project how mary the new film that's just coming out he's involved with the animatronics in that as well as a load of other things as well and on socials he has built a whole following because he 3d prints lego inspired blocks but basically lego puts it all together and makes robotics out of that he's even got the Guinness world record for the world's largest rideable road it's called Mantis it's this massive robot that he sat in with I think it was six legs that he made a few years ago but why did I want to get him on the show because for me he's a perfect guest for what's the trick because it is about turning ideas into reality and as somebody in that field special effects and you are given a brief from a director or creative of saying make this here's the idea and somehow you have to problem solve and come up with loads of different ways of turning that idea into reality so i really want to dig into that and it's a great mix isn't it between creativity and your scientific so i really want to pick him apart in that sense a bit of context you're going the need for this episode just uh if you don't know project hail mary uh it's a massive book all about sci-fi about essentially an astronaut in space saving the world and he befriends an alien called rocky which the film is just about to come out it's coming here played by ryan gosling like i said and rocky is going to be mostly animatronic as well so that's just a bit of context for you on that one and bb8 for the non-star wars fans he's one of the biggest characters recently in the star wars universe in the universe he's a droid and he is that you probably definitely have seen him he was the droid on the ball that rolled through the desert and jj abrams kind of came up with that and it launched the new batch of films as well the force awakens so he's really in the team that created that and made that happen a lot of people thought at the time it was cgi and then they realized oh no they actually built this robot that can do So that's where we start the conversation.

3:03Ben Hanlin: I want to get into how did the idea of BB-8 become a reality. We talk about loads of other things as well on this journey. We talk about how you fail on million dollar film sets, other animatronics and his kind of problem solving process. Also some really interesting things. Be a millionaire I didn't expect. So anyway, enjoy this episode. This is What's the Trick with Matt Denton. he did a few designs in america and then those designs or simultaneously our guy in the creature shop um started working on it as um jake lunt and he he was our principal designer for bba in fact he fleshed out the final designs it was his final vision that came to life the original one had more of a wheel i think without being a ball and stuff like that it didn't have the sides on it just more of a will from recollection um so jake a massive design process of what bbh should look like and while that was happening we knew it was going to be a ball with a head on top and mike my engineering counterpart the mechanical engineer in my this will have like a work wife if you like we call it is josh he'd started to think about how we're going to film something there's a ball with a head on top and he started the mechanical ideas of what we can get away with well let's so first of all things that you've already used the phrase creature shop which i love yes um but interestingly already the way you're talking so i'm a magician right people go how do you come up with tricks yeah and i've not actually been able to speak to anybody in this kind of detail but magic and what you do is very similar i would imagine in certain ways because essentially we're engineering props and illusions to solve a problem but did you have this clear vision so when i think of a magic trick the first thing we do is we really make it so crystal clear in our mind the magician is going to stand on this podium lift up a cloth and they're going to vanish and that is the movie we're trying to create and that's a non-negotiable and then every problem Almost every solution has to fit exactly that.

5:17Ben Hanlin: Otherwise, it's a different trick. So this vision for BB-8 that it has to be a ball that rolls, or was it quite vague? What was essentially the mission you were trying to solve there? Well, the thing about films is we can cheat, unlike doing... Well, you cheat, as I'm a teacher. Alive on stage. Yeah. But you have to do it live in front of people. And in film, we can cheat in many ways because we now have brilliant digital stuff where we can remove people from the picture and remove rods and stuff. So there's two ways you have to approach it. On through the script with Josh, I think, and said, look, these are all the kind of shots we have to achieve with BB-8.

6:07How best can we do this? And obviously, we can cheat if we need to. we can have stabilizers and we can have rods and we can have you know that kind of stuff so early on i think josh had thought there's no way we can make a ball rolling with a head on top self-balancing and even if we could there's no way it will work in sand or on gravel or you know all these other scenarios so what can we do so that so josh had come up with several ideas one which was just a push-along version you know like a All Barry, you push along with the head, was on an arm on top, and the arm gets digitally removed. So that became used a lot.

6:47It was the puppet one. And then we made two radio-controlled versions. But again, we cheated. We put a rear trolley on the back with two extra wheels, which could turn on the spot. And that was a three-wheel drive to BB-8, and all the back end got digitally removed afterwards. But you had this radio-controlled system that you could be puppeteer-free so there's no people around it, so you can drive through a shot and there's less to remove. So you have to work, you know, like what can we achieve and what's the best way to do it and what are the best ways that you can make to achieve all the shots?

7:23You know, there was a shot where BB-8 goes flying through the Millennium Falcon, I think, and he's out of control because the ship was spinning or whatever. So we made the bowling ball BB-8 and it was literally just a ball with a head and we'd throw it through shot. you know like yeah stunt be lightweight version that you can pick up and carry with just the head moves you know so we had an arsenal of bb-8s for filming but then when it gets to the end of the filming and the red carpet event is coming up the premiere you can't have puppeteers pushing the bb-8 down a red carpet the magician trick comes in and you're like well how can we do it for real and how can we sell it so that you know everyone believes it's a real bba even if it just comes out on stage um you know could we actually make one does it need to be on a track and do we put dry ice on the stage to hide the track you know all those kind of things to come into play

8:21Ben Hanlin: then but then equally when you start suggesting them does somebody then go yeah but if it's got dry ice and a track that's not that's not bba so it's keeping the illusion going as well right so is that is that and then you eventually came up with a solution right is that correct of how to do it yeah that's right yeah so we'd finished filming and i think we were well really at the end of filming episode seven the force awakens um and josh i think was like i really want to go to a premiere i've never been to a premiere i've never been invited to one because engineers you don't really get to see that sort of stuff you know um so uh And he was like, well, maybe, you know, like, could we actually make a BB-8?

9:05And he had a few ideas. He was kicking around. And then I was like, well, let's, you know, let's try it. We had some time. We had a little bit of budget. And I was thinking, well, we could stabilize it with gyros and a big weight in the bottom and stuff. And then develop. Originally, I think we just set out to make a ball that was painted to look like BB-8. A smooth ball. A head that stays on top and just drive around. And as we started to achieve each of those things that we set out to, I'm like, well, actually, I was sat on my office chair one day spinning on the spot. Can you make a ball spin on the spot without, you know, having anything to push against because torque is hard to...

9:47So I figured out, I think you could. I said to Josh, if you can make... All the batteries are in the bottom. They're really heavy. I said, if you could make the battery rings spin, you've got a big weight spinning up, and then we break it hard, that's transferred into the body and you can spin on the spot and that's a lovely illusion because because we haven't done that with many other ones that we've built since but the mark one red carpet bb8 as it became known could spin on the spot and it was a beautiful beautiful feature and then it was like well if we got a smooth ball it's got led how do we fit them in because there's all this stuff going around inside so you can't have structure um so i said to josh what if we had lasers pointing at where the where the lights should be and the lasers spin inside the ball and they all project to the inside of the ball josh came up with this crazy the lasers should be and we basically put reds a blue and a white torch red and a blue laser and a white torch that would point into the various points in the body and spin around on the inside of the axis and always project into the correct position.

10:55So, you know, we just started adding more and more to the illusion to try and make an illusion. So, yeah, you took it one little bit at a time

11:06Ben Hanlin: and tried to solve that one bit. And a lot of your job, I think, is about solving problems, right? So you get given essentially the problem of, well, this is the thing, so go, solve that problem. it's i'd imagine you know i always think about inventions as thousands of failures so how many do you have any idea something like that how many prototypes how many times you would have tried and failed to have made a bba um we had five weeks we built that first and that that version i don't think had the laser array in it i think it had the spin on the spot and it was just a grey sphere with a grey head shaped like BB-8.

11:52And we only had, because we had no real official budget for it, we were doing it at the end of the film budget. So we built one and then we shot a little bit of it coming out of a doorway. I think it poked its head around the doorway and it drove out of the door and drove towards camera. And we sent it to, or Neil sent it to Catherine Kennedy, head of Lucasfilm. and I think the title was Where's Brian? Because Brian was one of the puppeteers. Brian, Herring and Dave Chapman were the two physical puppeteers on BB-8. And it was just said, Where's Brian? And it just BB-8 rolled out and there's a bit of music.

12:29And she was like, have some money, make it look like BB-8 because at this point it's a grey ball. And we've got Star Wars Celebration coming up in Anaheim in a time. Can you get it ready for that? and it was like oh god now you know now the pressure's on you know so really because not only is we you know doing it in our own controlled environment now they want us to roll out on stage in front of a live audience televised to millions uh you know and then and then it all changes and uh possibly that that moment for josh and i was our career highlight because we couldn't imagine the reaction it got because at that point everybody assumed it's a cg BB-8.

13:12They've only seen one shot of it in the teaser trailer, rolling through the desert really fast, which coincidentally was actually the puppet. Everyone thought it was CG, it was a puppet. And yeah, we got to Anaheim. We only had one. We had no backup, no spare because we only had time to build the one. We usually build two of everything for film if we can because if it breaks down, it costs a lot of money. And yeah, I was driving, I was puppeteering. I was behind me just off stage in case the head fell off. We had this whole routine planned to go on stage and rescue the head and put it back on again.

13:50Ben Hanlin: And yeah, we rolled out on stage. We did this little loop-the-loop around R2-D2 and JJ was talking about it. And we went up to front-centre stage and turn and spin on the spot and turn and spin on the spot back. And it was just the best incredible reaction you could ever hope for. And then suddenly we had the whole world of engineers and magicians trying to figure out how we did it. And that was the best bit ever. Something you alluded to was almost the pressure and the stress of having to. You were saying, yeah, we had a backup plan. So here's something I think I can relate to with you a little bit is we had moments where you'd come up with a prop or a trick and you get to the shoot day.

14:32Ben Hanlin: And I used to do hidden camera pranks. You'd have one go at this thing. and if the lever or the prop didn't work at that point, it would blow the whole shoe or we'd be sat there some days and a magic trick wouldn't be working and the director would be looking at us going, magic team, how long are you going to need? Because we've got 50 people standing around. Now, you're on a film set with Star Wars, right? Was there ever any moments where, you know, this is your moment, we've got the animatronics happening and it doesn't even have to be Star Wars it could be any film you've done where that pressure, something has gone wrong or you've had to deal with those problems there and then because that's quite a high stress environment right?

15:19Yeah very it has happened in the past, it happened many things but the problem is

15:29generally speaking the animatronics are you know a sideline to the main action it's not the main event we're just there for the background stuff BB-8 was the main character and that's why we have spares of everything you know we had two mostly two of most things but the two trikes I mentioned earlier on this was a an absolute something that actually happened they were both the radio control ones so they liked to use them when there was a complex shot where you didn't want to digitally remove humans from the stuff stuff and so i would drive those two trikes and i think jay dave chapman did the head he would ready to control the head so it's a two-man operation and we had a left and a right-handed trike and what that means is that it was the left-handed one was digitally clean on the left hand side so you didn't need much cleanup if you were shooting it from the left yeah on the right and they were quite very hard to transfer rounds you could kind of do it but it was a bit weird anyway i think we were filming one day on the left-handed trike and it stopped working and josh and i really proud you know we're really proud that we never stopped the camera battery and that's the key so whenever there's a break in filming if you think the battery might be low you go in and change it whilst there's a break like they're changing the film on the camera or something like that you know because you don't want to stop them mid-shot and go oh the battery's run out that's a disaster you know you've ruined a take you've ruined the actor's take or whatever so once and the left-handed tripe we're using it and it stops working and we're like oh yeah this is our moment now it's happened to us and at this point i think i think this was on episode seven it's a lovely ad called uh tommy gormley and uh he was he was harsh but fair you know like he's because his job is to keep the the shit moving you know um uh and anyway he with the trike stopped working but at that moment they're changing a lens on the camera and and reloading the camera so we've got a few minutes you know so we got the side of the trike off and i'm looking inside and josh's going what do you think figure it out went far up um and we're fiddling around and tommy comes over because he sees this going on you know and he's like well yeah what's what's the deal what's the deal guys what's happening what's happening and uh you know his catchphrase was savage pressure savage pressure it's a scottish guy uh we're like we'll just you know we're figuring it out tommy you know we've got the backup we can do a version with the right-handed tripe but we're going to try and get this one working we need a few minutes and he went in and he went two thousand dollars a minute guys i was like great that really helps wow so it's costing two two thousand dollars a minute to hold the camera.

18:20Like, the camera hasn't finished loading and the lens isn't on yet. So don't, you know, like... But he put the pressure on us. The camera crew rarely get that kind of pressure. They're like, oh, we've got a battery change. Oh, you know, there's a hair. And they're like, but for us, he can put the pressure on anyway. I don't know whether we got it or not to come out, but by the time they got the camera running, we were already up and running with BB-8, whichever fix we did. But yeah, that's it.

18:47Ben Hanlin: when you're in that moment if you can think about being it because i think you you might have been like hot sweaty on set you've got all these eyes on you and someone's come over and gone come on guys two thousand dollars a minute so you have a bit of almost like being in the army of going right okay let's go through my list let's see what or do you because it must be quite hard to not just go mate will you just get out of my face um yeah i i actually that's i think that's one thing i'm quite proud of i deal with pressure quite well on set when i was younger i probably would have um i probably would have fixed it and got it running but i would it would have it would have affected me more and now i'm a bit more like i don't know i can take those people kind of you know like giving you some grief on set because i'll i will kind of if someone is being unfair i will unfair now as in the past i would have said nothing which is probably what supposed to do whereas now i'll be like look come on the camera's not ready don't have to ask you know when that camera's up and ready and you're ready in a film then you can start telling me it's two thousand dollars a minute but you know they're generally speaking to get on pretty well with the first ad's i'll make it my job to do that to pull with them because that's going to help you a lot generally speaking i i'm you know you go through i'm very good at fault finding so i know that i'll find the fault if it can be found quick if not we go for backup and it's making that decision quickly to tell that person we need five minutes or we need 10 minutes this is a proper 10 minute fix which they'll mean isn't it you know and you kind of work with that you get used to working with that from 30 years of being on a film set you know yeah and that even though what you just said they would make kind of sense is become friends with the ad because there's there might be a point yeah where you're going to need that goodwill to cash in a little bit at times as well um about so moving on from star wars i'm kind of going a bit all over the place chronologically here but let's harry potter as well you worked on harry potter what did you yeah what did you do on harry potter yeah the animatronics there i uh potter i started on the third film um and uh funnily enough i used to work in game shows as well i did game shows for quite a while on and off between films like who wants to be a millionaire yeah yeah yeah who wants to be a millionaire and the weakest link and stuff like that so i designed the fastest fingers first keypads for my and asked the audience technology and all that and went all around the world and trained people how to run the show on the computer system and things like that so it was a good gig actually but i'd just finished at this game show company and i had no job to go to and i was going to go off skiing for a season or something i kind of had a bit of a break and an email saying uh are you you know are you still starting next week and i was like what starting where and there was a harry potter so i'd been to seen them some months ago and you know like with the idea of all maybe but I'll go back to the film work, had an interview with Nick Dubbin, who was the head of Creatures on Harry Potter.

22:01And they offered me a job, but it bounced out of my email box or something. So I had no idea. So I literally finished this game show company. And a week later, I was at Leifson Studios working on Prisoner of Azkaban. I had no idea. It just appeared from nowhere. It's just lucky that I'd already handed my notice in.

22:18Ben Hanlin: But hold on, quick. We're going to come back to Prisoner of Azkaban. You've just mentioned, though, you've uh made the fastest fingers first for who wants to be a millionaire which is if we just take it into perspective that was one of the biggest shows on the planet and that features features probably in almost every country in the world was it always that scenario did they always know it was going to be this finger or did it ever change in the early stages uh no it was i think it was always that scenario the original when they when they developed the show it was actually called cash mountain uh when there was in a development stage and then it became who wants to be a millionaire which i always thought was a real big mouthful but we're all um and yeah we had yeah so we had the fastest fingers first that asked the audience which was you know the voting system and uh what have you in fact i've got i can see my prototype for the fastest fingers first box in my cabinet just there and um the best bit about millionaire i was in training the guy there a guy called rudy who was my computer operator in new york and i'd train him up and i'd sit and watch the first few shows yeah so they'd get up to speed and i was there for two weeks and i was in the gallery where everything gets filmed so the gallery is like um uh where all the controls are for the camera and stuff like that system and the producers are in the director and as it happened lloyd's bank insured because they were insuring the big wins you know like someone from Lloyd's is there or whatever.

23:50And I was there when the first millionaire was made, ever. And it's one of the best clips to watch because the guy had gone all the way to the top. Like, it's unheard of.

24:03Ben Hanlin: So hold on. Have you seen it? You were in the gallery when the first ever millionaire, you were behind the scenes when the first millionaire, and you're there just obviously doing... What was the atmosphere? Were they happy or were they panicking? Well, panicking because he'd gone to a lifeline. And it's such a brilliant clip to go back and watch because nobody does that. You know, like he'd gone all the way to these on the 10th question. He's got all three lifelines. So what is your obvious thing to do, right? You've got three lifelines on the 10th question. You would go statistically 50-50, get rid of two answers.

24:38Yeah. Ask the audience, get two answers.

24:41Ben Hanlin: And if you have to, phone a friend. Yeah. What does he do? He phones a friend. straight away phones a friend and we were like oh my god what an idiot what an idiot you know everyone in the gallery is just going why why would you do that yeah so he phones a friend and you've got to watch the clip because he phones his dad and it was um regis regis is like i'm going to pass you over i've got your son here yada yada you know here's the question and he says oh you know he reads the question to him i think yeah he goes oh dad yeah i don't i don't need to uh hear what you or your answer whatever because um i know the answer i just want to tell you i'm going to be a millionaire by answering final answer you know like the biggest mic drop in tv history and then i know and then everyone really panics because they're like i remember hearing people go the glitter cannons ready and the glitter cannons you know are the pyros ready like because and they're going to what they're shouting at us is he correct is he correct and And we're like, yeah, you've got it.

25:42We're ready waiting to press the next button on the computer to go, you know, all the straps go off, the graphic straps and stuff. And they had to pause. And I think they told Regis to try and stall him because we weren't ready for him to do that quick. We thought he was going to talk to his dad for a bit and then maybe come back and... Could you imagine as well being the pyrotechnics guys

26:05Ben Hanlin: that have been there every show? They've never had to do anything for years. going on and then oh all right okay well yeah uh i'm on exactly exactly exactly and then it not working and then but were the people in the gallery were they immediately think is this guy cheating is something going on or were they was it was it panic because the lloyds guy's about to give away a million dollars or is it all just good publicity there wasn't that i don't recall there be any any sense of that at all we were just like how did he do that you know like i remember he took everyone out after the show and bought people drinks and stuff he was a really nice guy he was he worked for the irs i think and it was like well how did he know that question and it was something weird like what statue is outside of the university of so and so so and so in russia you know it was like a really and and he went well my girlfriend went there my girlfriend studied that university you know like you know slumdog millionaire the film it you know he just happened to know the answers it was literally that and i've often wondered whether slumdog was based on that that one airing because he literally just happened to know all the way to the top so and that we've diverted but it was i never didn't think yeah sorry i didn't think i'll be speaking to somebody who was in the room when the first minute happened.

27:31Ben Hanlin: Anyway, Prisoner of Azkaban, short answer. Yes. Let's talk about Harry Potter in general then, because obviously I'm guessing you worked on a few films. What are the big animatrices you worked on throughout that film? So Azkaban, yeah, we did the Hippogriff, which was a massive thing. We built, I think, two or three Hippogriffs, which were hard work. I mean, some of the work on that was beautiful. The feather work was stunning. That was headed up by Vila and her team. And they were hand cutting and hand painting and dyeing the feather suit on the hippogriff, which was beautiful. But as an animatronic, it was really hard work, really difficult.

28:12In fact, we called it the Heap of Grief. It was the well-known nickname for it. It's a little hippogriff. And we haven't... Why is it a difficult animatronic? it oh it it was very ambitious um yeah very ambitious i mean it was filmed in scotland in the mud you know like and it rained every day and it's a feather suit so we had to keep going in with umbrellas it was supposed to be this summer you know like the summer didn't come thing to build we built a fully standing version which is pretty much what you can see in the harry potter museum now yeah and you know that's where where um harry potter daniel first meets the hippogriff and that scene and we get it you know we take it on set it it can do everything but walk the wings work the head works it's beautiful but it can't walk you know we can't make things walk we get it on set alfonso coran the director's like okay now uh harry you step in and now the hippogriff steps in you know and we're like what you just watched us with two hours we just buried it into the ground and hid all the cables it can't he's seen in our workshop you know but anyway so they're like all right get rid of the hippogriff so we get we take out this four month five month build of animatronic and beautiful you know and stick it back in the van and it becomes a cg shot you know and that was that was that's the way that the industry was really sad but that was the reality of it so the heap of grief um sorry no well let's very quickly uh

29:50Ben Hanlin: it's because you if you go back through that time cgi and you must have had this throughout your career yeah that why pay a team five months to build something when i and it's and even now with ai very quickly where do you think we're at is it is animatronics gonna stay there because it helps just general film and audiences love them or do you think ai is going to potentially come in there a bit more as well well i mean by the way i'm sorry if i'm negative no no it's all right i i think everyone is worried about generative ai at the moment um i mean yeah so cg pretty much wiped out my industry for a while we were doing things like stage shows and stuff where you can't fake it it has to be live on stage for and then the force awaken came along force awakens and uh jj wanted as much practical stuff as he could and so we started collaborating together again and it's it's really about telling the story you know like you can't beat having a physical thing on set for a for the actor to work with for the light um you know for all that essence and then if you can collaborate with the digital creators to make something more believable or do shots you know i always use jurassic park the original as my the t-rex scene i think still stands out to this day because one minute you're looking at a size animatronic t-rex close up eyeball dilator you know the pupil dilator and stuff and then it's wide and it's tearing a car part and it's like cg even the car was cg and that fooled me when i went to watch it i remember of thinking how do they get that car interacting with the dark you know but it's cg car as well so you know it works because you're left guessing what am i looking at if you look at too much cg it looks like cg if you look at too much animatronic sometimes it can't achieve the shot hello it's ben here this is a short commercial break and for regular listeners you know i say commercial break but we got no sponsors so it's just me talking at you for about 30 seconds this is matt what an interesting and different career he's had and clearly like i said somebody who straddles the creative side and the scientific side which is really exciting if you love what you're hearing from him and you want to support him he's on instagram he is mantis robot that is mantis youtube he's got his longer form stuff you can go and find him matt denton on there and he's got all his Lego inventions and all the crazy wacky things that he builds are all up there.

32:30Ben Hanlin: So if that's your thing, go and have a look at that. Also, I suppose, as we've got no sponsors, I should give you a short advertisement. What have I been up to in the last week or so? Beside doing this podcast, I love what I do, which is at the moment I'm performing a lot of corporate events and in the last week or so, so actually this week, coming up, I am about to go to London tomorrow to host the Christmas party awards. So I do a lot of these awards, but this is particularly people in the Christmas party. So again, it can be completely different each week. Also this week, I'm banking awards.

33:05Ben Hanlin: And then on Saturday, I'm hosting a conference for a company. And I'm even delivering a bit of my keynote about human connection on there. So it's a mixture of all these conferences, awards, all sorts of things where I'm having fun and also talking about human connection often as well. is on my website benhanlin.com especially the keynote stuff which people might not know that i do very often where i love to talk to audiences about how they can build connections with their audience but anyway let's get back onto this podcast something's happened this week i'll put it on my insta stories i'm going on the actually by the time this comes this morning then if it comes out on a friday i'll have been on jeremy vine on channel five talking about this podcast So we've had our first ever TV spot about this podcast.

33:52Ben Hanlin: And I'll be completely honest with you. Normally you have to get a PR person to get you booked on these types of shows. But they've come to us. So I don't know if anybody's listening to the pod and they've said, oh, let's talk about that. So this is growing, which is lovely. So thank you. And if you're listening because you saw me on there, hello, welcome to any new listener, by the way. Welcome. And please go and have a look at some of the other old episodes. If you're into film, we did something with the podcasters, The Pulp Kitchen. Nice and geeky about films. So you can go and have a look at that episode.

34:24Ben Hanlin: And as usual, my request, if you honestly, as you know, I'm trying to build this thing from scratch is the usual. Please subscribe. I've not talked about this before. My biggest struggle at the moment really is booking guests on the show. It takes a lot of time and get forward. So if you happen to know a brilliant creative, maybe you are one yourself. maybe you're a comedian, an author, a singer, or you know somebody, or you work with somebody, and you think, hey, I can help Ben here, drop me a message on Instagram, DM me, and let's see if we can help as a community build the guests that we get on here as well.

34:58And what else I would say, always ask for is,

35:02Ben Hanlin: if you can just think about one person in your network, your friends, your family, that would love this, just drop them on WhatsApp and say, hey, give this guy a listen, and see if we can build a listener one at a time. and also as always if you dm me on instagram i love hearing where you're at with the show you just listen what you think and i'll dm you straight back we'll have a little conversation so please do it's that i say it's mainly for my ego to know that people are on board and and we're all getting some enjoyment out of this because i'm loving doing it and uh yeah it's been great building it each week right we're going to get back in to the fantastic matt dennon what's the trick if you could have uh been involved in one other animatronic that's not your invention what's your one of your favorite animatronics that's been out there or anything actually anything robotic that's been made in film that you've gone oh my god best ever the t-rex in jurassic park the original one you know which it it was amazing uh their work on that i got to work on the T-Rex in Jurassic World, which was nice because it went full circle, but it wasn't quite as complex as the one they had to build at that time.

36:17So yeah, Stan Winston's stuff was really nice. There's some lovely stuff in Robocop, Robocop 2 actually. Gustav pointed that out to me. There's some really nice animatronic Robocop 2 stuff, which is an incredible film.

36:35Ben Hanlin: Well, hold on. Some of my listeners might not. in Robocop what would you mean it's like late no so the original was amazing yeah the original ones don't go for the new stuff go back to the 80s one but Robocop 2 he gets destroyed and he's laid in a pile just kind of twitching and it's like this animatronic version of him laid in a pile with legs and arms off and stuff

37:01the reason I got into the film industry so it's not really that they were amazing animatronics but at the time it completely blew my mind and i wanted to figure out how it was done was labyrinth jim hensel's creature shocked labyrinth i remember watching that and just going what am i seeing here and it was the first time pretty hefty radio control puppet work on ogle um and me and my mate i think i was about 13 14 my mate could sculpt and draw and so he sculpted this little ogle head and he'd seen a making of and he went they use they use um uh latex and we were like well that's copy dex glue isn't it so we reverse cast of that and painted the inside of this was really thick copy dex about 50 layers of it in a hair dryer and then i made some eyeballs inside of the head to move around with some servos from my radio control car um so i suppose all those those 80s kind of fantasy animatronic I

38:02Ben Hanlin: would have loved to have been involved How old were you then Matt? About 14ish something like that. So it's funny I got into magic when I was about 14 and I've got a few friends who are puppeteers and they got into puppetry when they were like a bit earlier than that and that's all they wanted to do Were you like oh this is what I'm going to do now I'm going to do animatronics no because i had no idea what there was a thing my mate said to me oh there's this they there's made at the jim henson's creature shop there's a creature shop in london and i thought it was a shop you could go to and buy stuff it's the american version of workshop i didn't realize it was a shop so i had no idea and also i you know i was like well how would you get involved in that and i didn't really know and i had no contacts in the industry and all i knew was i was fascinated with electronics and control and software i didn't realize that that applied to animatronics um and i love radio control stuff and what have you and so actually i ended up going into electronics and software engineering even though i was better as a mechanical engineer at school i did way better i wanted to know i actually wanted to know how the night rider like worked you know like so the first thing i built once i got the knowledge i did a year of my my electronics engineering apprenticeship, I built a Knight Rider light and I stuck it on my Suzuki Jeep.

39:29Ben Hanlin: Constantly, it was on there? Yeah, I built it and put it on the front and had a little switch on the dashboard and at night time would have this little Knight Rider flowing back on the Suzuki Jeep. Weird car. Even there Paul again, the Suzuki Jeep. But I bet your parents... I wish I had it. I bet your parents were like, how's a university degree going? Well, I've made a... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God, he's doomed. Yeah, I know. What are you going to do with that? And at that point in your head, were you connecting... Hey, excuse the pun, connecting the dots. But were you connecting going, right, I'm doing this, but my passion's that, and I'm going to use that to get into essentially film, TV, entertainment?

40:08Ben Hanlin: No. I was near the end of my four-year apprenticeship, and I'd mentioned to someone at work that I really liked special effects. You know, I thought I was really interested. and my husband's got a book. I'll bring it in for you to have a look at. And it was, I don't think it's behind me. Oh, yeah, it's right there. The Art of Special Effects. And it's an industrial light and magic book. And I think it was a decade of ILM and it was all those 80s films, E.T. and stuff, you know. And I went through it and it was pictures of electronic engineers wiring up spaceship lights and stuff. And I was like, oh, my God, they use engineers.

40:49film of course but i had no idea how to go from there to to work in the industry um but i think i started to say to people i want to work in special effects i want to do that and i think my sister met a director in a bar and um he was stuck he did that in low budget amateur films but then he introduced me to a guy that did his special effects guy called alistair and uh we used to make models to staff and like little gadgets and props and we both wanted to work in the industry and then I blagged my way into a television production uh show and um it went along and we met a couple of special effects companies they were like what can you do and I was like oh you know I'm electronics engineer and they were like well some stuff and get bring us some pictures of what you do next year so I'm going back the next year and that was a year into my university degree by this point and they offered me a job, a summer job, making props and things.

41:52And I quickly found out I was a terrible model maker because I'd learned just by doing stuff in my bedroom. But, you know, there was no... So I was like, well, I'll get all the lights working and I'll make the motors move or whatever. And then the rest was history. I'm reluctant to say that I dropped out of my degree to pursue my career in film, but it's never held me back. I don't think I was made out for academia.

42:17Ben Hanlin: also if you read between the lies there had this not necessarily grand plan but you had this passion and something you said there is like I just started telling people so it's like you just put it out there to people and said hey I'm really into this just so you know eventually that obviously logged in the back of your sister's brain and she went oh special effects so even just not having a plan but telling people hey this is something I do Even that is a starting kernel of moving into something creative, isn't it? Yeah, I guess it is. I didn't realise it was my passion until it became my job, and then I really enjoyed it.

43:00I enjoyed about it. My brain doesn't, my focus doesn't last very long, and I get distracted by things and want to move on and do something else quite quickly.

43:15Ben Hanlin: and that is perfect for the film industry because you get a job, you spend a few months on a project and then it's done and you move on to something else. So I didn't realise what I was moving into actually suited me really well. I don't think I could have ever done an office job or a typical classical engineering type of job. Where you've got to work years on something. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe the film industry, I don't know. But I do find it, even now, I've got my YouTube channel, I've got this and that, and I'll do something and I'll be on board of that now. I'm going to go work on me and Morris Minor.

43:49Whenever, my brain just goes all over the show.

43:53Ben Hanlin: But even with that with film, it's got to work for that day. And then after that, if needs be, we can throw it in the bin or whatever. Get to this thing and it's done. What does I say to you? Let's talk about the new stuff, Project Hail Mary. it's going to be one of the biggest films of the year uh for maybe people who haven't read the book or don't know the plot in essence it's up into space to save the world it's a bit more it's a brilliant plot i'm just really simplifying it and then slight spoiler alert but he befriends an alien and that alien is in the book described almost as a robot so this alien's called rocky the main character Matt have you got and by the way in the film we got Ryan Gosling it's going to be a huge huge blockbuster go on then Matt how have you got involved in this film well again this is you know came into the creature shop to my boss Neil Scannon I guess he'd worked before Chris and Phil we worked on Star Wars Solo I think solo with them.

45:08So he already knew them and they, they were like, well, we've got, you know, they had the, they were going to direct the film. So I guess they came to Neil with the idea and, and again, you know, they, what does Rocky look? This is an alien creature that, um, it looks, Marcus made out of rock, hence the name Rocky. And it has five legs and no face, you know? So our guys are brilliant. creatives start working on designs and there's months of that and whilst that's going on we're like we're going to make an animatronic with five legs and it's got to move around and it's got to pick things up and stuff you know so we started working on a on some test we did a one-arm test animatronic rig we were like we're going to how do we control it so we'll do it like a Waldo a slave device I'm around and that one copies it you know the animatronic copies it but also we have to make a really lightweight puppet so there's a puppet version so all those shots you can do with just rods and the puppeteers um so yeah so it's another one of those things where it just starts evolving um and were you on set with because obviously he has a lot of

46:20Ben Hanlin: ryan gosling they obviously i think i don't imagine it's through some sort of wall or whatever it's because of the there's a heat thing um did he were you on set with him and sat there in the middle of the film? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did, I can't remember how many months, three months of filming in Shepparton Studios, I think. I can't think. Maybe four. So yeah, we had Puppet Rocky, Animatronic Rocky. And, you know, you pick the shot. Again, like you say, there is something around Rocky. So it's really difficult because he's effectively inside of a ball kind of thing, cage. So really hard because sometimes you can't so we'd use an animatronic for some shots um but the animatronic was very heavy so we had to have a cable coming out of that so it has to be supported um it was a really really challenging shoot for many reasons um and uh but you know once they're in space there are two characters you know there's grace ryan gosling and there's rocky so you're like principal character in the movie which is really rare you know um it's it doesn't happen very often anymore that that's you go back to jim hindle's creature shot days and they are characters because the films were about ogle for example and labyrinth so they spent the time rehearsing and practicing and getting that shot right for that character very rare now to come into something you know in these day and ages where the character is so pivotal to the role in the film.

48:00Ben Hanlin: Just to be going, okay, we're going to have a lot of eyeballs on this character. I don't know if you're feeling the weight of the industry. We're going to be like, right, we've got to represent animatronics here and make sure this delivers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, you know, and there was obviously quite a lot to use digital to replace things or remove things or add things or take puppeteers out or do completely digital rocky shots you know because there's some bits you we just can't do again like the t-rex scenario um and not only just that it's the eyes are on us from the industry um but book within the engineering science community yeah that you think oh god god you know i hope we've done that proud.

48:48And I'm sure, you know, everyone involved in it hopes that because I'm going to somewhere, literally in a few days' time, to a conference in the States and there's all sorts of physicists and Nobel. The guest list is crazy, but they all will know that book and they all know I've worked on it. So I'm kind of like, you know, most, so far, everyone's been like, absolutely loved it. And I really enjoyed it. And I'm not just saying that because I worked on it, but.

49:14Ben Hanlin: Right, Matt, this has been, I think I could pick your brains about this industry for a long time. But we have to go to Fast Five. Are you ready for Ben's Fast Five? Ben's Fast Five. Oh, crikey. Go on then. Okay. Right. Here we go. So we're going to start with my Highlander question. You've already been a fan of the 80s films. Highlander. In the film Highlander, when an immortal kills another immortal, they get to steal their powers, knowledge, skills, and expertise. so if you could steal anyone on the planet's skills or knowledge or expertise in anything who would it be um can i can i amalgamate two people oh so i would like i would love like it's bonkers i haven't spent enough time learning my dad's craft as a carpenter and i'd love to be able to work with wood much better and he's a brilliant uh you know carpenter with that kind of thing i'm an engineer it's very different so i'd love my dad's if i did learn more of my dad's skills but i'd love the brux because i would like to understand the universe and physics better and i'd love to be able to just have his brain and go oh you know i understand it i want more understanding i did a gig with brian cox uh a few weeks ago about a month ago and i had a chat with And he'd been on set with you guys at Project Hail Mary.

50:38Ben Hanlin: Did you meet him? I know. Yeah. Workshop. I did meet him briefly. Yeah. And I saw him at the premiere just last week. But yeah. So I met him very briefly. Yeah. He absolutely loved all of that, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, time capsule. So you can only keep one thing you've ever invented. It could be the smallest or largest of things. But all of the other. that's going to go in a time capsule and kept forever. All of your other animatronics inventions, anything you've ever done, he's evaporated. What are you going to keep, Matt?

51:17I mean, the obvious thing would be the Mantis I've ever done, and it was brutal. But I also kind of feel like I don't want that to... I just sort of... Yeah, it's like a chain around my neck, so I don't know whether I do want to keep that. bb8 would obviously be a good pick but then i'm not the sole creator of that so i feel like that's unfair you can keep it someone else would probably you can keep it if you want well yeah maybe bb8 to be honest that the lego inspired monkey bike is so much fun and brings so much joy people see that and go they know it's instantly recognizable because it's lego inspired inspired um and it's great fun to ride i'll keep that i'll keep the lego bike lego lego monkey but

52:05Ben Hanlin: i showed my son that today my son's eight anyway i want one of them i want more good just for those you've seen it it's 3d printed lego inspired i'll say inspired uh inspired you print it quite large and then you clip everything together and you turn it into a century on a ride don't you exactly like an e-bike yeah which is got millions of views online so go and have a look at that we're good that's in that's the time capsule we're moving on culture vulture what is the one book film anything you've seen or watched recently or experience that you've loved that you want to share easy it's project hail mary i mean it's uh i really enjoyed the book and um i'm just really pleased to that the film came out so good in my opinion uh so i would share that project hail mary go and watch it fantastic we've actually had that before but for an author in terms of the book so now we've had oh yeah and the thing uh okay magic wand i'm going to give you my magic wand matt don't try and figure out how it works because i know that's what you'd probably try and do is work out the science pilot but in this magic wand you can make anything vanish and we'll keep it to the world of animatronics electronics and film until world vanish it can be a style a type anything you like to make make that world a better place what would it be something vanishes uh i mean does it class as entertainment can i get rid of generative ai fake clips yes that's my head in like people oh look this guy's tony stark getting on a futuristic bike but he's got eight fingers and the bike falls apart and he rides you know it's like why why do that yeah it does my head in just for clickbait you know that annoys me generative AI used badly yeah it's gone it's vanished go you've made the world a better place and the final trick Matt final question is and you can repeat something you've mentioned before but you've had a fantastic career you've obviously done what you love you've found a way to make a career out of your passion so what for you do you think is the trick to having a great career special effects and animatronics crikey um i think you i mean for me i've always done something i enjoyed and um i have i've been lucky i've followed what i wanted to do um i've had support i think that helps obviously um because i always knew there was a somewhere to fall back to if it all went wrong and they'd be there probably i hope um and so i think being passionate about passionate about something really does help um obviously following that passion and hopefully it goes somewhere uh and i a lot of the time i've never really felt like i've had a job a proper job as i call it um i'm very i admire people who do things um you know work in hospitals and and doctors and all that kind of you know um care workers and things because i don't think i could do it um because you know i'm you know because i enjoy what i do and i don't want to stop doing what i do and it feels a bit selfish but that's what it feels like i was passionate i was fascinated by electronics and software and that drove me to somewhere i never could have imagined i loved robotics but i couldn't have imagined working as an engineer in a robotics company metronics was perfect because it satisfied my creative outlet as well as my engineering outlet yeah you managed to fuse something you were really really good at and something you're really passionate about you put those two things together yeah yeah yeah thank you matt that's been great thank you very much there we go that was the fantastic matt denton there here on what's the trick and listening back to that i think one thing that stood out to me and it's something that i don't think we've had previously was how he got his first break which is often the hardest in anything particularly difficult and creative is that he put it out into the world didn't he planned but he just made everybody around him know i love this thing this is the thing i want to do and eventually just putting it out there something came back and i just think that's quite easy to replicate isn't it i think in anything we do even i think about this podcast now is i'm trying to build one of the world's biggest creativity podcasts and it's out there i'm putting that message out there constantly hoping that it'll come back eventually so anyway that's what i took from it and i thought that was quite a cool way for anyone just to get started by just telling their network what they want to achieve and then as always thanks for listening episodes come out on a friday by now i'd have been on jeremy vine who knows what would have happened drop me a dm If you've liked this episode, I'll DM you back, share this to a friend, and I'll see you next Friday here on What's the Trick?