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The
Making of..
*copied
and pasted original content copyrighted ŠTyme
The
Making Of Super Mario Bros.:
It
Ain't No Game!
by
Tyme
Millions of people worldwide have
played, and even mastered, the popular Nintendo adventure
game, Super Mario Bros. For four months this summer in a small
town called Castle Hayne, 200 people lived the ultimate
adventure. Not with eye-hand coordination, but with filmmaking
savvy, they faced and conquered the ultimate challenge: the
making of "Super Mario Bros.", the movie.
Intrigued by the notion of a genre
departure, Jake Eberts and Roland Joffe acquired the movie
rights to the successful Nintendo adventure game Super Mario
Bros., having outbid many high-powered competitors in the
process. With script in hand, Lightmotive Fat Man Productions
enveloped itself in development. During the early stage, the
producers planned to take over a large portion of the burgeoning
Carolco Studios complex in Wilmington, North Carolina. When
their story concept changed, as did their creative players
roster, the location requirements changed as well. It was
at this point that Co-Producer Fred Caruso, along with Production
Designer David L. Snyder, and Co-Director Rocky Morton, began
the search for the ideal location.
"We decided to go to wherever
there was a big space." Caruso explains. They looked
at steel foundries in Pittsburgh, abandoned woolen mills in
Massachusetts, and industrial sites in Houston, Atlanta, Charleston,
and Salt Lake City. "We narrowed it down to four places.
The bottom line was this had everything that we needed plus
a working [film] crew that was readily available to us,"
Caruso says.
At home on 908 acres, near the Cape
Fear River, the 268,000 square foot facility is quite impressive,
even in its abandoned state. For Snyder, perhaps best known
for his art direction on Blade Runner, it was love
at first site. "My first response was to get finished
scouting and then get on to designing sets. And even though
we were going on to Atlanta and Houston, we had pretty much
made up our mind, because this was ideal."
Could the Castle Hayne cement plant
be the ideal location? The granite sign that welcomes guest
to the site implies that it is. It still bears the name of
its former owners, Ideal Cement Company. Although the plant
is now owned by Carolinas Cement Company, the location most
often is referred to by locals and filmmaking alumni as Ideal
Cement.
Before a final decision would be made,
the scouting group explored the interior potential of the
facility. Here, they met their first obstacle -- no electricity.
"We took a lot of flash pictures," Snyder explains.
"We took a look at the pictures after they were developed,
and said 'Oh yeah, that's what we saw.' " And what they
saw obviously was enough.
After months of site seeing, the scout
was complete and the location chosen. But, how does one persuade
the owners of an 11-year-abandoned cement plant about to undergo
an $80 million renovation, to relinquish temporary control
to a film company? Well, if you are Production Liaison Les
Pendleton and Stage Coordinator Johnny West, you just walk
right in and ask. (Exploiting the adage "If you don't
ask, you don't get!") Bob Pyle, Plant Manager, remembers:
"Les and Johnny walked in on me early one morning, and
we chatted in the office....At first, I had told them that
we just were not interested in leasing it for filming operations.
But, when they began talking about the magnitude, I felt that
it was a situation for Mr. Cohrs to make a decision rather
than I."
Carolinas Cement Company was in the
process of securing construction permits in order to begin
the renovation. Consequently, they had turned down previous
filming requests by production companies. It was because of
the permit delay that Fred Cohrs, Chief Executive Officer
and General Manager, was able to consider Lightmotive Fat
Man Productions' filming request. "It looked like a fairly
substantial movie, a good organization, responsible-type people,"
Cohrs said. "So, I felt that [it] might be a pretty good
opportunity to get a lot of the plant clean up done in preparation
for construction; get some benefits and all of the improvements,
in addition to the rent."
FROM ABANDONED CEMENT FACTORY
TO MOVIE STUDIO
A man looks at an abandoned cement
factory and sees lonely concrete. A man with a vision sees
Dinohattan, a world parallel to modern day Brooklyn, where
the inhabitants are descended from dinosaurs. Production Designer,
David Snyder, along with the wealth of a 20-person art department,
one-and-a-half square miles of plywood, 62 miles of lumber,
and 50 tons of steel converted the elements of the five-story
Carolinas Cement Company plant into head-turning sets. Before
there could be head-turning sets, there had to be a studio.
"We thought we were breaking new
ground on this show because of the magnitude of the show and
the location where it was done, and how it was done,"
says Johnny West, Stage Coordinator. "This was our studio,
as well as...our location. So, it created an interesting settlement
for demands that you wouldn't normally find."
Perhaps the greatest demand was to
revive the unconscious cement factory. Before the plant could
be returned to active status, it had to be cleaned. This task
was as massive as the plant itself. A clean up crew of as
many as 30 men worked for two months, during the raw cold
of winter, to clean the plant. In addition to this crew, heavy
equipment and its operating crew were used to complete the
clean up effort.
First, a super sucker was used to vacuum
up the debris in the buildings. "He [the operator] worked
here for two straight weeks with a crew, sucking all the trash
out of here," Pendleton says. The entire area around
the plant was graded and landscaped, eliminating mounds of
debris 10-12 feet high in some places. Then, pressure washers
were used to remove the dirt. Pendleton recalls: "We
pumped over 50,000 gallons of water through the art department
office alone. We probably used half-a-million gallons if you
count the whole plant. We washed down everything."
Hardened cement dust posed an enormous
problem for the Locations Department. Lee Henderson, who was
assigned to oversee the clean up effort, remembers it well:
"Every floor had a collection of at least six inches
to three feet of concrete dust in various spots. There was
one place [where] there was twelve feet deep solid concrete.
It took six guys two weeks with two jack hammers and a little
Bobcat to get it out. We ended up moving, it seems, 50 tons
of dirt just out of that building."
Initially, debris had to be removed
by wheel barrow and shovel, because it was impossible to get
heavy equipment up to the third, fourth, and fifth floors.
Each floor was swept four or five times, with debris being
swept to the lower floor, until it reached the basement. Then,
debris was removed by backhoes and front end loaders.
Concrete debris was not the only challenge.
An old engine room became home to the Dormitory set. "That
particular [room] was a grease pit," recalls West. "There
was grease 3 inches thick on everything....We had people working
a couple weeks on that."
Once the clean up was complete, the
plant's infrastructure had to be revitalized. There was no
water to the site. The Locations Department, through subcontractors
as well as their own crew, dug a 170-foot well and put in
a new drain field for the septic tank. All the bathrooms were
re-plumbed. In spite of the upgrade, the sewage system often
was overwhelmed by the high-volume use (200 crew members,
plus as many as 250 extras). More than 300 electrical ballistes
and fluorescent lamps were installed. Production offices were
built, carpeted, and air conditioned. The plant, for the most
part, was a shell.
As soon as the infrastructure was re-activated,
preproduction began. The enormity of the compound proved to
be the advantage in converting the industrial site to a movie
studio. As Snyder points out, "Not only did we have enough
room to build the sets, but we built the metal shop, the wood
shop, the plaster shop, the prop shops, special effects, special
visual effects, the art department, the editing rooms...all
of these functions are in one facility. We never had to go
anywhere else to perform these functions."
TOTO, I'VE GOT A FEELING
WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
While the creative forces of "Super
Mario Bros." were enamored by the location, the technical
forces were not as enthusiastic about the filmmaking environment.
For Special Effects Coordinator, Paul Lombardi, safety was
a major concern. "What we were concerned about mostly
was fire. We put 2,000 gallon tanks on top of the [five-story]
building, and we had an 8,000 gallon water tanker outside
with a fire engine pumper running all the time. So, we had
charged hoses on the set all the time with seven fireman standing
by all the time."
To create the special effects, the
department built a 20,000 square foot shop that was prop shop,
welding shop, automotive shop, and machine shop all in one.
In addition, a forty-foot effects truck was parked outside
for additional work.
Likewise, the lighting department was
affected by the logistical problems that the location presented.
For example: Due to the immensity of the Dinohattan Main Street,
it was necessary to build a platform from which to work above
the set. Gaffer, Dwight Campbell, explains: "We got the
grips to build about 200 feet of greenbeds and crossovers.
We were able to place at least 50 lamps up there and do whatever
we needed to do. I had a crew of two or three guys up there
moving lamps to a position where I wanted them. It was like
a real motion picture studio, in that way."
Providing power to the five-story building
was a challenge as well. When all levels were used simultaneously
to light the action of 250 extras in addition to principal
actors, lighting required five to six generators and up to
7,000 amps. Two additional generators were needed to accommodate
the power load of special effects. "I couldn't give you
a cable count, but that power went up six floors, some of
it," Campbell says, "...that's a tremendous amount
of cable."
The Grip Department might have adopted
the motto: 'I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.'
Many obstacles popped up to remind them that they were not
in a real movie studio. Led by "Chunky" Huse, they
were confronted constantly by the physical challenges of the
plant. With no working elevator, equipment had to be carried
up the numerous concrete steps, or brought up by rope. Only
limited areas allowed a scissor lift to be used to move equipment.
In addition, many areas of the massive plant had to be blacked
in with duvatyne or Visqeen to control light leaks. Unfortunately,
on many occasions, Mother Nature was less than kind to their
effort.
When the Visual Effects unit began
shooting, they shot at night, as the Visual Effects bay was
not enclosed completely. In an effort to synchronize with
the shooting schedule of the other two units, Visual Effects
made the decision to go to a day schedule. Consequently, the
Grip Department was called upon, at the last minute, to black
in the bay. They met the challenge and even got the chance
to repeat the effort when, several weeks later, strong winds
blew down much of their work.
For Sound Mixer, Richard Van Dyke,
the plant itself was not a hindrance. The sound challenges
that he faced were those common to location shooting, i.e.,
noise from a nearby industrial plant, and noise from production:
working generators, air conditioning units, special effects,
construction, etc. "We were our worst enemy," Van
Dyke remarks. Due to the hard surface of the concrete and
the abundance of it, the off-set noise was grossly reverberated.
Controlling the noise became the issue, rather than the noise
itself. With three units working at the same time, "locking
up" the set, without hindering the shooting of another
unit, proved to be an A.D. Department's nightmare.
Actually, Van Dyke found recording
conditions favorable in one bay, home of the Police Station
and Ice Tunnel sets. "It's the single biggest room out
there, with cement walls and sides, but the ceiling is like
a wave," he says. "The biggest problem you have
in a square room is what's called a standing wave problem:
The sound source goes to the wall and comes back almost in
the exact same pattern as it went to the wall which creates
that sound of echo. But because the ceiling is wavy like it
is, it breaks up the flow of the sound as it comes back."
A gift from the cement plant gods.
The cement plant housed the Construction,
Scenic, Art, Lighting, Animatronics, and Wardrobe departments,
as well as a Props and a Set Dressing warehouse. The Lighting,
Grip, Camera, Special Effects, Props, and Wardrobe departments
used trucks (20 to 40 footers) in addition to the covered
space. Makeup and Hair trailers were set up in the plant's
parking lot, convenient to the actors' trailers. The Editing
team also occupied trailers. Company meals were taken under
the big top.
WAS IT WORTH IT?
By all admission, the Castle Hayne
cement plant was chosen for its Production Design appeal.
While an actual sound stage would have better served the technical
departments, the benefit to production design was the greater
value. Convenience was traded for creativity. "If this
film had been shot anywhere but the 'Ideal' [Carolinas] Cement
plant, the entire look would be completely different,"
claims Snyder. "It wouldn't look anything like it does
now, except maybe the color and the graphics and style. The
shapes would be completely different."
No existing sound stage affords the
luxury of shooting a four-story 165 x 175 foot set, day or
night, rain or shine. The De-Evolution Chamber set alone would
have cost as much as four times the amount to construct on
a sound stage. No filmmaker's replica could compare to the
original rotary kiln area. Surprisingly, even "Super
Mario Bros." could not exploit all the natural
aesthetics of the cement plant. (It was designed to be a showcase
for the application of formed concrete. When built in 1964,
it was the most expensive cement plant in the world.)
The compromise for this filmmaking
treasure was the working conditions. The heat of summer raised
the temperature in the concrete structure to as high as 110
degrees. Few sets could be adequately air conditioned. Besides
the heat, the physical challenge of hauling equipment up and
down the numerous concrete steps, and the abundant cement
dust took a toll on cast and crew.
As the look of the film was important
to Snyder, the cost of the look was important to Co-Producer,
Fred Caruso. "You couldn't afford to do this on a sound
stage. Not only couldn't you afford it, but you couldn't find
a space big enough. There is no sound stage in the country
that's as big as the [Dinohattan] street. If I had to create
the [Dinohattan] street, I would then have to do it as an
exterior location, and then be involved with the weather problems:
if it rains, I can't shoot; if the sun [comes up], I can't
shoot."
Fred Caruso contends that the facility
lease and site preparation cost were insignificant to the
overall production budget. And, he maintains that shooting
at the cement plant saved considerable money. So, to the producers,
"It was all worth it!"
The making of "Super Mario Bros":
It ain't no game...yet!
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(c) 1992 Tyme
All rights reserved.
Tyme is a filmmaker as well as a
Freelance Writer.
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