My name is John Baker. I started working in the cinema when I was 16 years old.
First of all, I started with the cameras and I've worked with cameras for probably 30 years, 30, 35 years.
And one of the first people I met, also working with the cameras in those days, was a man called Kit West, who later turned or changed from being a cameraman to special effects, mechanical special effects.
He was working at the time with a very well-known English special effects man called Les Bowie, and he, to start with, was doing special effects but also doing camera work.
And I was still working with the cameras, not always with Kit, but whenever he needed a camera assistant, he would call me and I would go and work with him doing the, or photographing the special effects for what he was working with with Les Bowie.
And there finally came a day when the union, which was very strong in England in those days, came to him. I was actually working with him this day and they said to him, look, you've got to decide what you want to do.
You can't be doing the special effects or preparing all these special effects and then going behind the camera and photographing them.
You've got to decide whether you're going to be a camera man or a special effects man. So he thought about it for a while and then finally decided that he was going to be a special effects man.
I changed the special effects and that picture was, well, the first one was Indiana Jones. That was the first of the Raiders of the Lost Art pictures.
And the second one was Revenge of the Jedi, the last of the first three Star Wars films with George Lucas.
And then from then on it was always special effects and always with my friend Kit West, hardly without exception. He and I worked together for something like 50 years or slightly more than 50 years.
Well, working with these big directors, well, the only one who was really big is Brian De Palma. He was a very fat man in those days.
I think he's slimmed down a little bit now. But no, working with these well-known directors is always a great pleasure and an honor to get to know these people.
Some of them are easier to get to know than others because they talk to you and talk to everybody on the crew, whereas some of them don't really talk directly to the people.
One of these was Brian De Palma when we made the film Casualties of War in Thailand before the film started shooting.
In the preparation he was always talking with everybody, but once we started shooting he wouldn't talk to anybody. On the set he would only talk to his first assistant director and he wouldn't talk directly to the person concerned.
He always used the first assistant to take a message to somebody, or even if you'd be standing next to him.
Like you and I were sitting next to each other and Brian De Palma was here and myself or Kit West, for example, is here and his assistant director is you and he would say to his assistant director,
tell Kit West that in the next shot I would prefer that he did something a little bit different like this, this, that and the other. And Kit would have to say to the assistant,
well yes we can change that, but we need to know exactly what change you want. And it was in this way sometimes very difficult to get to know exactly what he wanted.
That's just one example that other directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would always be very close and talk directly to the people concerned,
which obviously makes life a lot easier for everybody, and if there's any problem then you can sort it out a lot quicker.
Rather than just being told through a third person, well he wants to do something different, so you have to imagine what that is and hope that whatever you do different is what is wanted.
That can be somewhat difficult.
We as members of the crew and not with the artistic decoration department, we don't really have a lot to say in where they shoot a film.
But from what I gather, the art director and Steven Spielberg, they looked at many, many locations, not only in Spain, in other countries as well,
but during the course of the film and working and talking to people, they chose here, one particular thing obviously, for the sunrise and the sunset,
when you see this wonderful ball of fire floating up and down to the earth, and that in this particular location was absolutely amazing.
That was one thing and the other thing is when you choose a location where you're filming is not only for the look of the land and where you can later build your sets,
you also have to think about on a film there's something like 250 technicians working during the shooting and sometimes a lot more in the preparation,
building the sets and wherever you choose has to be near to somewhere where they've got hotels and places for the people to sleep.
It's not always possible to build a big camp to house the people for the months that they're working.
There's always these other things you have to think about.
Yes, well obviously in those days it was all mechanical effects, there was hardly any digital things put on with the computers,
well apart from the ending with the art when all these things started whizzing around the place,
but most of it was done for real.
One of the most complicated was the ball when it was rolling down with Harrison Ford running in front of it,
trying to get out of the way of the ball and that was done for real in the studio in England
and we had to control because the ball had to be heavy so that it didn't bounce going down the tunnel so to speak
and we controlled it with two cables, there was a metal axle running through the centre of the ball with a couple of bearings
and two wires, steel wires attached to the bearings going back up to a big drum with hydraulic brakes
so you could control the speed of the ball, if it happened to get too close to Harrison Ford
then you could slow it down a bit to give in time to get up speed and get away from the ball
but there was just in case anything went wrong, there was also a shallow like a dip that is not very apparent when you see the film
but it was deep enough for him to be able to lay down and the ball could go over him without squashing him
so that was an extremely complicated shot to do, luckily all went well, the ball went well and Harrison Ford is still living
so it was good fun but a little bit nerve wracking whilst you're actually shooting it
because in particular when you're doing these sort of things with the real actor
it's, well even if you've got a stuntman there you have to be terribly careful
because stuntmen are not expendable, you have to take care of them as well
so that was very complicated, that one
I think it's lost a lot and the biggest culprit of this are the very production companies
because in order to make more money they have a team of people going round filming the making of the film
and they put this in the cinema or on the television very often even before the film comes out
so everybody can see exactly how things are done
the cinema I think has completely lost the magic that it had many years ago
when you didn't advertise how things were done
it happened on the screen and it left people wondering how on earth did they do that
but nowadays everybody knows and I think it's a great shame
and today with the modern action films and with all the explosions and cars being blown up here
crashing into each other and all the actors climb out of the car without, they might have a bit of dust on them
but nothing happens to anybody, they're still walking around when it's completely unbelievable
that anybody could get out of the wreck that they leave
and they do this all the time but it's now what the public expect to see
there's lots of action and it doesn't matter how they do it
no as I was saying earlier it's lost so much of its magic
because everybody knows how it's done with all these, the making of
which they put out before the picture even comes out
so to help the public see a little bit of what they can expect
but they show how everything's done whereas in the old days one didn't do this
you don't get magicians that do these incredible disappearing acts on the stage
showing everybody how they do it
and I don't think that they should do it with the cinema either
although now it's far too late
I think that's probably it, I'm not sure what else I can say about that
because it's gone, the magic isn't there
you can get a watching a scene and it's all happening even on the television
when they show a film and you can get a five or six year old boy
turn around and tell you how you did it because they've seen it in the making of
it's a great shame
