{"id":1875,"date":"2008-06-17T18:31:07","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T17:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2008-06-18T03:00:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T02:00:08","slug":"a-tribute-to-stan-winston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/06\/17\/a-tribute-to-stan-winston\/","title":{"rendered":"A tribute to Stan Winston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve been off ill for a couple of days so apologies for the delay in posting this but last night I saw the very sad news that Stan Winston<\/strong><\/a> had passed away at the age of 62.<\/p>\n

Even if you aren’t a huge film fan you probably know some of his work: the robots in the Terminator series<\/a>, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park<\/a> and the alien colony in Aliens<\/a> <\/span>– all were created by Stan Winston studios.<\/p>\n

In his career he won a total of four Oscars<\/a> and set a new standard in make-up, puppets and visual effects.<\/p>\n

Director and longtime collaborator James Cameron<\/a> issued this tribute:<\/p>\n

He ran at full throttle, in both work and play, and was a man of kindness, wisdom and great humour.<\/p>\n

He was a kid that never grew up, whose dreams were writ large on the screens of the world.<\/p>\n

I am proud to have been his friend, and I will miss him very deeply.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Iron Man director Jon Favreau<\/a> has said:<\/p>\n

He was experienced and helped guide me while never losing his childlike enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

He was the king of integrating practical effects with CGI, never losing his relevance in an ever-changing industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

California governor and former Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/a> said:<\/p>\n

The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my best friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is a look back at the highlights of his career.<\/p>\n

THE TERMINATOR SERIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although his company was founded in the 70s and achieved a level of recognition in the industry it was in 1984 that his work broke through globally with The Terminator<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A surprise sci-fi hit, it was the tale of a merciless cyborg assassin sent back in time to kill the mother of a future rebel leader.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

It propelled director James Cameron<\/a> and star Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/a> to fame and still stands as a landmark action film of the 80s.<\/p>\n

One of the enduring images from the film is the T-101 cyborg<\/a>, which we see in the future sequences and in the later stages of the film as the Terminator loses his outer skin.<\/p>\n

This video is from a making of film shot in 1984, showing how Winston’s team operated the robot in a\u00a0 chase sequence:<\/p>\n

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After the success of that film, a sequel was inevitable and in 1991 came Terminator 2: Judgment Day<\/strong><\/a> which took visual effects to another level with the now famous T-1000 liquid metal android<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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On this film Cameron married groundbreaking CGI by ILM<\/a> with make up and mechanical work from Winston’s team – the combination redefined visual effects in cinema.<\/p>\n

Check out this segment of a 2002 documentary about the film – Stan makes an interesting point about art and technology at 5.01:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Although Cameron didn’t return for Terminator 3<\/a>, Winston did and made the T-1 robots<\/a> that feature near the end.<\/p>\n

ALIENS<\/strong><\/p>\n

When James Cameron made Aliens<\/strong><\/a>, the 1986 the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien<\/a>, the story called for colony of creatures rather than just the single beast of the first film.<\/p>\n

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Given that this was made in the mid-80s before the CGI revolution heralded by The Abyss<\/a> and T2<\/a>, it is a testament to Winston’s work that the alien creatures still look so damn good.<\/p>\n

Here is a video of Winston, Cameron and their team talking about the re-creating H.R. Giger’s original monster<\/a> for the sequel:<\/p>\n

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PREDATOR<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1987 Winston helped create another a memorable movie monster in Predator<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Like Aliens it was a beast from another world and like Terminator it also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/a>, only this time he was the good guy.<\/p>\n

The visual camoflaugue effects<\/a> and the costume were highly impressive, in some ways a foretaste of the T-1000 in Terminator 2.<\/p>\n

The actor who played the Predator was Kevin Peter Hall<\/a> – someone also now sadly no longer with us. Check out Stan’s warm tribute to him in this video:<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZMRPxtDlYjY[\/youtube]
\n
\nJURASSIC PARK<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Terminator 2, visual effects went into a new era with morphing<\/a> and digital CGI becoming common place.<\/p>\n

But in 1993 Steven Spielberg<\/a>‘s bockbuster Jurassic Park<\/strong><\/a> took it even further.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

The recreation of dinosaurs was a triumph, with remarkable work from ILM and Winston’s team in making the prehistoric creatures seem believable.<\/p>\n

For four years (until Titanic<\/a> in 1997) it was the highest grossing movie of all time<\/a> and was another blockbuster in which Winston had a key role.<\/p>\n

Here is a segment from the making of the film with Stan and Spielberg discussing the challenges of how to make dinosaurs look real on screen:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

OTHER FILMS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Winston also worked\u00a0 on films such as Edward Scissorhands<\/a> (1991), Small Soldiers<\/a> (1998) A.I.<\/a> (2001), <\/em>the Jurassic Park sequels, Big Fish<\/a> (2003), Wrong Turn<\/a> (2003), Constantine<\/a> (2005) and most recently Iron Man<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For the first blockbuster of this summer his team worked on the creation of the different Iron Man suits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is a video of him signing autographs and joking around with fans from Comic Con<\/a> last year:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Stan had been battling multiple myeloma<\/a> (a plasma cell cancer) for for seven years and on Sunday he died at home in California surrounded by his family.<\/p>\n

> BBC News<\/a>, New York Times<\/a>, LA Times and report on his death
\n> Stan Winston<\/a> at the IMDb
\n> Official site for Stan Winston Studios<\/a>
\n> Check out a series of fine tributes to Stan at Aint It Cool News<\/a> with contributions from James Cameron<\/a>, Joe Dante<\/a>, Jon Favreau<\/a>, Jonathan Liebesman<\/a> and Frank Darabont<\/a>.
\n> Green Cine Daily has many useful links to other tributes<\/a>
\n> Cinematical with a list of Winston’s greatest creations
\n<\/a>> Check out The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio<\/strong><\/a> – a book by Jody Duncan about Stan’s career that was published by Titan in 2006 (you can buy it Amazon here<\/a>)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been off ill for a couple of days so apologies for the delay in posting this but last night I saw the very sad news that Stan Winston had passed away at the age of 62. Even if you aren’t a huge film fan you probably know some of his work: the robots in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,2],"tags":[287,289,288,285,286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}