Best Special Effects: Tippett Studio
For a man who loves movie magic as much as Phil Tippett, it’s odd that he loathes Tinseltown itself. “I was born in Berkeley, and my parents moved us down to Los Angeles. I hated it there,” says the 58-year-old special effects wizard. “It was always my dream to move back to Berkeley and open my own studio.”
Tippett knew he wanted to make special effects at age seven, after seeing the Ray Harryhausen classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He worked on all three Star Wars movies and won his first Oscar in 1983, after creating Jabba the Hutt and other creatures in Return of the Jedi.
The Star Wars trilogy’s success allowed Tippett to realize his dream—to exile himself from the Southland and open his own studio in Berkeley in 1984. “I literally started in my garage, making a short educational film about dinosaurs,” Tippett recalls. “I then moved into a small space on Gilman and eventually to our location on 10th Street. I can see Saul Zaentz’s studio from my office.”
In the past quarter century, Tippett Studio has added the make-believe to everything from Charlotte’s Web to Hellboy. In 1993, Tippett won a second Oscar for the CGI landmark Jurassic Park, and his studio worked on the recent blockbuster New Moon.
“We went to the New Moon premiere, which was the biggest premiere in Hollywood history, bigger than Gone with the Wind,” he says. “People were camping out a week ahead of time.”
Tippett Studio created the shape-shifting werewolves for the smash Twilight sequel, though Tippett admits the film is a rare case of an audience wanting to see fewer monsters and more actors. “The audience wanted the wolf to change back into the teenage boy with his shirt off,” he says.
"Tex Avery was a mentor. In fact, when I was working at Cascade Pictures in my early twenties, I remember pulling out a dummy sheet and plopping down into a chair next to where Tex was sitting. I asked him, 'Can you show me how this works?' As an example, he drew a little sketch of Bugs Bunny and then drew all the little vowel sounds and showed me how to check off the frames on the dummy sheet. At the end of it, I said, 'Would you sign this for me?' He wrote, 'To my good friend Phil.' I have that framed on my wall at work."
