Syd Mead | Visual Futurist

Syd Mead has influenced the look of science fiction for nearly three decades. Designing worlds and characters which are rich in a unique style, Syd and his company have defined the way our culture believes sci-fi movies should look. Recently, we asked fans and artists to submit questions to the visual futurist. The questions that our editors picked span the length of Syd’s career from a variety of perspectives. With Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Visual Futurist: The Art and Life of Syd Mead currently in release, we thought there was no better time to speak with this living legend.

ILLUSION: You just got back from traveling abroad promoting the documentary “Visual Futurist: The Art and Life of Syd Mead”. Can you tell us how your film is being received?

SM: The documentary had its first screening last year at the LA DANCES WITH FILM festival and receiving the highest audience rating in the nine year history of the festival. The documentary was screened at ROMICS comic fantasy festival in Rome;the sceduling folk cut it off after 9O minutes evoking groans and protests from the audience. The documentary was then screened full length at the FORTIETH SITGES FILM FESTIVAL in Sitges, Catalnia/Spain and received enthusiastic reviews and audience response. At this time, November 2OO7, sales have gone past the 1,OOO mark and climbing.

ILLUSION: The Blade Runner Final Cut DVD is releasing soon and I understand you participated in a commentary track for the DVD. Has time changed your perspective on the production? Has it given you any new insight in to how the film influenced your career?

SM: Having the opportunity to work with Sir Ridley Scott on BLADERUNNER was one of the more fortunate events in my professional career, along with working with Raymond Loewey, designing private 747 airplane interiors and a myriad of world-wide corporate clientle. The movie persists because it addresses universal issues of the meaning of humanity (Philip K. Dick’s moralistic concerns) and the impact of technology on social ethics and the economic benefits and costs of scientific advancement.

ILLUSION: Having been a part of such influencial films as Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens… and continuing to do amazing work in films like MI-3, do you ever feel like you’re competing with your own legacy in your current project?

SM: Of course! Everybody eventually gets to the point, if they have the nerve, to continue to ‘work’ as their past accomplishments become successful and well received. Some simply ‘freeze up’ and retire; others relish the new challenges and every fresh chance to ‘do it’ but better than before.

JoLeyden: (Blade Runner) Did your time in Okinawa and Hong Kong during 1954-1955 influence the subsequent direction of your art in any way?

SM: No.This is a persistent question because of Ridley’s packing the RIDLEY-VILLE sets with Kanje symbols. My first trip to the far east was in the 1953-1956 period. I became fascinated with Asian cultural design, food and a very superficial knowledge of customs. My first trip to Tokyo was in 1961, long before I worked on BLADERUNNER in 198O-81.

Driller: (Blade Runner) in preparing for Blade runner did you read Phillip K. Dick’s novel , or did you only go by what was in the film script?

SM: I’d only worked in post production with John Dykstra on STAR TREK:TMP, so BLADERUNNER was only the second movie I’d ever worked on, and the first in pre-production. I figured that the script was ‘bible’ and did not read the softcover DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP after my pre production work on BLADERUNNER was finished and I was working on TRON.

JMaynard: (Tron) How much of the character design was influenced by the limitations of the technology of the early 1980s? If you were making the movie today, what would the characters look like, and how would you get there?

SM: What you saw in the computer generated imagery in TRON was absolutely the cutting edge of computer generated technique then. That’s literally all that could be done; shapes were generated by adding or subtracting primitives; no polygons, nurbs, etc. Characters? I did a lot of character work for TRON, and if done today, the mapping on the actor’s bodies would be all done as ‘projected’ overprints. Then, the actors wore black body suits with white tape patterns put on as applique. The scene was shot in black and white, then rotoscoped to the correct color and ‘blur’ effect. TRON was practically a ‘hand-made’ production.

Gomez Adama: (Tron) What was syd’s inspiration for the environmental look of Tron?

SM: I got the sense from Steven Lisberger, the director, that this was a ‘behind the video screen’ world. Therefore, nothing had any ‘weight’ in a physical sense, stuff could ‘float’ in 3D reference space with no mechanical connection, and the entire illustion had to look like ’solid graphics.’ The first look at TRON LAND was inspired by a graphical pattern called a ’sixteen gate square.’ This is a pattern that always, no matter how convoluted the pattern is inside the square boundary, has four ‘gates’ on each side that can match up to any other four ‘gate’ squares. If you rotate the other squares (can be the exact same on) you get a very visually complicated composite. This was the idea for the TRON LAND landscape that you see when the aerial shot moves toward’s SARKS’ training camp, a huge
articualed hole in the surface. That camp was also created using the primitive volumetric removal technique.

.