Day two of the SFX Weekender began with breakfast at the local Camber Cafe followed by what was supposed to be a talk by FX guru Steve Begg, however he had to leave at the last minute to complete work on the upcoming horror flick The Wolfman, so miniatures maestro and the other FX guru at the event, Bill Pearson, stepped up at 10.30am and extended his talk which was originally scheduled to start at 11.00am… And I’m glad he did.
As part of the talk we got to see a special promo video Pearson did for Red Dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor a few years back. It was a concept for a Christmas special which would see the Red Dwarf team heading inside Kryten, ala Innerspace, after he swallows an alien spaceship which contains a nuclear device! Sadly the idea never made it to the screen but judging by the promo it looked like it could’ve been one hell of a ride. The rest of Bill Pearson’s talk covered just about every classic SF film and television series ever made – Alien, Flash Gordon, Dr. Who, Blakes 7, Space Precinct and the recent SF hit Moon. He has worked on each and every one, bringing his skills as model maker extraordinaire – and hangar builder – to life on the screen. For a movie fan who adores physical FX rather than CG, the talk was one of the most interesting events at the SFX Weekender, it’s just a shame that CGI is wiping out such a skilled industry.
Later that day saw Dave Gibbons, Paul Cornell, Al Ewing and Dez Skinn take to the stage in the Main Void for a panel discussion on “The Growing Influence of Comics on Films.” The panel started serious enough, looking at how Hollywood has taken from comics and how comics have taken from Hollywood, but leave it to the legend that is Dez Skinn to lower the tone and turn the discussion to the S&M attributes of Wonder Woman and how he’d like to see that in a movie! The panel turned out to be one of the funniest discussions at the weekender and I think Dez Skinn needs to be a stalwart at all future comic events in the UK…
The rest of day two was spent milling around and soaking in the atmosphere of the event. We also managed to grab Dave and Will from SFX Magazine for a quick chat which will be online later. Of course an SFX Weekender wouldn’t be an SFX event without the annual SFX Awards and 2010 was no different – but we’ve already covered that here and here, PLUS we’ll have a video of the awards up later this week.
