[UPDATE: Added a slideshow of photos on 7/18/18] When I was a young lad (still am by the way…) I attended a Showbiz Expo at the LA Convention center in 1992. One of the booths was for a publisher called Cinefex, who was promoting their latest issue of their incredible behind-the-scenes special effects magazine, and the upcoming film Alien3. This was my first introduction to the work of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr and their company, Amagalmated Dynamics Inc., aka StudioADI.
Okay that’s a little refresher of the flick if you haven’t see it [in a long time]. The pair were(are) alumni of the Stan Winston studio and have gone on to create the creatures for a litany of sci-fi, horror, comedy, and well any other genre of movie you could think of.
My tour was led by Alec Gillis, a gentleman and scholar who has a rather hilarious IG account and should add comedy to the list of services provided by StudioADI (an abbreviation Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. later adopted). The tour was of particular interest to me as Alec not only covered the making-of and cultural aspects of the effects industry, but also the business-of-the-business and memories of the Winston days as well.
At times along the tour, we were allowed to take photos, (which can be found in the gallery), and then there were times when we couldn’t due to the nature of upcoming projects or works that Gillis knew studios wouldn’t be happy with him sharing the aftermath of a given project with the world.
The trophy room (that’s what I’m calling it), was spectacular and contained souvenirs of their work dating back almost thirty years, including items that had been screen used in Alien3 and featured in that first Cinefex I got (FYI Cinefex did exist before Alien3). You can see a plethora of them in the panorama at the top of this screen (utilizing my recently refined technique of course…) and it’s a challenge to try and name every single movie that has an artifact displayed here.
Of course there was more than this to see and I do encourage a visit to the gallery, and after you’re done there, you should hop on over to StudioADI’s YouTube channel as it’s full of great behind the scenes videos showing how some of our favorite movie creatures were made and then operated behind the scenes.