DENNIS SKOTAK

DENNIS SKOTAK
Visual effects director of photography at 4-Ward Productions. Academy Award for The Abyss. Other credits include Battle Beyond the Stars, Escape From Hew York, Heart and Souls, Aliens, Tremors, Terminator 2, Batman Returns, Honey, 1 Blew Up the Kid, Titanic and House on Haunted Hill.
As you get older, it’s hard to duplicate that feeling you had when you were a kid watching movies, but I think the visions Ridley Scott had in Blade Runner and in Alien came close. So in terms of a favorite, it’s kind of a toss-up between those two. The work that Doug Trumbull did for Blade Runner was virtually impossible to top – particularly the first aerial viewing where the camera is pushing in, traveling towards this nightmare image of a future world shrouded in haze and smoke and rain. I’m really a mood person, and the mood in that is very heavy. The same applies to the mood in Alien. I just got swept up in it
Of the shows I’ve worked on, the sequence that I felt the most proud of was the destruction of Los Angeles for the nuclear war dream in Terminator2. It was all miniatures and physical effects except for a wide shot, which was done with variations of a particle system – a fairly common application now, but one of the first that I knew of then. I remember the sequence affected me emotionally more than anything else we’ve done, because of what it represented. I grew up in the atomic era, and one of our great fears was nuclear war. This was the first time we were able to create that on screen, duplicating that nightmare feeling we had back when we were kids, pondering all the horrible things that could happen. It was so effective for us that just watching our dailies on a Moviola was gripping.