A few weeks ago I did a phone interview with Francis Coates, a British sculptor who has been working in the industry for decades, and whose career has spanned several popular and applauded films & television series.
Of particular interest to this blog was Francis Coates' work on the cult classic Xtro, where Coates was primarily responsible for designing and realizing the film's creature effects. All images in this interview are taken from Coates' website.
What made you want to get into sculpting?
Coates: I have always made things, since I was a kid. Always making three-dimensional things, and then when I went to my second art college, one of the aspects of the course was sculpture and modelling. So I did that one day a week, and I loved it.
When I left to go to the Central School of Art and Design to continue my studies, I asked my professor 'Is there any point in continuing this?' His name was T. B. Huxley-Jones and he made the sculpture outside the old BBC headquarters, and he said I was the best.
I was continuining to do industrial design, which I went on to do at the Central School, and part of that course was modelling. Again I found I was spending more time in the modelling room and less time in the design room. And gradually one thing took over the other.
What was it about film sculpture that appealed to you to make you want to go into it?
C: I didn't ever consider that I could become a sculptor until I was given the chance to actually do sculpture under supervision in an art college, and I loved it, and I still do today. Perhaps that doesn't answer your question though.
Robot suit sculpted by Coates for a Samsung advert
According to your resume you worked on many BBC series, especially Doctor Who. How much influence did you have on your BBC work?
C: Just to take Doctor Who as our prime example, it's done so much on the cheap, and so quickly, and you're given artwork to base your work on. But in order to achieve anything within a week or two weeks to do a complete costume, that means that you're left quite a lot to your own devices.
And if you come up with the right things, you're trusted a bit more and given a little less information, but everything is already drawn out before you start work.
Would you have felt it better to work in the BBC's VFX Department rather than freelance?
C: If I had been offered a job at the BBC I would certainly have considered it, but the situation didn't ever arise and I was always pretty busy as a freelance artist. So I had more flexibility.
If you do work on a series like Doctor Who, then you got to realize that you're tied to working for them for a good few months, prop after prop after prop after prop. I admire the BBC, but in retrospect it would have been far too limited for what I went on to do later on in life.
According to your resume you also worked on The Empire Strikes Back, helping sculpt the R2-D2 robot props. How different was that to working for BBC productions?
C: Well (laughs) on the R2-D2s themselves, the
Star Wars producers realized they had a winner on their hands, and would have to make more than one R2-D2, and it was pretty obvious they'd have to go fibreglass.
At the White Horse Toy Company, where we made the things, we were given the existing, very beaten up aluminium R2-D2 from the first film, but it was so beaten up all we could do is take dimensions where we could and help it aid us in reproducing it in fibreglass.
But we were given pretty good working drawings, certainly for all the details that existed. In fact, I recall there must have been so many that when the whole project was over, George Lucas said that he wanted every single bit of information back, that included even the drawings. 'It's lead boots in the Thames if you do!' He was that strong about wanting every single bit back! So there must have been a good few drawings, but no records of them anymore.
One of the fibreglass R2-D2s
Now we get to the main part; Xtro! According to the credits you were responsible for the creature effects; how did you manage to get the Xtro gig?
C: Because I'd done so many Doctor Who monsters, which were just men with silly hats on, I thought 'No, I gotta really try and break the mold' and so I tried to see if you could walk on your hands and feet inverted.
If you know what the creature looks like, as I'm sure you do, then you'll appreciate that it is a person inside there, it's just that its heads been put on the other way round. And having found out that we could walk and maneuvre quite well, I wanted to use that for the chief monster.
That was my rebellion against constant Doctor Who monsters with silly heads! To make it work, all they did was shoot the film backwards, The actor, it was Tik & Tok, two dancers, they went the way their head was facing, in other words backwards, the film was shot backwards, and after editing it looked like the creature was going in the opposite direction. Very simple.
Life cast of Tim Dry in the crabwalking position
Early sculpt of the monster suit
It's a really good effect honestly. Having Tik & Tok, a pair of mimes, playing the monsters feels ahead of its time. Nowadays every second horror movie has Doug Jones or Javier Botet play spindly monsters.
C: The only shame was there wasn't enough money to make the jaws move!
Funny as I was going to ask if there was a double puppet made for the closeup shots of the crabwalking monster.
C: No. We had two creatures anyway, the four-legged one and the black skeletal one, but there was no money for any bit-parts. Everything was all done with that one creature suit. It had very limited movement. Arms and legs could move perfectly well, the head could turn, but they didn't even have the money to get the jaws to open and close, which would have made it a lot more believable.
The other main monster effect in Xtro is the skeletal alien at the end of the film; there seems to be a full body prop for location filmed. How was it realised, and was there multiple versions?
C: I can't remember if there was any juxtaposition, but it was an elaborate rubber suit that went over a very simple robot, which was probably radio and cable controlled. I've probably got photographs of these things I can check up on, but at this moment I can't remember.
How much were you involved on the film's other makeup effects?
C: I've still got the latex appliances and stomach casts for when Maryam d'Abo's impregnated. You see worms radiating out from a spot across her body; first of all we had to make a body with very thin latex channels inside them, pretty much invisible.
For the second one we made these ball bearings and pushed these ball bearings along these so-called veins to make them stand up. It looked pretty impressive, I must admit.
The third stage, we just used a suction pump so that the tubes just disappeared from her body, but the eggs stayed. I must say, it was invented by Richard Gregory. He was my assistant all the way through Xtro, and thought these up and made it.
Richard Gregory also worked on Doctor Who in a freelance capacity as well as later on Space Precinct. Did you work with him regularly?
C: He was pretty obsessed with space things! And good lord yes! I believe we worked together on the R2s (on Empire Strikes Back) and then after that, we went on to make pattern making for Formula 1 cars, because of all our knowledge on fibreglass.
And we did awful jobs like repairing the Windsor Safari Park train. It was a high security, passengers went in these sealed compartments through the lions' enclosure so it had to be pretty robust and strong. And it was a horrible, horrible fibreglass job. Richard and I worked on every single thing the White Horse Toy Company did for quite a while.
(Note: the Windsor Safari Park eventually became Legoland Windsor, of which the 'Hill Train' still exists!)
On Xtro you worked with Christopher Hobbs, who was primarily a production designer but also worked with makeup artists like Christopher Tucker on The Company of Wolves. Did you work with Hobbs. or with makeup artists in general, again?
C: Regrettably not, because I loved how (Hobbs) transformed my creature into what it became. He's a very talented designer and sculptor, but no, it was only on that one job.
Was there any other work you did on Xtro?
C: Well, I had to make all these props like the living toy soldier's mask, Whatever props were required, Richard and I made.
After Xtro, you worked on The Neverending Story and its ill-received sequel Neverending Story III. While your site explains what you did on the first film, how much did you do on the third?
C: I was working for Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and The Neverending Story III came up when I was working on them anyway. And so they got me to do two of the creatures. A very gnarled, beaked bird, and the baby rock monster.
The Neverending Story III puppet
Most of your career after these other films consisted of such films as Lost in Space, Judge Dredd, Deepstar Six and The Mummy Returns? Was it all prop work?
C: You missed out one! The Borrowers! It was all making a Kellog's cornflakes packet, or its American equivalent, three stories high. So for Borrowers, every single thing we did was elevent times higher than it really was. Obviously I didn't do all of it, I was in a big team of people, making giant things.
An example of the giant Borrowers props
And there's another film you didn't mention, The Mission. It's a film I'm proud of working on, because the director (Roland Joffe) was one I really liked, about Amazonian Indians. It involved me taking a cast of an Amazonian Indian, and making eight of them, and putting them in a canoe, and throwing them over a waterfall! And they had to move, as they fell from the canoe their legs and arms waved, it was quite horrific, though it's a nice film.
Is there a difference between helping or creating creature work (ie Xtro, Doctor Who, Neverending Story) and prop/statue work? Is one more complex than the other?
C: (laughs) This is the absolute truth - it depends what you did on the last film. I did R2-D2, which was a mechanical monster. If you're making spaceships, buildings, cars, you're a 'modelmaker', not a 'sculptor', and every bit of work you have from that moment onwards has to be modelmaking, because that's all you can do. You're known from your last film.
Selection's of Coate's work on The Neverending Story
I do whole periods, where I had to do modelmaking because that's what I was, and then finally I got to have a go at another bit of sculpture, and then I was a sculptor for the next two or three years. That's how the film world works, you're good at one thing and people just forget.
Hovercar prop for Cold Lazarus
I enjoy doing both, but they are very, very different obviously. I thoroughly enjoy making props and even making scenery and stuff. I worked on
The Mummy Returns, that was making pretty big architectural and decorative props. It's just a job, and generally I always can find something that I'm interested in for every job.
Set design sculpture for The Mummy Returns
Even these repetitive Doctor Who things, you still had a bit of fun and tried to make them the best you could. I don't think I've ever done a second-rate job, not consciously. I've always found something that I really want to do, and if it turns out I didn't want to do a job, I wouldn't do it anyway.
A last note; Xtro has became much more beloved over the years, and your monster designs are partly why. People love these monsters! Some people even pass it off as 'real footage' of a skinwalker! How does that make you feel?
It's flattering! Particularly for Xtro, because I really was the boss there and put so much of myself into it. It was a very enjoyable experience, and I was very proud of what I did. So it's got sort of reintroduced in only Fangoria-type magazines, which is just one aspect of what film is.
I would like to thank Francis Coates for taking the time out to have this little interview with me, and for giving the lowdown both on his work on Xtro, and his career as a whole. Coates' work can be read about on his official website, Scope Design Production.
