A local master of special effects
October 13, 2009By Ken Little
Third-generation special effects man David Beavis has set down firm roots in Wilmington.
Including his son in the United Kingdom, there are now four generations of the Beavis family who have served the film industry in that highly specialized occupation.
The London native operates his business, Carolina Effects, out of rented space at EUE Screen Gems Studios and considers himself an adopted North Carolinian. Beavis has traveled the world and worked with big-name stars and music icons like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and The Who.
But at 57, he would like to spend more time in the Carolina Effects workshop. With the added opportunities Beavis anticipates resulting from the recently adopted 25 percent state tax credit for filmmakers, coupled with the new technologically advanced Stage 10 on the studio lot, that should be possible.
Before departing earlier this month for Savannah, Ga., with other Wilmington-based film crew members working on the Robert Redford-directed feature film “The Conspirator,” Beavis shared perspectives on his craft, changes in the industry and what makes movies tick.
‘A life of its own’
Like a person, film productions quickly develop a unique personality, he said.
“As the thing is getting made, it takes on a life of its own. Once a film gets started, it’s pretty difficult to stop it,” Beavis said.
“The director conducts everybody like a big orchestra and the producers hope everything is like a piece of good music.”
Beavis has seen the industry from the inside out since youthful days working with his father in the U.K. Through special effects magic, Carolina Effects enhances movies and television shows with the explosions, fires, floods and crashes that are a mainstay of celluloid fantasy.
Beavis’ credits include major Hollywood productions. For the first “Mission Impossible” movie, starring Tom Cruise, Beavis had to create a device that made it appear Cruise was riding on top of a fast-moving train.
His solution was to take a skydiving practice rig and connect it to a train mockup on a soundstage.
“We had a train carriage built on the stage and it was on a rig. The actual rigging was outside. We used a pipe to bring wind onto the stage,” Beavis said.
A lot of wind in a soundstage tends to pressurize the building like an airplane, an effect “we found out the hard way,” Beavis said with a laugh.
The end result was a realistic recreation of Tom Cruise riding on top of a high-speed train.
For the finale of the NBC television series “Surface,” which was set in Wilmington, Beavis simulated a tsunami that devastated the east coast and washed through the downtown area. Like most water-related special effects, the tsunami was done in miniature scale. The film studio’s Stage 10 has a large water tank that lends itself well to such projects, Beavis said.
Beavis also did special effects for the first “Hellboy” movie and the television series “Young Indiana Jones.”
“We did one episode every 10 days,” he said.
Technological leaps
Advances in computer technology have had an impact on special effects specialists like Beavis.
“Think of computer images as a high-tech cartoon,” he said. “Think of a herd of dinosaurs running across a field or a plane crashing into a plane. As the films have got more ambitious because of the computer technology, our stuff has gotten more demanding ... There’s things being done now in films being made that simply couldn’t have been done in the old days.”
Water-related special effects are a specialty of Beavis’ company.
“I have quite a lot of experience working with water, making rivers, lakes and the sea,” he said.
He describes his work as creating scripted scenes “that other people can’t normally achieve (like) making it rain on cue, stopping it, making it snow, creating a river on a stage and creating and designing the models to work.”
“Essentially, that hasn’t changed much over the years. We still use technology now I was taught 40 years ago. The machines are newer but we essentially do the same thing,” Beavis said.
Scale was often bigger by necessity years ago. Beavis recalls a film he worked on in Britain called “White Knights” that included the crash of a real Boeing 747 airliner into a building.
Beavis partnered with his father in the U.K. for many years. Among the projects they worked on were the Pink Floyd movie “The Wall” and the film adaptation of the Who rock opera “Tommy.”
“In London we would do theater, live bands, commercials. We did videos for bands,” he said. In the U.S. and other locations across the world, Beavis is in close proximity to the actors working on a film.
“We come in contact with them on a daily basis and we often work very intimately with them,” he said.
Beavis has operated his company, Carolina Effects, for 30 years. He first came to Wilmington in 1986 while working on the movie “Noble House,” which was also filmed in Hong Kong. Once in Wilmington and working at the studio then owned by Dino De Laurentiis, more work offers quickly flowed in.
“That year I did a few other things. I was approached by people to do the next job and I was here pretty much the whole year,” he said.
“I love Wilmington, especially the Wilmington of 20 or 25 years ago. It was a lot quieter and not built up, especially coming from London and working in Hong Kong.”
Beavis met his wife, Susan, in Wilmington. The couple has 18-year-old twin daughters who are now in college. Beavis and his wife left North Carolina for England, occasionally returning to Wilmington for holidays and film projects. They moved back permanently when the girls were of middle-school age.
A skilled crew base
Beavis set up his Carolina Effects workshop at EUE Screen Gems and occasionally leases it out to other production companies that come to town. They’re often pleasantly surprised that a filmmaking infrastructure is already in place.
“Wilmington has quite a large base of very skilled and experienced filmmakers now. The skill levels of people here are comparable to anywhere else,” Beavis said. “In the last few years, many people from Wilmington are taken by productions to other parts of the country and other parts of the world, for that matter. There’s enough people here to do four simultaneous productions.”
“The Conspirator” is about the inner circle of people surrounding Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and the trial of one of its members. Other than for brief visits, Beavis said he and other crew members do not expect to be home until mid-December.
“We’re going to be living in a hotel for the next three months,” he said.
So far in 2009, Beavis has worked on another film project in Savannah, along with others in Pittsburgh and Charleston, S.C.
“That describes the last two or three years. We seem to go somewhere else,” he said. “We’ve been going to do (films) for people in Louisiana, South Carolina and Michigan.”
The 25 percent film credit goes into effect Jan. 1. Beavis said the incentive should make a big difference to the industry in North Carolina, which was once considered a preferred designation for filmmakers.
“I don’t particularly want to get too far from home now,” Beavis said. “I’m ready to not be doing it as much nowadays. I’m very interested in the stage (10) here and hoping the business comes to us.”
