Independence Day - Visual Effects - Model and Prop Builder and Special Effects.

The film Independence Day has a special place in my heart. It was after this motion picture that I voluntarily retired from Visual Effects Model Making to pursue Set Design. It is a good feeling to know that I left voluntarily after working on the box office winner of that season. I was even included in an IMAX film about Special Effects that included this film. 1996.

Note: These images and clips are presented here for portfolio purposes only. These images and clips are not available for sale or to be given away in hard copy or digitally in any scale. I will be happy to show hard-copy during a legitimate job interview for Set Designer.

ID4 Open

Everyone asks if I built the White House model that blew up. No, I built the death ray that blew up the White House.

I would like to thank Jeff Frost of the sculpture crew for lending me the following five images to scan.

15 Mile Ship. I mostly added many many fiber optics.
15 Mile Ship. I mostly added many many fiber optics.

Stalagmite. I mostly added many many fiber optics.
Stalagmite. I mostly added many many fiber optics.

Mother ship
I left college after two years of Urban Planning because I wasn't designing cities. I designed and built a city in the center of the eye of this 250 mile long space ship.

I had stopped photographing my work by this point in my career, so I have only to offer video clips of parts of the movie featuring my work. I hope 20th Century Fox doesn’t mind my using these clips of my work, I doubt they will loose any sales because I've included these clips.

These short clips are intended to showcase my work on the film. If you enjoyed the movie or these clips, buy the video from your favorite legal vendor of videos. Please don’t pirate. We can’t afford to make new movies if we can’t sell them.

Video Clip 1 - After one day of installing fiber optics in the edge of the tube, I estimated that it would take weeks to finish. Oliver calculated which areas were outside of camera, they hired Kent to help, and we were done in a little over a week.
Video Clip 2 - Video Clip 3 - I built all the parts you can see of the schism. Eric built all the mechanical parts that you don’t see, but that made it move. There were four axises of movement, the domed doors opened, then the four-way clam shell doors, next the cylindrical nose lowered and the arrows moved toward the center. That’s when it fired.
Video Clip 4 - I helped redress this desert after some takes of this shot.
Video Clip 5 - Flying into the Mother Ship. Tunnel entrance.
Video Clip 6 - Several of us spent a week stuffing fiber optics into the columns.
Video Clip 7 - Toward the end of production, several of us were laid off for a short time while the ending was rewritten. We came back and built models for these scenes.
Video Clip 8 - We built a section of the saucer. Had we built the full saucer, it would have measured 48 feet in diameter. The section we built was almost a quarter of a doughnut. This was used for the close-ups.
Video Clip 9 - We built a second 12 foot diameter saucer for the post destruction shots.
Video Clip 10 - Another clip of the ending scene.

This page last updated 7-1-04

This site maintained by Kenneth A. Larson.
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, Kenneth A. Larson. All Rights Reserved.
Website content including photographic and graphic images may not be redistributed for use on another website.

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15 Mile Ship. I mostly added many many fiber optics.	15 Mile Ship. I mostly added many many fiber optics.
Stalagmite. I mostly added many many fiber optics.	Stalagmite. I mostly added many many fiber optics.