New Deal Studio’s David Sanger

David Sanger from New Deal Studio stated that the best creature art coming from the studios today are a hybrid between physical and digital technologies. “Now with puppets and CGI, the sky is the limit.”

New Deal Studio located in Sylmar, in Southern California started in 1995 by Matthew Gratzner, Ian Hutner and Shannon Blake Gans. It was a design and miniature effects facility, but over the years became a 21st century visual effects studio. Today, the company has continued to build its reputation by successfully expanding into photography and digital effects. As New Deal has grown, the major studios continue to entrust them with special effects sequences on multi-million dollar projects. A sample of their recent projects includes “Ironman”, “Batman: The Dark Knight”, “Watchmen”, “Hancock”, “Live Free or Die Hard”, plus Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed”, “Shutter Island”, and “Hugo” as well as Chris Nolan’s “Inception”. “Whatever film has ‘…Man’ in the title, we worked on that too” said Sanger. “We do lots of special effects with water and fire, as well as inside photography with actors like Mila Jovovich and Leonardo de Caprio”.

David Sanger – New Deal Studios

The competitive edge of New Deal Studio has always been to match great creativity with strong management. Shannon Blake Gans is the head of the studio, David Sanger runs production.

Sanger gave us a tour of the facility. There are many awards on the walls and in the cabinets Moon Man Awards from the Visual Effects Society for Grammy and Academy Awards. Pictures that studio is known for as well as memorable miniatures from “Inception” fill in the other spaces.

New Deal Studio Special Effects Awards

The facility is approximately 30,000sq/ft and consists two sides: one for building characters and the other for shooting. In the character building, there are many tools for wood working, and a machine shop. There is everything that is necessary to build a creature or alien. In addition, they build miniatures and sets that look big in the movies. He explained they mostly photograph here in their facility, and do not need to go to the studio. Usually the studios come to the New Deal Studio so they do not need to transport “giant” miniatures. Many times they are not giant anyway – explained David – such as the train from “Hugo” that crashed through the window at the station. The miniature of the train was just 6 feet long.

They use computers to build a model of the character or object before they build it. Designers mark the pieces that they need to build so they match the computer pieces perfectly. Are they using 3D printers? They have few big 2D printers and a small 3D printer. When a big piece needs to be printed in 3D they send it outside, and make a small copy on the 3D printer. That is very useful – explained David.

He said that the best creatures art that is coming from the studios today are a hybrid between physical and digital technologies. Now they can do more things physically than they could 10 years ago. They can put a puppeteer right in the shoot and operate it hands on, then use digital techniques to remove the operator and cabling. This way the story is better and more compelling along with making the creatures and effects more engaging.