Credit: Directed
Special Effects: Designed & created
all fantasy characters, special make-up effects, and animatronic creatures
for twenty episodes of the syndicated series
 The "Iron Mole" was built by a Burrough's character named Abner Perry. It was rendered in an Art Deco "Wonder Gizmo" style by Buechler and MMI -- a la Jules Verne/HG Wells "modern" contraption. |
 |
 |
Here's a closer look at the rod and cable operated miniature version of the Giant Spider in "Tarzan in Amator" -- somewhat reminiscent of the rat-bat-spider-crab in "Angry Red Planet." |
"Tarzan and the Mahars"
Directed by John Buechler
The hour long follow up to the record breaking two hour premier of "Tarzan: The Epic Adventures." A direct sequal to the pilot episode, Tarzan is confronted by his old arch nemesis Rockoff. Originally stranded in the sub-terranian realm of Pelucidar, Rockoff has tunneled back to the outer world of men by stealing Abner Perry's "Iron Mole." Unfortunately he has been followed by massive winged creatures called Mahars. These creatures can control human thought. By controlling your mind they can appear to be "anyone." The Queen Mahar is on a quest to recover the "jewel of immortaility" which was stolen by Rockoff. When the queen killes Rockoff's brother, and kidnaps Tarzan's friend Timba. What follows is a rollicking good time as Rockoff, the mad Russian played with gusto by Stephen Macht, joins forces with Tarzan to avenge his brother's death as they travel to Pelucidar in the fabulous Jules Verne-like "Iron Mole." Once in Pelucidar, they are captured by the neanderthal-like Sagoths, and taken to the Mahar palace, a vast cave lined with caged human prisoners -- food for the Mahars. In a dynamic climax, Tarzan frees the prisoners and confronts the hideous Mahar queen. Wounding her with his daggar, Tarzan, Timba, and Rockoff escape to the Iron Mole and begin to tunnel their journey homeward. Unfortunately the Queen Mahar recovers and races to meet them in the tunnels. All seem lost as the monster starts tearing the Iron Mole apart. In a fit of conscience, Rockoff grabs the jewel of immortality and grapples with the Mahar in a fight to the death while Tarzan and Timba escape to the surface world. The Iron Mole explodes in a firey concussion as the cave housing collapses, sealing it forever. Tarzan and Timba miraculously escape!
This episode has it all, monsters, action, stunts, exotic locations, beautiful women, great bad guys, handsome heros, cool gadgets, and a bunch of "Gosh Wow!" Borrowing heavily from Edgar Rice Burroughs creations, Buechler has crafted the most fan friendly adventure of Tarzan the TV Series ever made. but then again, you'll have to travel far and wide to find a greater Edgar Rice Burroughs fan then John Carl Buechler.
Article: Special Effects Master Directs
Tarzan
by MJ Simpson
Tarzan is back on TV, at least in America, and he's fighting some fantastic monsters, created by top special effects bloke John Carl Buechler. "It's got gosh-wow," he tells MJ Simpson.
To many people, the name Tarzan conjures up images of adventure
and excitement, but very little in the way of fantasy and science fiction.
Indeed, for decades, the Lord of the Jungle has swung across our screens,
wrestling lions and crocodiles, in tales which have had little or no connection
to the original stories penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The UPN series Tarzan - The Epic Adventures sets out to change all that by returning to the author's original material. Although the hour-long episodes aren't adapted directly from the novels, they use Burroughs' characters and creatures, and are certainly truer to the author's vision than any previous version. Joe Lara as Tarzan (later replaced by Xavier Declie) battles reptilian Lacarians, bat-like Mahars and all manner of fantastical semi-human races, as well as giant spiders, sea-serpents, and othermonsters as he travels to Atlantis, meets a lost Roman legion, and tunnels to the underground world of Pellucidar... The Epic Adventures, as you can see, is Tarzan as he was meant to be seen.
And a large part of the credit for the look of the new show lies with visual effects designer John Carl Buechler, who is not only one of Hollywood's top special effects blokes, but also a massive ER Burroughs fan.
"I love Tarzan, I love Conan, I love all those characters
who were created for the pulp magazines between, say, 1914 and 1936,"
he enthuses, "I think probably the first book I ever read for pure
entertainment was Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess Of Mars, which was the
first book in the series of John Carter adventures. And after I went through
that series, I wanted more Burroughs and I started reading the Tarzan books.
Yes, I'm a huge fan."
Buechler's CV is extensive. he's worked on three of the biggest modern
horror franchises - Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare
On Elm Street - plus two Scanner flicks, all three Carnasaur
movies, and the full quartet of Ghoulies films. Throw in TV effects
for Jason of Star Command, Northern Exposure, VR Troopers, and various
Roger Corman Presents telemovies, it is clear that John Carl Buechler
is the Busiest Person In Science Fiction. And right now. Tarzan - The
Epic Adventures.
Adventures is keeping him very busy indeed: "I try to get five weeks advance notice of every major creature effect that's in the series. What that means is that at the beginning, in pre-production, I do a tremendous amount of design work and sketches. And ultimately it comes to the point where they pick out the basic characters that they're going to use and then it's up to me to go ahead and construct them."
Buechler and his team have so far made over 20 major props and creatures for the series, many of them full-body costumes. One potential problem is that the suits are made in LA, while the series is shot in South Africa, so the actors involved are unavailable for fittings. "There are generic body types that we can start with. I've been in the business a number of years and have a number of full-body castings of people. Sometimes, when I design a big creature, we have to find a big guy to portray it. But I brought into this project a friend of mine, Don McLeod., and he's one of the most versatile, talented actor-mimes in teh world. he's played in 90% of the creatures on Tarzan, and many of the creatures are based on his body proportions. He plays Bulgani the ape - in fact, he plays all the apes! Sometimes there's somebody else in the suit but he's very good and does a lot to sell, in terms of performance, the reality of the costume. Combine that with a certain amount of attention to detail and sophisticated animatronics and I think we've come up with some wonderful fantasy pieces.
And in an era of TV CGI monster overkill, Buechler's preference
for combining CGI with more traditional methods certainly pays off. "The
computer comes in when we digitally composite a large character into a scene.
An example would be the Mahars. There are many flying sequences, and I shot
all of my people in their costumes in front of blue-screens. We digitally
composited those characters into th matte that I had shot, then digitally
animated the shadows of the creatures on teh ground as they were flying
across. We've also done a sea serpent type of creature, a puppet with a
radio-controlled head, which was digitally composited into the background.
There's a lot of interplay between the two media.
"We also did a giant spider. We created a full animatronic spider, plus a miniature, which was digitally composited into the frame. We then made a shadow beneath him. I think we had eight puppeteers on the miniature spider, so it wasn't that complex. it was just a matter of co-ordinating the movements, then choreographing the camera movement and co-ordinating it with the plates."
But don't expect Tarzan to wander through thie adventures
witha chimp called Cheetah - that was a Hollywood invention. What he does
have by way of companionship is a large ape called Bulgani, although even
he wasn't originally conceived as a regular character. "Everyone is
afraid of using any sort of animatronic character for television, because
nobody believes you can do it well in that amount of time. So they said,
'we're going to use an ape in one of the first episodes, and it's going
to be in the shadows, you're not going to see that much, so it doesn't have
to be that good.' Then they saw the ape-suit I'd provided, and now it's
out there in broad daylight in every episode! So Bulgani has become a major
character in the series, and is utilized a lot, which makes me really happy."
"People have been making ape-suits for a long time,
and we've been seeing bad examples of ape-suits get better and better as
time wears on. By the time we got to The Legend of Greystoke and
all the wonderful things that Rick Baker did, there were people looking
at those photographs and saying, 'hey, this is a real monkey.'
"You learn guite a bit as you build these things. In my case, Congo had just been made, and that was an achievement certainly in realistic looking ape proportions and creature effects. So you build on what has already been done; you don't have to start from scratch. I think the only modification that I made in terms of what had been done before was that I insisted on doing mechanical eyes in the animatronic heads of the apes, because I think when people wear contact lenses, they have a tendency to look like people wearing contact lenses.
"So we created a broader neck crest on the bodysuit under the hair, which gorillas do have. They have this large crest on their skill and these mammoth neck muscles that go into their trapezius. They also have - by proportion - very short legs and a very long torso and very, very long arms. First of all, a talented mime who doesn't walk around like a human being but who has studied ape movement is essential in getting to be real. Then you play with the proportions: you build the shoulders up higher and you extend the neck up almost beyond the head. In this case, our actor looked out through the nostril. We gave him arm extensions that he could walk on, or gloved hands so he could articulate, depending on what the shots were.
"Recently there have been some wonderful breakthroughs in different synthetic fabrics and lightweight urethane that you can make the muscle suits out of. All in all, it's not so much of a trial and error process any more. You see what hasn't worked in the past, you try to discard it, then you go for what has worked well and try to improve on it."
As well as providing creatures and props, Buechler also got
the chance to direct an episode of the new series, although this wasn't
exactly his first directing gig. "My best time in South Africa was
directing an episode of Tarzan. It's kind of neat really - I got to do a
lot of things in my show that I wanted to happen in the series anyway. Before
that I had nothing to do with the story or direction. So I had to pretty
much keep my mouth shut. But getting an opportunity to do it, I put a little
bit of the old gosh-wow into it. I wanted to see a Jules Verne-looking device
tunnel through the earth; I wanted to see winged Mahars flying around; I
wanted to see th temples of Mahars filled with Sagoths and cages filled
with people screaming; I wanted to see beautiful women transform into hideous
creatures. I think that a show like Tarzan should have lots of fantasy and
lots of adventure and lots of action, and it was an opportunity to really
put my stamp on it. I enjoyed it a lot."
And clearly the producers really liked what he did too. "Initially, Max Keller, the executive producer of the series had wanted me to do six or seven episodes, plus do all the creature and make-up effects. I didn't think that was feasible. I don't want to compromise on one job for the sake of the other. but I think we have a system now where I can do a little bit more directing.
"I think on a show like this you'll find directors who
are not used to doing high-concept visual fantasy, so they have a tendency
to think in terms of cop shows or Westerns. When you deal with fantasy characters,
they need a logic and a sense about them, and you shouldn't be afraid to
show them, because that's what the show should be about. I think sometimes
there's a tendency to poo-poo the magic area and just go for people talking.
I think story is essential, and part of the story, particularly in high-concept
fantasy, are the magic characters that are there.
"I think that viewers who are new to the concept of Tarzan in fantastic worlds are taken a little aback until they realize that this is what Burroughs initially intended. And now they're looking at the show not so much a rip-off of Hercules, but as a translation of Burroughs' vision. In that regard, we're satisfying a lot of folks. I believe that there probably are some die-hard Burroughs fans who will find problems with some of the execution of the material. you cannot please everybody, so the best that you can possibly do is attempt to remain true to what your vision of the material is. I certainly tried to do that with my episode. I guess that it's good that I'm an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, and I actually got to do the design and direction of one of these shows, so maybe the Burroughs purists will respond kindly to mine.
"On my episode (Tarzan and the Mahars), I tried to stay as close to Burroughs' idea as possible; I love the material. So I created the Sagoths of Pellucidar, I created two species of Mahar, and we threw in the bad guy character of Rokoff who came from the second novel, Tarzan Returns. And the Iron Mole which tunnelled to Pellucidar in At the Earth's Core. So we borrowed from all the Burroughs books in my episode and tried to put them into one big cluster."
Domain name & Website Hosting by registerdude.com
