Stan Winston: an appreciation

Anyone with an interest in big screen special effects will know the name Stan Winston. Along with contemporaries Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Tom Savini, Winston helped raise the art of cinematic visual trickery to a new level and won four Oscars for his troubles.

Winston was the man who oversaw the creation of such iconic monsters as Predator and Pumpkinhead and who seamlessly amalgamated CGI and hand-crafted models in the likes of Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Jurassic Park. Think of any great blockbuster SFX moment over the past two decades and, chances are, Winston had a hand in it: from the salivating space-ghouls of Aliens right through to this summer's Iron Man. Alongside stop-motion pioneer Ray Harryhausen and ILM's Dennis Muren, Winston is one of only three effects artists to be honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a privilege he richly deserved.

I had the chance to speak to Winston last year about his legacy in the effects business. Full of spirit and remarkably humble ("I just want to have inspired others"), he reflected on his time in the business since launching his own special effects house - Stan Winston Studio - in 1972.

"It was really King Kong and The Wizard of Oz that got me interested in the career I now have," he said. "The animatronics and stop-motion animation on King Kong is amazing, and The Wizard of Oz had some really great make-up effects. However, I actually came out to Hollywood to be an actor and the film that made me think that I would rather get into the special effects business was Planet of the Apes."

Although Winston's TV studio got off to a flying start (by 1974 he had two Emmy awards under his belt) his ambitions remained on the big screen. However, his early film work was largely in the field of tawdry low-budget horror such as 1976's Massacre Mansion and 1980's The Exterminator. The only redeeming feature of either film these days is the shoestring ingenuity Winston employs in bringing eyeball-less victims and decapitated Vietnam POWs to the screen. It might not be pretty but it is pretty effective.

In 1982 Winston bagged an Oscar nomination for his work on Allan Arkush's sci-fi farce Heartbeeps and was on his way to bigger and better things. With science fiction all the rage after the phenomenal box office returns of Star Wars and Alien, he began work on a succession of Hollywood hits - starting with James Cameron's The Terminator and including Aliens and Predator. In 1988 he was given his first directorial job with Pumpkinhead (re-titled Vengeance: The Demon for its initial UK release), which was not a commercial success although it spawned no less than three direct-to-video sequels, none of which Winston had any involvement in.

"A lot of unfortunate things happened just before the release of Pumpkinhead," Winston explained. "It was supposed to get a big Hollywood release but the distributors went belly-up just before the release. There was not a lot of energy put into getting behind it after that. Fortunately, the people who did see it liked it and began to give it a good following. So, after a while, it became a cult classic. I'm still very proud of it."

His second - and final - job as a director was on the obscure children's fable A Gnome Called Gnorm (1990). By then, Winston had grown tired of putting his energies into projects no one was seeing and he instead began to embrace the potential of digital special effects with 1991's groundbreaking Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This is perhaps the highlight of Winston's remarkable CV - a movie that introduced audiences to the potential of computer generated imagery.

"I have always embraced CGI," said Winston. "I welcome any technology that allows us to create the illusion of what we are doing so much better. The scene where we first used CG and live action together was on Terminator 2 and with the T-1000, the metal man. We did as much as we could with animatronics and rubber but, when we could not go any further, we used this brilliant computer animation. Then came Jurassic Park and CGI notched up another level."

Winning Oscars for both Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, Winston went on to found production houses Digital Domain and Stan Winston Digital. Towards the end of his life, Winston began producing as well: revamping a slew of 1950s creature features such as Earth vs the Spider and The Day the World Ended. "B-films are what got me into the business," he said. "I have a great deal of love for the movies of the Fifties and have really enjoyed bringing them to a new audience."

When asked to name his favourite creation, Winston's response was surprising - it was a book he published in 2006, The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio, detailing his work.

"Out of everything I have ever created the book is the most important thing that I have been a part of," he said. "I hope it will be inspirational for young people who are interested in this industry and business."