For nine years, Imahara worked at ILM using his expertise in electronics and radio control. "If it moved or lit up, I usually had a hand in it," Imahara laughs. "This meant lighting up interiors of spaceships and miniature buildings, or putting servos into some creature. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering from USC, but also a healthy tinkering side. I'd always built circuits for fun on the side and played around with radio control." His talent for tinkering made him famous as the creator of the servo joints that animate the Energizer Bunny, as well as for his participation in "Robot Wars/Battlebots" as part of team Deadblow. (Savage and Hyneman also have a history with "Robot Wars/Battlebots" for their own creations.)
Of course, it was inevitable that his passion for robot building would lead him straight to the dynamic droid duo of Star Wars. "I remember getting Doug Chiang's drawings of the prequel C-3PO ("Spaghetti-O") from my supervisor Michael Lynch," Imahara says. "This was a character that I'd grown up with and mimicked and drew pictures of, and now we were going to reinvent one. Then there's the time we got a call asking how quickly we could make another R2-D2. I got to work with all the same mechanics that put the beat in the new Energizer Bunny, but this time, it was for Artoo. My fondest moment is when supervisor Don Bies, fellow operator Nelson Hall, and I were testing our brand-new Artoo out in the lot behind ILM, and seeing him come to life for the first time. It was a fan boy dream come true to be paid to work on the Star Wars prequels. Oh, and the models -- the Federation battleship and the Republic Cruiser. All the hangar sets. It was a return to the hey-day of model making. Our crew was over 100 strong, working on multiple stages. It really was a great experience."
Belleci also worked at ILM in the model shop for about eight years as a model builder, as well as a sculptor and painter for various films, but it was his work on the prequels that held special significance for him. "Working on Star Wars was absolutely a dream come true," Belleci says. "When I was in high school I did a report on movie special effects and in a book I saw a picture of the Millennium Falcon in front of a bluescreen at ILM. I thought to myself, 'I want to do that someday.' It wasn't until the Episode I issue of Cinefex came out, and I found a picture of me standing by the Federation battleship in front of a bluescreen, that I remembered that childhood dream."
With the members of "MythBusters" having different skills as animators, model makers, stage and interior designers, carpenters, welders, painters, explosive experts, droid operators and such, it's easy to see why the show was a perfect fit for the ILM veterans.
"On 'MythBusters' you have to be a jack-of-all-trades," Belleci says. "We are constantly building devices or rigs to test certain myths. No two builds are ever the same so every time we start a new story, we are starting from scratch. Faced with these challenges you have to pull from all areas of construction and fabrication so it helps to know a little of everything."
Being fearless also comes in handy. In many of their experiments there can be a level of "don't try this at home" risk to it, sometimes resulting in rather hair-raising accidents such as Savage losing an eyebrow during an explosion test, cutting his arm while working on a scaled-down metal bridge in the "Break-step Bridge," cutting his lip after putting a vacuum cleaner motor too close to his mouth, suffering mild burns in the "Exploding Jawbreaker" experiment, and getting hit by several pennies in the myth of "Penny Drop." "For some reason I'm more accident prone than Jamie," Savage laughs.
"The closest call I've had in my career was with the X-MB plane in 'Exploding Hair Cream' episode," Grant recalls. "We had made the 'Sharammer' from our Shark Week special into a huge pressure vessel. The front was welded shut, but the rear had several plates of plywood held in place by screws (not my design -- I should have protested more). We had the plane up to pressure, and I suggested that we all walk around the (welded) front rather than the back. Adam (being slightly hard of hearing) immediately walked around the back, and just as he passed, BOOM, the back end blew out. In the end, he probably wouldn't have been hurt even if he was standing directly in the path, since the plywood ruptured in the middle and allowed the pressure to escape, but that is a much closer call than I like to deal with. When we do anything truly, obviously dangerous like explosives, we have experts like the nice people at the FBI come and help us."
