Posted with permission from the Hamilton Spectator
Building a dream career
August 27, 2009
Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
When his younger brother died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 41, Mike Emiglio began to rethink his priorities in life.
Both brothers were long-time steelworkers at Dofasco, like their father, Ralph.
They both had houses on the Beach Strip, down the street from their father.
And they both had ambitions of doing something other than making steel.
Peter Emiglio's dream was to work in the used car business. He had a small business on the side and Mike Emiglio figures that might have contributed to his heart disease. He was trying to do too much.
"He was on the go all the time."
Emiglio's aspiration was even more adventurous. He was trying to establish himself as a special effects expert in feature film and television productions.
He decided his skills as an industrial mechanic could be applied to film special effects.
He knew about metal fabrication, welding and hydraulics, all of which are commonly used in film. In addition, he boned up on sculpting, makeup artistry and even some robotics in his spare time. He studied and got his licence as a pyrotechnician.
With his partner Dan Sheehan from Sarnia and the business he calls MFX and Manufacturing, he has worked on all kinds of projects such as the television series Goosebumps and the feature film Ginger Snaps, as well as designing and creating giant museum exhibit dinosaurs for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
After Emiglio's brother died in 2004, he says: "I re-evaluated my situation and decided life is too short. I couldn't go back to Dofasco."
Now, after working at his passion full-time for five years, the 48-year-old Emiglio still lives and works on the Beach Strip -- five blocks away from his dad's house -- but has made great inroads into his chosen field, establishing himself as one of the country's foremost stop-motion armature designers.
Stop motion is an old film technique that involves frame-by-frame filming of objects that are moved incrementally off camera. It gives the appearance that they are moving by themselves.
Emiglio designs and builds the armatures -- the skeletons of puppets or action figures used in animation films. The armatures he builds are placed in moulds and rubber or foam latex is applied before they are painted. Someone else usually does that.
For the figures to work, the armatures have to be exceptionally bendable and durable.
One of Emiglio's biggest triumphs was bailing out producers of the 2008 Telefilm Canada production Edison and Leo. Another company built the armatures but they broke down during production. Emiglio ended up being hired to fix or redo them.
More recently, he designed and built the armature for a puppet horse that is being used in a DVD movie bonus feature to go along with the upcoming Spike Jonze movie Where the Wild Things Are.
In a world of high-tech computer-generated graphics, stop motion is seen by some to be anachronistic and unduly laborious.
But others appreciate the simplicity and fine art of it. The technique is usually a lot cheaper than going the computer-generated route.
Emiglio thinks there may be a renaissance in stop motion brewing but it's too early to tell whether it will firmly take hold.
Meanwhile, he and Sheehan have another dream: to find backers for their horror movie idea called Carnivore. It's about a subterranean monster on an island that has been awakened by construction crews and is hunting a group of people who are visiting there.
Emiglio and Sheehan have put together a slick package and movie trailers and they are shopping it around trying to raise money for the project. Emiglio describes it as a "horror film in its purest form, a knock-down, drag-out scary movie, graphic, gory and unsettling. Definitely not for the kiddies."
He's hopeful someone with deep pockets will come along, but he says no matter what happens, he's glad his steelmaking days are behind him.
"The big jobs are few and far between," he says. "But when they do happen, they can pay as much as working three or four years at Dofasco."
STOP MOTION 101
* Stop motion or stop action is a film technique in which an object, such as a puppet, appears to move by itself. The object is actually filmed one frame at a time with stage crews moving it incrementally when the camera isn't rolling. The smaller the off-camera movements, the more realistic the movement appears to be.
* A classic example of the technique was in the campy Gumby television series, which used clay figures.
* The technique traces its roots to the 1898 film The Humpty Dumpty Circus, in which the director used his daughter's toy circus acrobats and animals and created the illusion they were moving by themselves.
* Modern-day practitioners include Tim Burton, who used the technique in the movies The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Other notable examples include the films Coraline and James and the Giant Peach.
* The original Star Wars movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robocop and Terminator all had sequences that used stop motion.
mmcneil@thespec.com
905-526-4687
Photo;
Ron Albertson, The Hamilton Spectator
Mike Emiglio designs special effects, particularly for stop ...
Ron Albertson, The Hamilton Spectator
Mike Emiglio designs special effects, particularly for stop-motion films.
Building a dream career
August 27, 2009
Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
When his younger brother died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 41, Mike Emiglio began to rethink his priorities in life.
Both brothers were long-time steelworkers at Dofasco, like their father, Ralph.
They both had houses on the Beach Strip, down the street from their father.
And they both had ambitions of doing something other than making steel.
Peter Emiglio's dream was to work in the used car business. He had a small business on the side and Mike Emiglio figures that might have contributed to his heart disease. He was trying to do too much.
"He was on the go all the time."
Emiglio's aspiration was even more adventurous. He was trying to establish himself as a special effects expert in feature film and television productions.
He decided his skills as an industrial mechanic could be applied to film special effects.
He knew about metal fabrication, welding and hydraulics, all of which are commonly used in film. In addition, he boned up on sculpting, makeup artistry and even some robotics in his spare time. He studied and got his licence as a pyrotechnician.
With his partner Dan Sheehan from Sarnia and the business he calls MFX and Manufacturing, he has worked on all kinds of projects such as the television series Goosebumps and the feature film Ginger Snaps, as well as designing and creating giant museum exhibit dinosaurs for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
After Emiglio's brother died in 2004, he says: "I re-evaluated my situation and decided life is too short. I couldn't go back to Dofasco."
Now, after working at his passion full-time for five years, the 48-year-old Emiglio still lives and works on the Beach Strip -- five blocks away from his dad's house -- but has made great inroads into his chosen field, establishing himself as one of the country's foremost stop-motion armature designers.
Stop motion is an old film technique that involves frame-by-frame filming of objects that are moved incrementally off camera. It gives the appearance that they are moving by themselves.
Emiglio designs and builds the armatures -- the skeletons of puppets or action figures used in animation films. The armatures he builds are placed in moulds and rubber or foam latex is applied before they are painted. Someone else usually does that.
For the figures to work, the armatures have to be exceptionally bendable and durable.
One of Emiglio's biggest triumphs was bailing out producers of the 2008 Telefilm Canada production Edison and Leo. Another company built the armatures but they broke down during production. Emiglio ended up being hired to fix or redo them.
More recently, he designed and built the armature for a puppet horse that is being used in a DVD movie bonus feature to go along with the upcoming Spike Jonze movie Where the Wild Things Are.
In a world of high-tech computer-generated graphics, stop motion is seen by some to be anachronistic and unduly laborious.
But others appreciate the simplicity and fine art of it. The technique is usually a lot cheaper than going the computer-generated route.
Emiglio thinks there may be a renaissance in stop motion brewing but it's too early to tell whether it will firmly take hold.
Meanwhile, he and Sheehan have another dream: to find backers for their horror movie idea called Carnivore. It's about a subterranean monster on an island that has been awakened by construction crews and is hunting a group of people who are visiting there.
Emiglio and Sheehan have put together a slick package and movie trailers and they are shopping it around trying to raise money for the project. Emiglio describes it as a "horror film in its purest form, a knock-down, drag-out scary movie, graphic, gory and unsettling. Definitely not for the kiddies."
He's hopeful someone with deep pockets will come along, but he says no matter what happens, he's glad his steelmaking days are behind him.
"The big jobs are few and far between," he says. "But when they do happen, they can pay as much as working three or four years at Dofasco."
STOP MOTION 101
* Stop motion or stop action is a film technique in which an object, such as a puppet, appears to move by itself. The object is actually filmed one frame at a time with stage crews moving it incrementally when the camera isn't rolling. The smaller the off-camera movements, the more realistic the movement appears to be.
* A classic example of the technique was in the campy Gumby television series, which used clay figures.
* The technique traces its roots to the 1898 film The Humpty Dumpty Circus, in which the director used his daughter's toy circus acrobats and animals and created the illusion they were moving by themselves.
* Modern-day practitioners include Tim Burton, who used the technique in the movies The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Other notable examples include the films Coraline and James and the Giant Peach.
* The original Star Wars movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robocop and Terminator all had sequences that used stop motion.
mmcneil@thespec.com
905-526-4687
Photo;
Ron Albertson, The Hamilton Spectator
Mike Emiglio designs special effects, particularly for stop ...
Ron Albertson, The Hamilton Spectator
Mike Emiglio designs special effects, particularly for stop-motion films.