Greg was a member of the Mad Max Fury Road SFX crew with Dan Oliver and Andy
Williams that spent months creating Vehicle modifications, modified props and
special effects for George Miller’s grand operatic action epic filmed in Namibia.
Greg was tasked with creating innovative special effects and props for the film
and designing precision remote control systems for vehicles and doing the
driving for major vehicle stunt sequences in the film. With zero humans aboard
there was zero chance of lives being risked with the massive explosions and
crashing metal.
When the huge Mercedes monster truck tanker explodes and flips over on fire,
Greg was at the controls making sure the truck kept precisely on track and
maintained a constant pace with the camera vehicles in the uneven surfaced
sandy desert. The truck was fully RC, with radio control gearshift, throttle,
steering, brakes and safety kill and able to maneuvre in tight carparks, load
its own trailers or blast away to 100+km/hr
When a war-rig trailer comes loose on fire and careens off into a canyon wall at
over 60km/hr, Greg was at the controls making sure it released flawlessly and
turned and hit the same mark, take after take.
When a Buzzard buggy explodes in a huge fireball from a suiciding Warboy, again
Greg was at the controls, ensuring no mortal stuntdriver was ever in any danger
from the wild pyrotechnics.
Because so many different types of vehicle stunts were required, a SFX testing
rig was built that could match different hero vehicles from the film. Greg converted it to radio control
steering and braking so it could be towed at speed and the danger of any
particular gag could be tested with onboard data encoders. These sort of
advances in safety helped ensure no stuntdrivers were injured in the making of
the movie.
Anti-seeds
When the movie’s badass looking villain Richtus Erectus needed a badass looking Gun, Greg took
one of the background prop guns based on an old car radiator and rebirthed it
designing and building a huge functional double layer open frame rotary
cartridge for 19mm brass shotgun shells, with claw action shell advancer, shell
ejector mechanism, carbon black cloud ejector, bicycle pedals and incorporating
colleague David James’ muzzle flash system for fully in-camera mean-ness. Other desert-punk guns fully
mechanised this way included an overscale Uzi 19mm and a twin cartridge machine
gun fashioned from a petrol bowser and fire extinguisher. Greg also made shell
ejector rigs to spray castmembers harmlessly with “spent” brass cartriges for heavy gunfire scenes.
Mad Max Fan
When blowers had to really suck, and the the film’s Stars needed the close-up attention of fans, Greg provided a 210km/hr blast of
fresh air using a brushless motor turbine system to provide skin rippling
ventilation at close quarters and fuel guzzling suction.
