You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI. It's Later with Moke Kelly. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app. Let's talk about special effects. Fawn Davis, who has been a previous guest on this show, is an alum of Lucasfilm worked there for ten years, worked on some of the biggest franchises known to cinema. Fawn, very quickly run down some of the franchises that your work is seen in. Oh boy, yes, Star Wars, Star Trek,
Jurassic Park, Terminator. See, that's why I asked him to do it a lot, Transformers over forty five feature films today. Oh my goodness, yeah, forty five feature films to date. Also, you are featured in Light and Magic season two, which is streaming right now on Disney Plus. Very quickly, let's quickly review how you even got into special effects.
For me, it was I was always driven to do it so And it's funny because in Light and Magic, I actually break down the whole story and they got pictures of me as a child even because yeah, yeah, no, I was in grade school, elementary school. I saw Star Wars, and you know, I thought it was good like everyone else. But what really changed my path was seeing one of those behind the scenes books and seeing that they were model makers working, and I'm like, that's a job.
I want that job.
For someone who may be listening, they may think special effects is only CGI. They're not of the age where they remember the model making the practical effects that you specialized in. Even today, Yeah, what does that consist of these days?
It's the same.
We just we use a lot more technology and everything that we do with a lot of the end results of our work is still physical objects.
It's like still CAD design.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, everything starts in the computer. Now we do use three D printing a lot more than we have in the past. Even when those came out, it was still just another tool. But now we're really leaning in that pretty heavy CNC machines. We use those quite a bit too. They've been around for that is it's a computer controlled cutter. Basically, CNC's well, the technology can drive a laser, it can drive cutters, it can drive vinyl cutters and all kinds of devices, but CNC
is specifically machining. Most of the time we use it for carving foam.
For your job. What is the most important skill set? Is it someone who is good with their hands, or is this someone who's creatively brilliant and can see and have things materialized from their thoughts. What is it?
I think it's a combination of dexterity and attention to detail, really, because if you have an extreme attention to detail, like most of our artists, you really can focus in on what makes something look real, you know, and no matter what scale you make it. So we do miniature as we do the reverse. We do oversized things.
We do a lot of of course, real life sized objects.
Our studio specializes in unusual.
Things sci fi fantasy, yeah fhon Co Studios, and we.
Still do a lot of practical but we also work directly with teams that are using virtual production and using computer graphics, and actually within the industry we do specify. Special effects are the effects that you do in front of a camera and the visual effects of the effects you do after photography, like in post.
Yeah, so that's that's the major difference between those two. And we do special effects for visual effects, you know, you just blow them on mat. Tell me this when you're doing something for a Star Wars property, whatever that may be within that known universe.
How much information are.
You given or you're just told we need this star destory to look like it's coming over our head.
One is you know.
Samilar With They're usually really good about giving you enough to go on, but you're also expected to and it's my favorite part of the job. You're expected to make some stuff up. You might get a piece of concept art that shows one side of an object, you know, and then you have to figure out what it's going to look like on the back and all the sides and the parts that aren't visible to camera.
How were in the in the illustration?
Excuse me? How often are you tasked with creating something an effect or a model, something that has never been done before and you have to just go home and work shop it every day.
It's my favorite part of the job.
Give me an example, please.
It's well, just you know, we'll start a project and the majority of the time clients come to us and they want to do something that's never been done before. That's what every director, every storyteller wants to do something new. So we'll have a meeting with them and after the meeting is done. You know, we get our team together and we start talking about how we actually going to achieve the design or the effect needed.
If you're running the team, and I know you've had vary levels of responsibility over the course of your career, how closely are you working with a Steven Spielberg, a George Lucas or any prominent director.
It varies wildly.
You know, I'd say I've worked with directors more in
pre production when we're trying to flush things out. Once you get into production, the special effects team, like as a model maker doing design work, you work really close with the director, and then once the production happens and it balloons out to two thousand people, a lot of times you're working with visual effects supervisors that are working with directly with the director and or maybe a production designer, so they really have an army of like people to complete these movies.
Especially these days, because you'll have two thousand visual effects shots in a movie. It's not uncommon.
Have you ever on into a project thinking like, I have no idea how in the hell we're going to do this, And then on the other side, wow, we really pulled that off.
Every time? Yeah, we never know what we're gonna do before we start a project. You always can tap into the things that you've done before, but because they're asking you to do something new and different every time, there's only so much you can reach towards in your history to create something new, So you have to just lean into your you know, tools materials technique is what I always always go to, but it's it's a lot of there's a lot of testing involved, you know, we always
have a whole thing. And I share this with younger people especially. You shouldn't be afraid of failure, but I do prefer to fail in private. And what that means is if you're running a company, you do all your tests when the client's not around, and then you have that way when you go into a meeting, you can show them what works instead of waste of time on things that didn't work. Also, if you're you know, even when I was working at high Ale Amazon model Maker, when I was.
Industor Light and Magic for people don't know, yes.
Correct, Industrial Light Magic.
So when I was in their model shop and if I could see on the schedule that I was going to be asked to do something I've never done before, I would actually go home. I would study it and I would do it in my garage, so that when I got to the point where they asked me to do it, I looked like a pro and they never knew that I'd never done it before because I did all my failure at home. I think studying at home
is underrated. I think that just approaching life as a student is a really great tool to aid in failing in private.
Jing Right now in studios front of the show Special Effects and Visual Effects Wizard Fawn Davis. His company's Fonco, and we talked about visual effects and special effects in this segment. But there's also a robotics aspect to your career. Some may know you as a former judge for the show BattleBots, one of my favorite shows. You know something about that world of technology as well. Can we talk about that when we come back? Yeah? Absolutely, all right,
let's do it. It's Later with mo Kelly. Fon Davis joins me in studio.
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's Later with mo Kelly live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app and if you're just tuning in my guests in studio Von Davis of fon Co Studios. He is a visual effects special effects wizard. He has been in the game for I don't know, thirty five forty years at this point, is that ak?
Yeah, yeah, a little over thirty five years.
Also, I know of you as a former judge for the show battle Box. You know a little something about robotic technology. You are also a participant and competitor at one point. Yeah, when you look at robotics today, where do you think that is going?
And where are we?
Where would you put us in the spectrum of a progress?
A progression? Oh, it's pretty funny.
Because I work in robotics, I actually see a I actually get really frustrated because I expect us to be moving a lot faster with the technology than we are. And you see a lot of promises since the eighties. Really we've been promised to robot to go grab as strings from the fridge, right, I'm still waiting for it.
But don't we kind of have that the way we have the little roombo which will clean the room. I mean we have robots on a smaller level. We do household items.
We do and you could classify some of the technology that we use for fabrication, or three D printers as little robots. I feel like the three D printers in particular feel like robot helpers. They'll work when you go home, right, just great. But I still really want to see just
me personally too. I want to see more consumer robots beyond the rumba, you know, okay, something something that can actually like you see a lot of experimentation happening with humanoid robots right now, like Boston Dynamic, Yeah, Boston Dynamics.
Tesla's got a robot. There's a lot of.
Companies in China creating these humanoid robots.
But it feels like, you know, I've just learned to kind of recognize this through the years about technology.
It seems like they've hit a bit of a wall.
If they've hit a wall, let's combine what we were talking about last segment with this segment.
Let's talk about cinema.
How close are we to the world of eye robot for example? How close are we to I don't want to say the terminator, but you know, how close are we to that humanoid assistant or presence in our homes?
Yeah?
I think that's the wall that's been hit. You know, there's a lot of stuff happening with AI, and of course AI is going to be a fundamental core component of humanoid robotics in our daily life. I think, you know, I feel like the label AI is being slapped on a lot of things is just software. You know, chatbots has been around forever, for example, true, now chatbots are AI.
You know, it's like l M is another term that has thrown out their language learning models. Yeah, where more than software is software that evolves in its own space.
Yes, yeah, but I think I think there's more, there's more programmers involvement than most companies want to.
Kind of reveal.
Because speaking again, this is just my perspective on all of it, because I do a lot of work in technology, it feels like there's a lot of protecting the companies in you know, so they can get investment. Whenever there's a lot of investment in new new technology, there's an incentive for technology companies to kind of exaggerate their success their successes and to hide their failures.
Okay, let me let me jump in there because we have an ongoing discussion on the show about self driving vehicles, autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, that's not the hugeoid robot, but I would say that's the combination of AI and also robotic technology. If you were to get in a way, moo, where do you see that aspect of technology going. That's I feel like WEIMO has already brought us there. I think it's just a matter of time for or driverless vehicles
to be to become more commonplace. Okay, let's talk about cinema and also this. When I think of self driving cars, I think about movies like of course I robot. I think of the fifth element. I think of what other ones minority report, all sorts of examples in cinema where we have this self driving technology, is it that we do not have the infrastructure to accommodate it, or is the technology not quite ready.
For consumer use?
I think for something as sophisticated as driving a human form like a humanoid robot, the technology has got a long ways to go. A car is weirdly much much more simple in terms of the math that is required to operate it. Not saying it's simple, but it's more simple than driving a human body, you know, hands, fingers, oh so in other words, just the you know, awareness of the surroundings.
You know.
The road is a confined kind of formula, you know, but but you step into what humans encounter in a day and.
It becomes a lot more complicated.
So we're not going to have Johnny Cab like in uh Total Recall, where you have the humanoid driver, but we will have the autonomous vehicle.
I think you could end up with a human just to make people a humanoid robot.
Attached to a car, but it's not actually driving a car. No, no, probably not well, and you wouldn't need it, you know. Uh, it's always funny to see science fiction, even in Star Wars some cases, you know, robots drive vehicles when the vehicles themselves can be robots, and they have some of
that too. But I think to make I think robots are going to be utilized a lot more just to make people feel comfortable, you know, because because a humanoid robot, the anthropomorphic design is going to lend itself to people being more comfortable with technology.
See.
I feel actually less comfortable with seeing that anthropomorphic humanoid thing because you can't get the facial expressions right, that the eye contact focus right.
It just seems oh disconcerted. Yeah, yeah, I don't mean like.
One to one human copies that kind of like replicants from Blader on or anything.
Keep going. I'm thinking more like.
I'm thinking more like, you know, you look at the robots and it looks at Johnny five, okay or Wally right, you know those there's like this short circuit Johnny five right, right exactly, And and those robots really connected with people. But if you take a robot and you make it try to make it look human, like literally really human, then it just gets creepy.
Yeah, it does.
And I know some countries they do have the humanoid human, you know, trunck facing, like in Japan they will have like the concierge, which is supposed to be human presenting robots.
And that's unsettling to me.
That is, yeah, And I think that's the that's one of the walls that this technology is going to hit. And I mean that from not just the robotics side, but just AI in general. Just the idea that you can you can mimic humans, but to copy humans is a whole different thing.
When we come back, I want to go now further down this AI path. We talked about special effects, visual effects. Now we talked about robotics and how it's going to be integrated with AI. I want to have this conversation with you about where we are with AI and where you expect it to go in five ten years.
If you're just tuning in, My guest is Fon Davis.
We started off talking about the second season of Light and Magic, Season two, which is now streaming on Disney Plus. Fon Davis is promintly featured in all three episodes. He is an alum of Lucasfilm more than ten years in the special effects and visual effects Wizard. When we come back, when we get into a Hi, it's Later with mo Kelly. I Am six forty Live Everywhere in the iHeart Radio app.
You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from KFI. AM six forty is Later with mo Kelly Live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
My guest in studio is Fawn Davis of fon Co Studios. He is a visual effects a special effects expert. He's worked on every major franchise in cinematic history.
I'm not really exaggerating.
He could run him down, but we would be here all night and at the beginning of our conversation. We were talking about his involvement in the show Light and Magic and it's in season two. All episodes are now streaming on Disney Plus, talking about special effects, visual effects, and in this conversation we touched on that. We touched on robotics and its future according to Fawn, and now I want to get into where we are as you see it fonn Davis with AI and where we're headed.
Let me couch it like this. More and more discussion is being had about the singularity, the point where AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes capable of self improvement. You know, it's just it doesn't need us anymore. From where you sit, from what you know about robotics, from what you know about AIK, how close do you think we are and what implications might that be?
I don't know if I feel like this is probably not a popular opinion right now, because people really really love touting the achievements of AI, and they should be rightly. So it's come a long long way and it's really hit some huge mind milestones this year. But but in my opinion, I think that they've like I said, I think they've hit a wall in terms of like the singularity.
I just don't think we're anywhere near it.
I often draw a graph, and this is actually referring to visual effects. Like you know, one percent of the work is creating a shot. Ninety nine percent of the work that you put into a shot is making it look real. So one percent is to create it, ninety nine percent is to make it look real. And I think that that AI is right now is at that one percent.
Let me push back on that big conspiracy theorist for a second. I remember seeing satellite photos from the nineteen sixties which were very advanced, and I would say maybe twenty thirty years ahead of our consumer level access to satellite photos that we take for granted now on our GPS, for example. I say that to say, I'm quite sure the military is way beyond our consumer level consumption of AI. And might that change the equation?
No, Okay, I don't think so, because, like I said, I I think that we're scratching the surface.
I really do.
And a good example of that is if you look at was it vo Vo three from Google just came out with a bunch of new videos. I watched a bunch of those on my phone and I'm like, oh my god, they did it. They did it, And then I went home and I brought I put it up on my big television.
So I'm sorry to interrupt you when you say they did it, they passed at.
Well, no, they just they in their piece of technology, they've created audio and video in AI of humans that look on my phone, they look pretty good, pretty impressive. But then when I put them up on my television, the mouth, mouth shapes are weird, the eyes do weird things. It's it's the same thing that Visual Effects has been struggling with for decades, trying to make you know, computer
rendered humans look real. They've they've come a long way, and they get really really close, but it's it's just uncanny and weird looking, and I think it'll continue to be there for quite a long time. I'm predicting decades before AI can actually generate believable human beings, and I could totally be wrong, but I just I've seen this so many times, the promise of a technology solving something like, you know, human performances, and I just I just don't.
I don't buy it. I don't buy it.
All right, let me ask this then, as you know as a cautionary tale, what is the worst case scenario from where you sit as far as the use or implementation of AI.
Well, obviously, because I work in visual effects, I mean the worst.
Case would be there.
Okay, okay, Well, well we know it's going to replace people's jobs. We know that, and yet it will and it has and I think, but I don't.
I don't see AI generating with true creativity. You know, as an example, if you if you have an AI generate a armored suit, a space armored suit, right, you know, being a designer, I can look at it and I could go, oh, that piece is from Star Wars, that piece is from tron Legacy, that piece is from a fifties sci fi you know, I can see the influences. I could see exactly where it drew its references from.
It's too literal in the way it learns. It has to it's not creative. It has to drop on information. It's been fit in one second, And Mark Runer, I want to bring you into this conversation right now, because Mark, who's our newsman. We have this conversation all the time about AI and the type of scripts it may generate, how it may impact the movie industry.
Mark ask it the way you want to ask it.
Well, I'll tell you that if an AI writes a script, then only an AI should read a script.
The purpose of art is for.
Connecting with other humans and becoming more of a human yourself. I have no interest in AI generated art. There's a really narrow bandwidth of things where AI can be used legitimately in art. Maybe special effects is one of them. I don't know.
Yeah, I feel like maybe an advertising in commercials, but true narrative storytelling. I agree with you. I think that every aspect of storytelling, to achieve the nuance and to achieve that connection with people, it has to be done by a person.
I think that's altruistic and I think that's personal preference.
But we also know that Hollywood is money driven. Oh yeah, but I also a lot of money. Yeah, and that's why I also think the technology is not there yet. You know, to further back that that feeling and it is strictly technical. This is not me just wanting to protect my job. I mean, why would I fight something
that's inevitable. But I don't think it's inevitable because I can design something and we do on a daily basis, we're designing things, and I can I can say I'm going to draw from a dragonfly, and I'm going to draw from aviation, and I'm gonna make an aircraft that has a vibe of those two things. But I'm not gonna take literally pieces from someone else's work or literally things that exist in the world and combine them to do that. I'm gonna draw a line, and I'm gonna say,
what is this? What blends with this line? That gets me where I want to go as an artist? And there's so much nuance in all of that that that AI has never proven itself capable.
Yes, I'm glad you used the word inevitable because I keep seeing this debunked more and more that inevitability is just something we have to face when it comes to AI. When it's more and more clear to me and from everything I read that people don't really want it and it's being forced upon us, especially this inevitability line. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think all of
that is just salesmanship. Honestly, it's the people who are saying that are the ones benefiting from investors pouring money all over this technology.
You always follow the money. That's exactly right. Okay, let me add to that, though, But can't inevitability be I'll say it may vary. In other words, it's inevitable I'm going to die, not to be morbid. But I don't know when that data is going to come. I don't know if I'm very close or still years and years off. Can't the same be said about the inevitability the supposed inevitability of AI.
We know it's.
Coming, but it may not be as close as some have theorized.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've not seen anything to indicate that they're remotely close to what they say they're close to. But it's already taking jobs, it is, and it's taking mathematic jobs. It's taking it's taking jobs that rely on statistics and solid you know, kind of formulaic you know, equations and research. I think there's a place for it. I think it's great. I think it's there's a lot of places in science for it. There are places for it in visual effects, but I don't think storytelling is one of them.
When we come back Fon Davis, let's close out our conversation. Let's talk about Star Wars celebration in Japan and you're doing something with Beyonce.
Do I have that right? That is correct?
All right, don't tell us now, we'll tell us on the other side. Fon Davis joins me in studios. We talk about the world and how it's changing so quickly and much to Mark Runners delight. AI is not going to take over as of yet, it's not quite inevitable. I Am six forty is Later with mo Kelly.
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty KFI.
It's Later with mo Kelly. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app. No video simulcast tonight. We're just live radio, old school style. And my guest in studio for the better part of this hour has been Fon Davis of fon Co Studios. He is in a lum of lucasfilm, worked there ten years. He has a new show, which is Light and Magic Season two, which is streaming right now on Disney Plus. He's prominently featured in all three
of its episodes and fun You just came back. I wouldn't say just came back, but you know, a couple months ago came back from a Star Wars celebration in Japan. Correct, Yes, great, okay, I'm just kind of envious of you. What was that, like, what happened? Oh man? Well, first of all, Japan is amazing.
We we went to my partner and I went to Star Wars celebration and then we spent almost a month in Japan.
Oh so you did just kind of just give back, we did.
Yeah, but yeah, No, Star Wars celebration is always amazing because it's it's well, you've been to cons before. It's it's it's a celebration of you know, art and creativity and fans and artists and I don't know, to get that many people together that want to be in any place.
It's always my favorite thing about But is.
It a different Khan if you will, culturally because it's in Japan as opposed to let's say San Diego.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say traveling anywhere in the world, you have to do a little bit of study to just kind of understand what the local customs are. I think whenever you travel to Asia specifically, it's definitely the furthest from Western culture. So there are things like you bow to greet people, you tend to show less emotion in public, you know, yeah and so, and I don't know. You just I think, just out of respect for people, you learn, you know, some of
the key phrases. You need to get by and try to use the language whenever you can. So, yeah, I don't know. I love travel because I love food and the food reason it is amazing. They have a okinoma yaki Hiroshima style. It's like a crape with vegetables and noodles in it and it's made just a little crispy with delicious sauce. Oh, I just found out in Los Angeles, where I live. They do have it in little Tokyo. So let me ask you this as it aside. You
were born in Vietnam, correct, that's correct. Have you been back to Vietnam?
I did. It was a life changing trip.
I went back in the nineties when they first opened a US embassy in Vietnam, and so not a lot had changed because of all of the restrictions on trade.
Which is kind of in the news right now. Yeah.
Yeah, Like Vietnam was kind of left in the nineteen seventies. So I went there in the nineties and they were driving around on motorcycles from the sixties and seventies, and even Vietnam Airlines had some very old scary planes, you know, flying domestically within Vietnam. It was a very very different experience. And what I hear it's like now, I haven't gone back since. But weirdly, I was born there, but my
father was American. He was in the Air Force. He was from Oklahoma, and my mother was born in a village outside of Saigon and they met there, so so I'm half So when I went back to Vietnam, they did not treat me. I was like, oh, my people, I'm going to go to my homeland, you know, and they.
Were like, no, not at all. I'm not laughing at you, but no, it was. It was.
That's I think why it was such a life changing event for me, because it really helped me to find who I am as a person, because I grew up in America and I thought, I'm a Vietnamese American and I'm so proud of my Asian heritage and I'm I just felt and also because I look, I'm brown, people identify me as Asian more than they identify me as American growing up.
So when I went there and they were like, no, you're not.
That was really shocking, and it made me realiz, how you know, for lack of a better description, how white I really am. I'm one hundred percent American. I am not in their eyes at least in my eyes too. After that trip, really because it was I realized how different I am because I grew up here.
I am. I'm a you know, I'm just American.
I don't feel like an Asian American so much outside of my appearance. And I do appreciate my my family history, and I have an appreciation for those things, but as far as my personality goes, I'm one hundred percent American.
Before I let you go, I tease this that you have something in the works, as best you can tell me, because I know there's a cloud of secrecy around a lot of what you do because manytimes, you can't tell us about the movies you're working on, the franchises you're associated with. I assume there's the same level of non disclosure here with Beyonce. But what can you tell.
Us, Oh, well, that one actually she's on tour now, as we all know. So your work is so, our work is done. It's it's there's videos playing behind her while she's performing, and we did a number of the miniature effects for her video show.
That's kind of cool.
It's really cool.
We didn't even know there was so much secrecy around it while we were doing it. I'm sure we didn't know it was for her tour. We thought we were working on a music video. But you know, when you when you work on really top secret, high profile things, you get the information for your little component of the show.
When when you're not told anything else, when you.
Read it, when did you realize, like, oh, this is going to be going around the world. It's going to be on the screens right behind her when she's doing her thing.
The funny thing is we found out when she went on tour this like all you say, someone saw it.
Someone saw it.
Videos were leaked onto the internet and someone forwarded me one and I was like, oh, there it is. No one told you, and then of course somebody takes those videos down immediately, right, But no no one ever told us.
And that's that's common. That's pretty common.
I'm quote.
I'm quite sure that concept the agreement.
You know, they did what they were going to do, what they promise, but you would think somewhere in there someone or at least would have given you a heads up.
No, not at all.
Well, and you know, to be fair, we work on about a dozen projects at a time, so I don't even know if our interest is in what we did before. Of course, when we find out, it's always exciting at a personal level, but professionally you've moved on to the next twelve projects and you just you know, it's a little factory of work that we're always kind of in the grind, So we don't think about projects once we've left them, you know, until they get presented in front of us.
You have sat with me I don't know, maybe four or five times over the years since the beginning when I had the bo Kelly Show Saturdays and Sundays here on KFI, and each time you come in I learned something new. We got to have you on more regularly in the future. I don't know how that's going to happen. I don't know how we're going to create it. As they say, I'll work shop it and see if we can find a way. Because your insight has to robotics AI,
all this ever changing world that's happening around us. I would love to be able to get your insights. So I'm just going to say thank you for coming on tonight and I'll see you soon.
Fond Davis, I certainly hope, so I love it here very quickly.
Is there a way that an aspiring effects artists might be able to reach out to you?
The best thing to do if you want to see some of the you know, share in some of the things that I, you know, teach. I teach with the stan Winston School, and I share a lot of the knowledge that I have in very specific areas. In fact, we just came out with a new lesson that focuses on technology in fabrication.
But there's also not just me.
There's a multitude of incredible special effects artists that share their work and the tools, materials, techniques of their work in the stan Winston School lessons.
We'll have to make sure when you come back we talk more about the stan Winston School.
It is amazing. Yeah, I just saw them. They were at Monster Palooza. They had a little set up there.
Matt Winston runs runs it with Eric Liddoff, so they were there were both sons of Dan Winston. You don't have a bad life, do you.
I can't complain. I actually life is so good for me. I sometimes feel guilty about it. You don't feel guilty. I enjoy it.
I get the imposter syndrome really bad. I get that it's like, wait a minute, they're paying me to do what for who? Yeah?
Yeah, I'm excited to get up every day I go to work. It's it's incredible. It's a wonderful feeling.
It is.
I know what that's like.
It's an enjoyable feeling. Von Davis, I'll see you soon, all right.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty