For fire år siden publicerede New Yorker en artikel om en samling af dronte-knogler, som var fundet i en hule på øen Mauritius. Mauritius er en lille ø øst for Madagascars kyst i det Indiske Ocean, og det er dér, dronten blev opdaget og udryddet, begge dele inden for 150 år. Alle var begejstrede for dette arkæologiske fund, idet det betød, at de endelig var i stand til at samle et enkelt dronte-skelet.
About four years ago, the New Yorker published an article about a cache of dodo bones that was found in a pit on the island of Mauritius. Now, the island of Mauritius is a small island off the east coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, and it is the place where the dodo bird was discovered and extinguished, all within about 150 years. Everyone was very excited about this archaeological find, because it meant that they might finally be able to assemble a single dodo skeleton.
Altså, selvom museer over hele kloden har dronte-skeletter i deres samling, har ingen -- ikke engang selveste Natual History Museum på Mauritius -- et skelet, der er samlet af knoglerne fra en enkelt dronte. Eller, dette er ikke helt præcist. Faktum er, at British Museum havde et komplet eksemplar af en dronte i deres samling frem til det 18. århundrede -- det var rent faktisk fuldstændigt mumificeret -- men i et anfald af oprydnings-iver skar de rent faktisk hovedet og fødderne af, og de smed resten i et bål. Hvis I kigger på deres nuværende website, optræder disse eksemplarer, med bemærkningen at resten var tabt i en brand.
See, while museums all over the world have dodo skeletons in their collection, nobody -- not even the actual Natural History Museum on the island of Mauritius -- has a skeleton that's made from the bones of a single dodo. Well, this isn't exactly true. The fact is, is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century -- it was actually mummified, skin and all -- but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire. If you go look at their website today, they'll actually list these specimens, saying, the rest was lost in a fire.
Det er så ikke hele sandhenden... Det fremhævede i denne artikel var dette billede, og jeg er en af dem, som mener at Tinas Browns arbejde med at tilføje billeder til New Yorker, var fremragende, idet dette billede ændrede mit verdenssyn. Jeg blev besat af denne genstand -- ikke blot det smukke fotografi, og farven, den lave dybdeskarphed, den synlige detaljeringsgrad, tråden, I kan se her på næbbet som konservatoren har brugt til at hæfte skelettet sammen, der er en hel fortælling i sig selv her. Og så tænkte jeg: ville det ikke være fantastisk, om jeg havde mit eget dronte-skelet? (Latter)
Not quite the whole truth. Anyway. The frontispiece of this article was this photo, and I'm one of the people that thinks that Tina Brown was great for bringing photos to the New Yorker, because this photo completely rocked my world. I became obsessed with the object -- not just the beautiful photograph itself, and the color, the shallow depth of field, the detail that's visible, the wire you can see on the beak there that the conservator used to put this skeleton together -- there's an entire story here. And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great if I had my own dodo skeleton? (Laughter)
Og derefter -- jeg vil gerne understrege på det her tidspunkt at jeg har brugt mit liv med en besættelse af genstande og de historier, de fortæller, og dette var blot den seneste i rækken. Jeg begyndte derefter at kigge efter om nogen solgte et samlesæt, en slags model, som jeg kunne erhverve, og jeg fandt masser af overordnet litteratur, masser af gode billeder -- intet held: intet dronte-skelet til mig. Men skaden var sket. Jeg havde gemt et par hundrede dronte-skelet-billeder i min mappe med "Kreative Projekter" -- det er et opbevaringssted for min hjerne, alt hvad jeg nogensinde kunne interessere mig for. Hver gang, jeg har adgang til nettet, er der en bunke ting, som flytter derind, alt fra smukke ringe til fotografier af cockpits. Nøglen, som Marquis de La Fayette sendte til George Washington for at fejre stormen af Bastillen. Russisk nøgle til affyring af atomvåben. Den øverste er billedet, jeg fandt på eBay; den nederste er den, jeg selv lavede, idet jeg ikke havde råd til den på eBay. Stormtrooper-dragter. Kort over Midgård -- denne har jeg selv håndtegnet. Her er mappen for dronte-skelettet. Denne mappe har 17.000 billeder -- over 20 gigabytes data -- og det stiger fortsat. Og en dag, et par uger senere, måske endda et år senere, var jeg i hobbyforretningen med mine unger, og jeg købte nogle værktøjer til at arbejde i ler -- vi skulle have en byggedag. Jeg købte noget polyler, noget ståltråd, forskellige genstande. Og jeg kiggede ned på lerret, og det slog mig, at måske, ja, måske kunne jeg skabe mit eget dronte-kranium.
I want to point out here at this point that I've spent my life obsessed by objects and the stories that they tell, and this was the very latest one. So I began looking around for -- to see if anyone sold a kit, some kind of model that I could get, and I found lots of reference material, lots of lovely pictures. No dice: no dodo skeleton for me. But the damage had been done. I had saved a few hundred photos of dodo skeletons into my "Creative Projects" folder -- it's a repository for my brain, everything that I could possibly be interested in. Any time I have an internet connection, there's a sluice of stuff moving into there, everything from beautiful rings to cockpit photos. The key that the Marquis du Lafayette sent to George Washington to celebrate the storming of the Bastille. Russian nuclear launch key: The one on the top is the picture of the one I found on eBay; the one on the bottom is the one I made for myself, because I couldn't afford the one on eBay. Storm trooper costumes. Maps of Middle Earth -- that's one I hand-drew myself. There's the dodo skeleton folder. This folder has 17,000 photos -- over 20 gigabytes of information -- and it's growing constantly. And one day, a couple of weeks later, it might have been maybe a year later, I was in the art store with my kids, and I was buying some clay tools -- we were going to have a craft day. I bought some Super Sculpeys, some armature wire, some various materials. And I looked down at this Sculpey, and I thought, maybe, yeah, maybe I could make my own dodo skull.
Jeg bør her understrege -- jeg er ikke billedhugger, jeg er benhård til at bygge modeller. Giv mig en tegning, giv mig en genstand at genskabe, giv mig en kran, et stillads, dele fra "Star Wars" -- specielt dele fra "Star Wars" -- og jeg kan genskabe den slags til hver en tid. Det er præcis sådan, jeg tjente til dagen i 15 år. Men når I giver mig noget i den stil -- min ven, Mike Murnane, skabte denne; det er en model til Star Wars, episode 2 -- det er ikke mit felt, jeg -- det er noget, andre folk laver -- drager, den slags ting.
I should point out at this time -- I'm not a sculptor; I'm a hard-edged model maker. You give me a drawing, you give me a prop to replicate, you give me a crane, scaffolding, parts from "Star Wars" -- especially parts from "Star Wars" -- I can do this stuff all day long. It's exactly how I made my living for 15 years. But you give me something like this -- my friend Mike Murnane sculpted this; it's a maquette for "Star Wars, Episode Two" -- this is not my thing -- this is something other people do -- dragons, soft things.
Men jeg følte, at jeg havde studeret nok billeder af dodo-kranier til rent faktisk at kunne forstå opbygningen og måske genskabe den -- jeg mener, så svært kan det heller ikke være. Så jeg begyndte at kigge på de bedste billeder, jeg kunne finde. Jeg hentede al materialet, og jeg fandt denne smukke genstand. Det er nogen, der sælger dette på eBay; det var en kvindes -- tydeligvis en kvindes hånd, forhåbentligt en kvindes hånd. Ud fra en antagelse af at størrelsen omtrent tilsvarede min kones hånd foretog jeg nogle målinger af hendes tommelfinger og sammenholdt dem til kraniets størrelse. Jeg forstørrede det til den reelle størrelse, og jeg begyndte at bruge dette, sammen med samtlige øvrige referencer, jeg lå inde med, og sammenlignede det som et størrelsesforhold for at gennemskue præcis hvor stort, næbbet burde være, præcis hvor langt, og så videre.
However, I felt like I had looked at enough photos of dodo skulls to actually be able to understand the topology and perhaps replicate it -- I mean, it couldn't be that difficult. So, I started looking at the best photos I could find. I grabbed all the reference, and I found this lovely piece of reference. This is someone selling this on eBay; it was clearly a woman’s hand, hopefully a woman's hand. Assuming it was roughly the size of my wife's hand, I made some measurements of her thumb, and I scaled them out to the size of the skull. I blew it up to the actual size, and I began using that, along with all the other reference that I had, comparing it to it as size reference for figuring out exactly how big the beak should be, exactly how long, etc.
Og efter et par timer nåede jeg frem til det, som var et ganske hæderligt dronte-kranium. Og jeg ville ikke forsætte; jeg -- det svarer til at man kun kan rydde et ekstremt rodet rum op ved at samle én ting op ad gangen; man kan ikke overskue det store billede. Jeg tænkte ikke på et skelet af en dronte; jeg lagde blot mærke til at idet jeg færdiggjorde kraniet, stak ståltråden, som jeg havde brugt for at få det til at hænge sammen, bagud, præcis hvor der burde være en rygrad. Og en af de andre ting, jeg har interesseret mig for over årene, er rygrade og skeletter, hvor jeg har samlet nogle hundrede stykker. Jeg forstod rent faktisk rygsøjlers mekanik godt nok til at kunne efterligne dem. Så stykke for stykke, ryghvirvel efter ryghvirvel, arbejdede jeg mig nedad. Og ved dagens afslutning havde jeg et hæderligt kranium, en brugbar rygrad og halvdelen af et bækken.
And over a few hours, I eventually achieved what was actually a pretty reasonable dodo skull. And I didn't mean to continue, I -- it's kind of like, you know, you can only clean a super messy room by picking up one thing at a time; you can't think about the totality. I wasn't thinking about a dodo skeleton; I just noticed that as I finished this skull, the armature wire that I had been used to holding it up was sticking out of the back just where a spine would be. And one of the other things I'd been interested in and obsessed with over the years is spines and skeletons, having collected a couple of hundred. I actually understood the mechanics of vertebrae enough to kind of start to imitate them. And so button by button, vertebrae by vertebrae, I built my way down. And actually, by the end of the day, I had a reasonable skull, a moderately good vertebrae and half of a pelvis.
Og igen, jeg fortsatte og søgte efter flere fortegnelser, hver eneste stykke information, jeg kunne finde -- tegninger, flotte billeder. Denne fyr -- jeg elsker denne fyr! Han lagde en drontes benknogler i en scanner -- med en lineal. Det er præcis det niveau af præcision, jeg ønskede, og jeg -- hele vejen igennem -- Jeg genskabte hver en knogle og føjede dem til. Og efter omtrent -- jeg vil gætte på seks uger, afsluttede, malede og opstillede jeg mit eget dronte-skelet. I kan se at jeg endda tilføjede en museums-etiket, som inkluderer en kort beskrivelse af dronten. Og TAP Plastics producerede -- selv om jeg ikke fik taget et billede af det -- en museumsmontre til mig. Jeg har ikke plads til den i mit hus, men jeg blev nødt til at afslutte, hvad jeg havde påbegyndt.
And again, I kept on going, looking for more reference, every bit of reference I could find -- drawings, beautiful photos. This guy -- I love this guy! He put a dodo leg bones on a scanner with a ruler. This is the kind of accuracy that I wanted, and I replicated every last bone and put it in. And after about six weeks, I finished, painted, mounted my own dodo skeleton. You can see that I even made a museum label for it that includes a brief history of the dodo. And TAP Plastics made me -- although I didn't photograph it -- a museum vitrine. I don't have the room for this in my house, but I had to finish what I had started.
Og det repræsenterede rent faktisk en stor ændring for mig. Igen, som jeg nævnte, mit liv har handlet om at være fascineret af genstande og historierne bag, og også at skabe dem selv, opnå dem, beundre dem og fordybe mig i dem. Og i denne mappe, "Kreative Projekter", er der læssevis af projekter, som jeg arbejder på i øjeblikket, projekter som jeg allerede har arbejdet på, ting som jeg måske vil arbejde på en dag, og ting som jeg blot vil finde og købe og eje og -- og kigge på og berøre. Men nu var der denne potentielle nye kategori af genstande jeg kunne skulptere som var anderledes, som jeg -- ser I, jeg har min egen R2D2, men det er -- ærligt talt, i forhold til at skulptere, det er let for mig.
And this actually represented kind of a sea change to me. Again, like I said, my life has been about being fascinated by objects and the stories that they tell, and also making them for myself, obtaining them, appreciating them and diving into them. And in this folder, "Creative Projects," there are tons of projects that I'm currently working on, projects that I've already worked on, things that I might want to work on some day, and things that I may just want to find and buy and have and look at and touch. But now there was potentially this new category of things that I could sculpt that was different, that I -- you know, I have my own R2D2, but that's -- honestly, relative to sculpting, to me, that's easy.
Så jeg gik tilbage og kiggede min "Kreative Projekter"-mappe igennem, og jeg faldt over Ridderfalken. Se, det er sjovt for mig: at blive forelsket i en genstand fra en Hammett-roman, for hvis det er sandt, at verden er delt op i to slags personer, Chandler-personer og Hammett-personer, så er jeg absolut en Chandler-person. Men i dette tilfælde handler det ikke om -- det handler ikke om forfatteren, eller bogen eller filmen eller fortællingen, det handler om genstanden i sig selv. Og i dette tilfælde er genstanden -- virker den på en lang række niveauer.
And so I went back and looked through my "Creative Projects" folder, and I happened across the Maltese Falcon. Now, this is funny for me: to fall in love with an object from a Hammett novel, because if it's true that the world is divided into two types of people, Chandler people and Hammett people, I am absolutely a Chandler person. But in this case, it's not about the author, it's not about the book or the movie or the story, it's about the object in and of itself. And in this case, this object is -- plays on a host of levels.
For det første er der genstanden i verdenen. Dette er "Kniphausen-høgen". Det er en ceremoniel karaffel, lavet omkring år 1700 til en svensk greve, og det er højst sandsynligt denne genstand, som Hammett brugte til inspiration for Ridderfalken. Så er der den fiktive fugl, den som Hammett skabte i anledning af bogen. Bygget ud af ord, det er motoren, der driver bogens og også filmens plot, hvor endnu en genstand er skabt: en genstand, som skal repræsentere den ting, Hammett skabte ud af ord, inspireret af Kniphause-høgen, og dette repræsenterer falken i filmen. Og så er der det fjerde niveau, som er en helt nyt genstand i verden: en rekvisit lavet til filmen, repræsentationen af denne ting, bliver, på sine egne vilkår, en helt ny ting, en hel ny genstand til begæring.
First of all, there's the object in the world. This is the "Kniphausen Hawk." It is a ceremonial pouring vessel made around 1700 for a Swedish Count, and it is very likely the object from which Hammett drew his inspiration for the Maltese Falcon. Then there is the fictional bird, the one that Hammett created for the book. Built out of words, it is the engine that drives the plot of his book and also the movie, in which another object is created: a prop that has to represent the thing that Hammett created out of words, inspired by the Kniphausen Hawk, and this represents the falcon in the movie. And then there is this fourth level, which is a whole new object in the world: the prop made for the movie, the representative of the thing, becomes, in its own right, a whole other thing, a whole new object of desire.
Og nu var det på tide at lave noget forskning. Jeg havde rent faktisk lavet nogle undersøgelser et par år i forvejen -- det er derfor, mappen var der. Jeg købte en kopi, en virkelig elendig kopi, af Ridderfalken på eBay, og havde downloadet nok billeder til rent faktisk at have noget fornuftigt materiale. Men jeg opdagede, i mine fortsatte undersøgelser, i at opnå et virkeligt præcist datamateriale, at fuglen var -- en af de oprindelige bly-fugle -- var blevet solgt på Christie's i 1994, så jeg kontaktede en antikvarboghandler, som havde det oprindelige katalog fra Christie's, og i det fandt jeg dette fantastiske billede, som inkluderede et størrelsesforhold. Jeg var i stand til at indscanne billedet, forstørre det til fuld størrelse.
And so now it was time to do some research. I actually had done some research a few years before -- it's why the folder was there. I'd bought a replica, a really crappy replica, of the Maltese Falcon on eBay, and had downloaded enough pictures to actually have some reasonable reference. But I discovered, in researching further, really wanting precise reference, that one of the original lead birds had been sold at Christie's in 1994, and so I contacted an antiquarian bookseller who had the original Christie's catalogue, and in it I found this magnificent picture, which included a size reference. I was able to scan the picture, blow it up to exactly full size.
Jeg fandt andre referencer. Avi [Ara] Chekmayan, en redaktør fra New Jersey, fandt faktisk denne kunstharpiks-Ridderfalk på et loppemarked i 1991, selv om det tog ham fem år at få autentificeret denne fugl til -- til auktionariussernes specifikationer, fordi der var en del kontrovers omkring den. Den var bygget ud af kunstharpiks, hvilket ikke var et typisk byggemateriale til filmrekvisitter på det tidspunkt, filmen blev lavet. Jeg synes, det er sjovt, at det tog et stykke tid at autentificeret den, for jeg kan sammenholde den med denne ting, og jeg kan sige jer -- den er ægte, den er god nok, den er lavet fra præcis den samme støbeform som den her er. Ved den her, fordi auktionen allerede var så kontroversiel, Profiles in History, auktionshuset, der solgte denne -- vidst i 1995 for omtrent 100.000 dollars -- inkluderede de rent faktisk - I kan se her forneden -- ikke blot et front-billede, men også fra siden, bagfra, og fra den anden side.
I found other reference. Avi [Ara] Chekmayan, a New Jersey editor, actually found this resin Maltese Falcon at a flea market in 1991, although it took him five years to authenticate this bird to the auctioneers' specifications, because there was a lot of controversy about it. It was made out of resin, which wasn't a common material for movie props about the time the movie was made. It's funny to me that it took a while to authenticate it, because I can see it compared to this thing, and I can tell you -- it's real, it's the real thing, it's made from the exact same mold that this one is. In this one, because the auction was actually so controversial, Profiles in History, the auction house that sold this -- I think in 1995 for about 100,000 dollars -- they actually included -- you can see here on the bottom -- not just a front elevation, but also a side, rear and other side elevation.
Så nu havde jeg alle de størrelsesforhold, jeg skulle bruge for at genskabe Ridderfalken. Hvad gør man, hvordan begynder man på den slags? Jeg ved det virkelig ikke. Så i lighed med dronte-kraniet forstørrede jeg alle mine referencer op i fuld størrelse, og så begyndte jeg at fjerne det overflødige og brugte disse skabeloner som reference for formen. Så jeg tog polylerret, og jeg samlede en stor klump, og jeg bearbejdede det, indtil jeg fik skabt de rette forhold. Og langsomt, fjer efter fjer, detalje efter detalje, bearbejdede jeg og opnåede -- arbejdende foran fjernsynet -- og polylerret -- her sidder jeg ved siden af min kone -- det er det eneste billede, jeg tog under hele processen. Efterhånden som jeg arbejdede fremad opnåede jeg en meget hæderlig gengivelse af Ridderfalken. Men igen, jeg er ikke skulptør,
So now, I had all the topology I needed to replicate the Maltese Falcon. What do they do, how do you start something like that? I really don't know. So what I did was, again, like I did with the dodo skull, I blew all my reference up to full size, and then I began cutting out the negatives and using those templates as shape references. So I took Sculpey, and I built a big block of it, and I passed it through until, you know, I got the right profiles. And then slowly, feather by feather, detail by detail, I worked out and achieved -- working in front of the television and Super Sculpey -- here's me sitting next to my wife -- it's the only picture I took of the entire process. As I moved through, I achieved a very reasonable facsimile of the Maltese Falcon. But again, I am not a sculptor,
så jeg kender ikke mange af de små tricks, som, altså, Jeg ved ikke hvordan min ven Mike skaber smukke, skinnende overflader med hans polyler, jeg var i hvert fald ikke i stand til det. Så jeg gik ned i min butik og jeg formede det og støbte det i kunstharpiks, fordi i kunstharpikset kunne jeg færdiggøre den glatte glasoverflade. Nu er der mange måder, man kan skabe en pæn, glat overflade. Min favorit er omtrent 70 lag af dette -- mat, sort grunder. Jeg sprayer det på over tre eller fire dage, det drypper som ind i helvede, men det giver mig en virkelig pæn blid sandslebet overflade og jeg kan få den glat som glas. Ah, og afslutter med meget fin ståluld. Se, det gode ved at være nået hertil var at fordi de i filmen, da de endelig bragte fuglen frem i slutningen, og de placerede den på bordet, drejede de den rent faktisk rundt. Så jeg var faktisk i stand til at tage billeder og gå enkelte billeder frem for at være sikker. Og jeg følger alle lysreflektionerne og sikrer mig, at når jeg holder lyset i samme position, at jeg får den samme reflektion tilbage -- det er denne detaljegrad, jeg går efter. Jeg endte med dette: min Ridderfalk. Og den er smuk. Og jeg kan fastslå med sikkerhed at på det tidspunkt, hvor jeg fuldførte den, at alle kopier derude -- og der er et par stykker -- så er denne den mest præcise genskabelse af den oprindelige Ridderfalk som nogen har skulpteret. Se, jeg bør nævne at den oprindelige
and so I don't know a lot of the tricks, like, I don't know how my friend Mike gets beautiful, shiny surfaces with his Sculpey; I certainly wasn't able to get it. So, I went down to my shop, and I molded it and I cast it in resin, because in the resin, then, I could absolutely get the glass smooth finished. Now there's a lot of ways to fill and get yourself a nice smooth finish. My preference is about 70 coats of this -- matte black auto primer. I spray it on for about three or four days, it drips to hell, but it allows me a really, really nice gentle sanding surface and I can get it glass-smooth. Oh, finishing up with triple-zero steel wool. Now, the great thing about getting it to this point was that because in the movie, when they finally bring out the bird at the end, and they place it on the table, they actually spin it. So I was able to actually screen-shot and freeze-frame to make sure. And I'm following all the light kicks on this thing and making sure that as I'm holding the light in the same position, I'm getting the same type of reflection on it -- that's the level of detail I'm going into this thing. I ended up with this: my Maltese Falcon. And it's beautiful. And I can state with authority at this point in time, when I'd finished it, of all of the replicas out there -- and there is a few -- this is by far the most accurate representation of the original Maltese Falcon than anyone has sculpted. Now the original one, I should tell you,
er skulpteret af en gut ved navn Fred Sexton. Og her -- bliver det mærkeligt. Fred Sexton var ven med ham her, George Hodel. Skræmmende fyr -- mange mener, at han er Elizabeth Shorts morder. Ser I, James Ellroy tror at Fred Sexton, skulptøren af Ridderfalken, slog James Ellroys mor ihjel. Jeg vil gerne tage den et skridt videre. I 1974, under produktionen af en mærkelig komedie-fortsættelse til "Ridderfalken", ved navn "The Black Bird", med George Segal, havde Los Angeles Country Museum of Art en gips-originaludgave af Ridderfalken -- en af de oprindelige seks gipsudgaver, tror jeg, lavet til filmen -- som blev stjålet fra museet. En del folk mente at det var et PR-stunt for filmen. John's Grill, som rent faktisk ses kortvarigt i "Ridderfalken", er stadigvæk et fungerende spisested, som blandt de faste gæster blandt andet talte Elisha Cook, som spiller Wilmer Cook i filmen, og han gav dem en af hans oprindelige gipsudgaver af Ridderfalken. Og de havde den i deres skab i omtrent 15 år, indtil den blev stjålet i januar 2007. Det lader til at den begærede genstand kun træder frem ved at forsvinde gentagende gange.
is sculpted by a guy named Fred Sexton. This is where it gets weird. Fred Sexton was a friend of this guy, George Hodel. Terrifying guy -- agreed by many to be the killer of the Black Dahlia. Now, James Ellroy believes that Fred Sexton, the sculptor of the Maltese Falcon, killed James Elroy's mother. I'll go you one stranger than that: In 1974, during the production of a weird comedy sequel to "The Maltese Falcon," called "The Black Bird," starring George Segal, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had a plaster original of the Maltese Falcon -- one of the original six plasters, I think, made for the movie -- stolen out of the museum. A lot of people thought it was a publicity stunt for the movie. John's Grill, which actually is seen briefly in "The Maltese Falcon," is still a viable San Francisco eatery, counted amongst its regular customers Elisha Cook, who played Wilmer Cook in the movie, and he gave them one of his original plasters of the Maltese Falcon. And they had it in their cabinet for about 15 years, until it got stolen in January of 2007. It would seem that the object of desire only comes into its own by disappearing repeatedly.
Så her havde jeg Falken, og den var smuk. Den så virkelig godt ud, den -- lyset spillede meget fint, det var bedre end noget andet, jeg kunne opnå eller hente ude i resten af verden. Men der var et problem. Og problemet var dette: Jeg ville opnå genstandens helhed Jeg ville have genstandens fulde vægt. Denne ting var lavet af kunstharpiks og var for let. Der er denne gruppe online, som jeg besøger. Det er en gruppe af rekvisit-galninge ligesom mig ved navn The Replica Props Forum, og det er folk, som handler, bygger og udveksler informationer om filmrekvisitter. Og det viste sig at en af fyrene dér, en af mine venner, som jeg faktisk aldrig har mødt, men blev ven med igennem nogle handler, var leder i et lokalt støberi. Han tog min grundplan for Falken, han støbte den rent faktisk i bronze, med cire perdue-metoden, og dette er bronzeudgaven, jeg fik tilbage. Og dette er, efter lidt radering, udgaven, som jeg endte med.
So here I had this Falcon, and it was lovely. It looked really great, the light worked on it really well, it was better than anything that I could achieve or obtain out in the world. But there was a problem. And the problem was that: I wanted the entirety of the object, I wanted the weight behind the object. This thing was made of resin and it was too light. There's this group online that I frequent. It's a group of prop crazies just like me called the Replica Props Forum, and it's people who trade, make and travel in information about movie props. And it turned out that one of the guys there, a friend of mine that I never actually met, but befriended through some prop deals, was the manager of a local foundry. He took my master Falcon pattern, he actually did lost wax casting in bronze for me, and this is the bronze I got back. And this is, after some acid etching, the one that I ended up with.
Og denne ting -- den tilfredsstiller mig højt. Her vil jeg -- jeg vil fremvise den senere i aften, og I kan ... Jeg ønsker at I samler den op og mærker den. I vil gerne vide -- hvor besat, jeg er. Projektet er kun til for min egen skyld, og alligevel gik jeg så langt, at jeg på eBay købte en kinesisk San Francisco-baseret avis fra 1941, for at fuglen kunne blive foldet præcist ind ... som den er i filmen. (Latter) Ja, jeg ved det godt! (Latter) (Klapsalver) Her kan I se, at den vejer 27½ pund. Det er halvdelen af min hund Huxleys vægt.
And this thing, it's deeply, deeply satisfying to me. Here, I'm going to put it out there, later on tonight, and I want you to pick it up and handle it. You want to know how obsessed I am. This project's only for me, and yet I went so far as to buy on eBay a 1941 Chinese San Francisco-based newspaper, in order so that the bird could properly be wrapped ... like it is in the movie. (Laughter) Yeah, I know! (Laughter) (Applause) There you can see, it's weighing in at 27 and a half pounds. That's half the weight of my dog, Huxley.
Men der er et problem. Se, her er den seneste udvikling af Falke. Længst til venstre er det stykke makværk - en kopi, jeg købte på eBay. Her er min beskadigede polyler-Falk, idet jeg skulle have den ud af støbeformen igen. Her er min første støbning, her er min original og her er min bronzeudgave. Der sker noget, når man former og støber ting, hvilket er, at hver gang, man smider den i silikone og støber den i kunstharpiks, mister man lidt af rumfanget, man mister lidt af størrelsen. Og da jeg sammenholdt min bronzeudgave med polyler-udgaven, var den trekvart tomme mindre. Ja, virkelig, det var nærmest som -- hvorfor glemte jeg dette? Hvorfor lavede jeg den ikke større fra begyndelsen? Så hvad skal jeg gøre? Jeg skønner, at jeg har to muligheder. Et, jeg kan affyre en laser mod den, hvilket jeg allerede har gjort, for at lave en 3D-scanning - der er et 3D-scan af denne Falk. Jeg havde beregnet den præcise mængde af svind, jeg opnåede ved at gå fra en voksoriginal til en bronzeoriginal og har forstørret den nok til at lave et 3D-original-litografi af denne, som jeg vil polere og så sende til støbebyggeren og så vil jeg skabe den i bronze. Eller --
But there's a problem. Now, here's the most recent progression of Falcons. On the far left is a piece of crap -- a replica I bought on eBay. There's my somewhat ruined Sculpey Falcon, because I had to get it back out of the mold. There's my first casting, there's my master and there's my bronze. There's a thing that happens when you mold and cast things, which is that every time you throw it into silicone and cast it in resin, you lose a little bit of volume, you lose a little bit of size. And when I held my bronze one up against my Sculpey one, it was shorter by three-quarters of an inch. Yeah, no, really, this was like aah -- why didn't I remember this? Why didn't I start and make it bigger? So what do I do? I figure I have two options. One, I can fire a freaking laser at it, which I have already done, to do a 3D scan -- there's a 3D scan of this Falcon. I had figured out the exact amount of shrinkage I achieved going from a wax master to a bronze master and blown this up big enough to make a 3D lithography master of this, which I will polish, then I will send to the mold maker and then I will have it done in bronze. Or:
der er flere personer, der ejer originaludgaver, og jeg har forsøgt at kontakte dem og få fat på dem, i håbet om at de vil lade mig bruge et par minutter i tilstedeværelsen af en af de rigtige fugle, måske for at tage et billede, eller ligefrem at trække den håndholdte laserscanner som jeg tilfældigvis ejer, som kan være i en æske cornflakes, og måske endog, uden at røre deres fugl, på æresord, kunne jeg en perfekt 3D-scanning. Og jeg vil rent faktisk underskrive dokumenter hvor jeg erklærer, at jeg aldrig vil lade nogen andre, med undtagelse af mig selv på mit arbejde, have adgang til den. Jeg vil give dem en udgave, hvis de ønsker det. Og måske vil jeg så nå til slutningen af denne øvelse. Men i virkeligheden, hvis vi skal se sandheden i øjnene, så må jeg indrømme, at det at nå slutningen af øvelsen aldrig var formålet med øvelsen i første omgang, vel? Mange tak.
There are several people who own originals, and I have been attempting to contact them and reach them, hoping that they will let me spend a few minutes in the presence of one of the real birds, maybe to take a picture, or even to pull out the hand-held laser scanner that I happen to own that fits inside a cereal box, and could maybe, without even touching their bird, I swear, get a perfect 3D scan. And I'm even willing to sign pages saying that I'll never let anyone else have it, except for me in my office, I promise. I'll give them one if they want it. And then, maybe, then I'll achieve the end of this exercise. But really, if we're all going to be honest with ourselves, I have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with, was it. Thank you.