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.
Pred približno štirimi leti je revija New Yorker objavila članek o najdišču kosti ptiča doda v kotanji na otoku Mauritius. Otok Mauritius je majhen otok pri vzhodni obali Madagaskarja v Indijskem oceanu. Na njem so doda odkrili in iztrebili v le 150 letih. Vsi so bili popolnoma navdušeni nad to arheološko najdbo, saj je pomenila, da bo mogoče končno mogoče sestaviti okostje iz enega samega doda.
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.
Veste, muzeji po celem svetu sicer imajo okostja dodov v svoji zbirki, vendar -- niti sam Naravoslovni muzej na otoku Mauritiusu -- nima okostja, ki bi bilo narejeno iz kosti enega samega doda. No, to ni popolnoma res. Dejstvo je, da je Britanski muzej sicer imel popolni primerek doda v svoji zbirki vse do 18. stoletja. Primerek je bil pravzaprav mumificiran, s kožo in vsem -- vendar v vnemi varčevanja s prostorom so mu dejansko odrezali glavo in noge ostalo pa zažgali v kresu. Če danes obiščete njihovo spletno stran, imajo ta dva dela na seznamu s pripisom, da so ostalo izgubili v požaru.
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)
Rahlo oddaljeno od resnice. Kakorkoli. Na naslovnici tega članka je bila fotografija, in jaz sem eden od tistih, ki menijo, da je bila Tina Brown odlična pri izbiri fotografij za New Yorker, saj je ta fotografija popolnoma pretresla moj svet. Postal sem obseden s tem predmetom -- a ne le s čudovito fotografijo samo in njenimi barvami, majhno globinsko ostrino, vsemi detajli, žico, ki se vidi tam pri kljunu, in ki jo je konservator uporabil za sestavo celotnega okostja, za tem je cela zgodba. In sem si mislil, ali ne bi bilo super, če bi imel svoje lastno dodovo okostje? (smeh)
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.
In tako -- na tej točki želim poudariti, da sem celotno svoje življenje obseden s predmeti in zgodbami, ki jih govorijo, in to je bila ravno najnovejša. In tako sem začel iskati -- če kdo slučajno prodaja komplet, neke vrste model, ki bi ga lahko dobil, in sem našel ogromno materiala, ogromno prelepih slik -- a brez sreče - ostal sem brez okostja. A škoda je bila vseeno narejena. Nekaj sto fotografij okostij dodov sem shranil v svojo mapo imenovano "Ustvarjalni projekti". To je odlagališče za moje možgane o vsem, kar bi me utegnilo zanimati. Če le imam možnost povezave na internet, prihaja v to mapo nenehno nov in nov material, vse od čudovitih prstanov do slik pilotske kabine. Denimo ključ, ki ga je markiz de Lafayette poslal Georgu Washingtonu za proslavitev zavzetja Bastilje. Ruski ključ za nuklearno izstrelitev raket. Tistega na vrhu sem našel na eBay-u, tistega na dnu pa naredil sam zase, saj si nisem mogel privoščiti tistega z eBay-a. Kostumi iz Vojne zvezd. Zemljevidi Srednjega sveta iz Gospodarja prstanov -- tega sem narisal sam. Tam je mapa z dodovimi okostji. Celotna mapa ima 17.000 slik -- preko 20 gigabajtov podatkov -- in še vedno neprestano raste. In nekega dne, morda nekaj tednov pozneje, mogoče eno leto kasneje, sem bil v umetniški trgovini s svojimi otroci in sem kupoval nekaj orodij za glino -- nameravali smo imeti rokodelski dan. Kupil sem nekaj gline, žic in raznih materialov. In ko sem gledal to glino, sem si mislil, mogoče, ja, mogoče pa bi lahko naredil svojo lastno dodovo lobanjo.
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.
Tukaj moram poudariti -- jaz nisem kipar. Sem čisti izdelovalec modelov. Dajte mi risbo, predmet iz filma, da naredim kopijo, dajte mi žerjav, ogrodje, dele iz Vojne zvezd -- še posebej dele iz Vojne zvezd -- te stvari lahko ustvarjam cele dneve. Prav s tem sem si zadnjih 15 let služil kruh. Ampak, če dobim v roke nekaj takšnega -- moj prijatelj Mike Murnane je skiparil tole; to je maketa za Vojno zvezd, Epizodo 2 -- to ni stvar zame, jaz -- to je nekaj, kar počnejo drugi ljudje -- zmaji, mehke skulpture.
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.
Vendar, tokrat sem imel občutek, da sem videl že dovolj slik dodovih lobanj, da bi bil dejansko sposoben razumeti topologijo doda in jo morda poustvariti -- Mislim, saj ne more biti tako težko. Tako sem začel gledati najboljše fotografije, ki sem jih našel. Zagrabil sem vse vire in vmes našel tale prelep kos za primerjavo. To je slika nekoga, ki to prodaja na eBay-u; bila je ženska -- očitno ženska roka, upam, da je to ženska roka. Predvidevajoč, da je približno enako velika kot roka moje žene, sem naredil nekaj meritev njenega palca in jih primerjal z velikostjo lobanje. Sliko sem povečal na dejansko velikost in jo začel uporabljati skupaj z ostalim nabranim materialom kot referenco za velikost, da bi ugotovil, kako velik mora biti kljun, ugotovil njegovo točno dolžino itd.
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.
In po nekaj urah dela sem sčasoma prišel do precej sprejemljive dodove lobanje. In nisem nameraval nadaljevati -- to je nekako tako, veste, zelo razmetano sobo lahko pospravite le s pobiranjem vsakega koščka posebej; ne morete razmišljati o celoti. Nisem razmišljal o dodovem okostju; opazil sem le, da, ko sem končal lobanjo, je žica, ki sem jo uporabil za držanje lobanje na mestu, štrlela iz zadnje strani, ravno tam, kjer bi se nahajala hrbtenica. In ravno ena izmed stvari, s katerimi sem bil obseden v zadnjih letih, so hrbtenice in okostja, katerih sem zbral nekaj sto. Dejansko sem mehaniko vretenc razumel dovolj, da bi jo lahko posnemal. In tako sem gumb za gumbom, vretence za vretencem, gradil svojo pot navzdol. Proti koncu dneva sem tako imel sprejemljivo lobanjo, še kar dobra vretenca in polovico medenice.
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.
In spet sem še naprej iskal referenčni material, karkoli uporabnega -- risbe, lepe fotografije. Tale človek -- obožujem ga! Skeniral je dodove nožne kosti -- z ravnilom. Prav takšno natančnost sem hotel in tako sem čisto vsako kost repliciral in jo vstavil v okostje. Po približno -- rekel bi, da šestih tednih, sem dokončal, pobarval in postavil svoje lastno dodovo okostje. Lahko vidite, da sem zanj ustvaril celo muzejsko oznako, ki vsebuje kratko zgodovino doda. In TAP Plastics so mi naredili -- čeprav je nisem fotografiral -- muzejsko vitrino. Za ta izdelek v svoji hiši nimam prostora, a vseeno sem moral dokončati, kar sem začel.
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.
In to je zame pravzaprav predstavljalo kar veliko spremembo. Kot sem že rekel, moje življenje je polno očaranosti nad predmeti in njihovimi zgodbami in tudi izdelovanja njih zase, pridobivanja njih, cenjenja njih in poglabljanja vanje. In v tej mapi "Ustvarjalni projekti" je na tone projektov, s katerimi se trenutno ukvarjam, s katerimi sem se že ukvarjal in s katerimi se morda še bom ukvarjal, ali pa stvari, ki bi jih rad samo našel in jih kupil, jih opazoval in se jih dotikal. A sedaj je bila tu potencialno ta nova kategorija stvari, ki bi jih lahko kiparil, ki so bile drugačne, ki bi jih -- veste, imam svojega R2D2 robota, ampak to je -- iskreno povedano, v primerjavi s kiparjenjem je zame to lahko.
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.
Tako sem šel nazaj skozi mapo "Ustvarjalni projekti", in tam sem opazil malteškega sokola. No, to je kar smešno zame: da se zaljubim v predmet iz Hammettovega romana, ker, če je res, da se svet deli na dve vrsti ljudi, tiste za Chandlerja in tiste za Hammetta, sem brez dvoma za Chandlerja. Vendar v tem primeru ne gre -- ne gre za avtorja, ne za knjigo ali za film ali zgodbo, ampak za predmet sam. In v tem primeru je predmet prisoten na več nivojih.
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.
Kot prvo - obstaja predmet v svetu. To je "Kniphausenov sokol." Je obredna posoda za nalivanje, narejena okoli leta 1700 za švedskega grofa, in je zelo verjetno predmet, iz katerega je Hammett dobil navdih za Malteškega sokola. Nato imamo izmišljeno ptico, ki jo je Hammett ustvaril za knjigo. Ustvarjena iz besed poganja celotno zgodbo njegove knjige in tudi filma, za katerega je ustvarjen še en predmet: rekvizit, ki je predstavljal Hammettovo izmišljeno ptico, navdihnjen s Kniphausenovim sokolom in ta predstavlja sokola v filmu. Potem pa imamo še četrti nivo, ki je popolnoma nov predmet v svetu: rekvizit narejen za film, ki predstavlja sokola, postane sam po sebi, čisto nova stvar, čisto nov predmet poželenja.
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.
Tako je sedaj bil čas za nekaj raziskovanja. Pravzaprav sem nekaj raziskoval že pred nekaj leti -- zato je bila mapa tam. Kupil sem repliko, izjemno slabo repliko, malteškega sokola na eBay-u in si ogledal že dovolj slik, da sem dejansko imel nekaj primernih referenc. A sem pri nadaljnjem raziskovanju ugotovil, ker sem želel res natančno referenco, da je ptica bila -- ena izmed originalnih svinčenih ptic je bila prodana leta 1994 na dražbi, zato sem kontaktiral antikvariat, ki je imel originalni katalog z dražbe, in v njem našel to veličastno sliko, ki je imela tudi podatek o velikosti. Omogočili so mi, da sem sliko skeniral in jo povečal na dejansko velikost.
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.
Našel sem tudi druge reference. Avi Chekmayan, urednik iz New Jerseyja, je našel tale primerek malteškega sokola iz smole na bolšjem trgu leta 1991, čeprav mu je vzelo 5 let, da je preveril njegovo pristnost po specifikacijah dražbene hiše, saj je bilo okoli njega veliko kontroverznosti. Narejen je bil iz smole, kar ni bil običajen material za rekvizite v filmih v tistem času. Hecno se mi zdi, da je bilo potrebnih 5 let za overitev, ker ga jaz lahko vidim v primerjavi s tem, in lahko vam rečem -- pravi je, originalen, narejen je iz popolnoma enakega modela kot ta. Pri tem, ker je bila dražba tako kontroverzna, je dražbena hiša Profiles in History, ki ga je prodala -- mislim, da leta 1995 za okoli 100.000 dolarjev -- dejansko vključila -- kot lahko vidite tu na dnu -- ne le pogled od spredaj, ampak tudi s strani, od zadaj in z druge strani.
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,
Sedaj sem imel vso potrebno topologijo, da bi repliciral malteškega sokola. Ampak, kako bi začel, kako se to sploh naredi? Res ne vem. Torej, ponovno sem, tako kot pri dodovi lobanji, začel s povečavo materiala na naravno velikost, nato pa sem začel izrezovati negative in te predloge uporabljati kot reference za obliko. Tako sem vzel v roke glino, iz nje naredil veliko klado in jo preoblikoval, dokler nisem dobil pravih oblik. Nato pa počasi, pero za peresom, detajl za detajlom, sem ustvaril -- med delom pred televizijo -- in tista glina -- tukaj sedim zraven svoje žene -- to je edina slika, ki sem jo posnel med celotnim procesom. Ko sem se prebijal skozi, sem ustvaril precej sprejemljivo kopijo malteškega sokola. Ampak spet, jaz nisem kipar
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,
in zato tudi ne vem mnogo kiparskih trikov kot, veste, ne vem, kako moj prijatelj Mike ustvari tako lepe, bleščeče glinene površine; meni to zagotovo ni uspelo. In sem šel v svojo delavnico, ustvaril model kipca in ga oblikoval v smoli, saj sem zaradi nje lahko končno dobil gladko končno površino. Seveda obstaja mnogo načinov modeliranja, da dobite lep gladek izdelek. Moja izbira je približno 70 nanosov tega -- matirane črne avtomobilske barve. Nanašam jo približno 3 ali 4 dni, sicer ogromno kaplja, a mi omogoča zelo, zelo nežno površino za brušenje, ki jo lahko naredim gladko kot steklo. In še dokončam z nekaj posebej fine jeklene volne. Kar je bilo v izjemno pomoč, da sem prišel do sem, je prizor proti koncu filma, ko sokola končno prinesejo na plano, ga postavijo na mizo in ga celo zavrtijo. Tako sem lahko dejansko vsako sličico filma posebej preverjal, da bi se prepričal. In sledim vsem svetlobnim odbojem na tej reči, da ob držanju svetlobe v enakem položaju, dobim enako vrsto odseva na njej -- v tako natančnost sem se spustil. Na koncu sem imel to: moj malteški sokol. In res je lep. Lahko rečem z avtoriteto, da je zdaj, ko sem kipec končal, izmed vseh primerkov, ki obstajajo -- in nekaj jih je -- to brez dvoma najbolj natančna reprodukcija originalnega malteškega sokola, kar jih je kdo ustvaril. No, originalni primerek
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.
pa je ustvaril mož z imenom Fred Sexton. Tukaj -- stvar postane čudaška. Fred Sexton je prijatelj tega človeka, Georga Hodela. Strašljiv tip -- mnogi se strinjajo, da je morilec Črne dalije. No, James Ellroy verjame, da je Fred Sexton, kipar malteškega sokola, ubil mater Jamesa Ellroya. Stvar postane še bolj čudaška. Leta 1974, med snemanjem čudnega komičnega nadaljevanja Malteškega sokola, imenovanega "Črna ptica", z Georgeom Segalom v glavni vlogi, so Los Angeleškem muzeju umetnosti originalni malteški sokol iz mavca -- enega izmed šestih originalnih, se mi zdi, narejenih za film -- ukradli iz muzeja. Mnogi so mislili, da je le reklama za prihajajoči film. John's Grill, ki se pravzaprav za trenutek vidi v Malteškem sokolu, je še vedno dejavna gostilna v San Franciscu, med njenimi rednimi gosti pa je recimo Elisha Cook, ki je igral Wilmerja Cooka v filmu, in jim je dal enega od originalnih primerkov malteškega sokola. In so ga imeli v svoji omari približno 15 let, dokler tudi ta ni bil ukraden januarja leta 2007. Zdi se, da predmet poželenja postane to šele, ko večkrat zaporedoma izgine.
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.
Tu sem torej imel svojega sokola in bil je prelep. Izgledal je res super, svetloba je na njega delovala odlično, bil je boljši kot karkoli, kar bi lahko naredil ali pridobil. A bil je težava. In sicer, hotel sem celoto tega predmeta, hotel sem težo predmeta. Ta stvar je bila iz smole in prelahka. Na internetu je ena skupina, ki jo pogosto obiščem. To je skupina norcev na rekvizite, kot sem jaz, imenovana Forum replik rekvizitov, in to so ljudje ki trgujejo, izdelujejo, potujejo in pridobivajo informacije o takih rekvizitih. In izkazalo se je, da je eden izmed ljudi v tej skupini, moj prijatelj, ki ga sploh nikoli nisem srečal, a sva se spoznala skozi posle z rekviziti, hkrati poslovodja v lokalni livarni. Vzel je model mojega sokola, s tehniko izgubljenega voska zame naredil odlitek iz brona in to je bron, ki sem ga dobil nazaj. In tole je, po nekaj jedkanja, končni izdelek, ki mi je ostal.
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.
In ta stvar -- me globoko, globoko zadovoljuje. Kar tukaj ga bom postavil, da boste lahko kasneje nocoj... Želim, da ga primete in si ga ogledate. Želite vedeti -- kako obseden sem. Ta projekt je samo zame, a sem vseeno šel tako daleč, da sem na eBay-u kupil kitajski časopis iz San Francisca iz leta 1941, da bi lahko svojega sokola zavil točno tako... kot v filmu. (smeh) Ja, saj vem! (smeh) (aplavz) Tukaj lahko vidite, da tehta okoli 12 kilogramov in pol. To je polovica teže mojega psa, Huxleya.
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:
Ampak tu je težava. Tukaj je najnovejši razvoj sokolov. Na skrajni levi je drek -- replika, ki sem jo kupil na eBay-u. Tam je moj nekoliko uničen glineni sokol, saj sem ga moral dobiti nazaj ven iz modela. Tukaj je moje prvi odlitek, tam je moj glavni izdelek in tukaj je moj bronasti sokol. Pri vlivanju in modeliranju se nekaj zgodi, in sicer, vsakič ko ga vržeš v silikon in ga odliješ v smoli, izgubiš nekaj volumna in velikosti. In ko sem svojega bronastega sokola držal pri svojem glinenem, je bil krajši za približno 2 centimetra. Ja. Ne, res, bil sem šokiran -- zakaj se nisem na to spomnil? Zakaj nisem že začel z večjim modelom? Torej, kaj naj naredim? Vidim dve možnosti. Prva, lahko kar ustrelim laser proti sokolu, kar sem pravzaprav že naredil, da bi ustvaril 3D načrt -- tukaj je 3D slika tega sokola. Ugotovil sem natančno, koliko prostornine sem izgubil s prehodom od voščenega do bronastega, in načrt povečal dovolj, da bi ustvaril 3D litografijo sokola, ki ga bom spoliral, nato poslal izdelovalcu kalupov, da ga naredi še v bronu. Ali pa --
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.
obstajajo še ljudje, ki imajo originalne sokole, in sem poskušal priti v stik z njimi, upajoč, da mi bodo pustili nekaj minut v prisotnosti enega izmed originalov, da morda naredim fotografijo ali pa, da celo privlečem ročni laserski čitalnik, ki ga slučajno imam in se prilega škatli s kosmiči in bi morda, ne da bi se ptice dotaknil, prisežem, dobil perfektno 3D sliko. Pripravljen sem celo podpisovati dokumente, da ne bom nikoli nikomur dovolil dostop do nje, razen mene v moji pisarni, obljubim. Dal jim bom eno, če želijo. I nato, morda, bom dosegel konec te vaje. Ampak, če smo iskreni, moram priznati, da priti do cilja vaje, že od začetka sploh ni bil namen, kajne? Hvala.