Magliochetti knew he would not only have to learn to use a computer,
but also figure out how to integrate his experience into this new technol-
ogy. A break in his learning curve came through Waterworld.
Similar to what had hap-
pened when Terminator 2
had gone into production,
Waterworld employed anyone
who had even rudimentary
knowledge of effects, training
them to complete the project.
Working on Waterworld,
Magliochetti mastered comput-
ers and discovered the poten-
tial they had for creating
visual effects.
After Waterworld wrapped,
he went to work for an optical
facility whose primary services
were titles and simple visual
effects. When he landed the job of visual effects supervisor on Jason Goes
to Hell: The Final Friday, Magliochetti struck a deal wherein the facility
would provide support, in terms of equipment and personnel to put the
effects together, and he would create all the animation. "I did every frame
of animation for Jason Goes to Hell myself. I had a crew of three people:
one person running an optical printer; one person running my animation
camera to shoot my artwork, because it was a union shop; and one
person to transcribe my notes into optical printer terms, so they could be
composited on the film properly."
Through a connection made in a film chat room, Magliochetti discov-
ered that Columbia College, where he first went to film school, had a
support group in Los Angeles. Serendipitously, the association was
having a get-together the following week, very close to where he lived.
Magliochetti was able to reconnect with people from his film classes
20 years earlier, one of them being a writer/director who was putting
together a remake of the 70s cult film Vanishing Point, for Fox Television.
"He asked me what was possible with visual effects and computer graph-
ics. At this point I had a 486 computer with a whopping 16 megs of RAM
that I purchased for the very good price of $5,000! I wanted to get into
computer graphics, but RAM was hideously expensive. With 16 megs, I
was limited in what I could do."
Hired as the effects supervisor for Vanishing Point, Magliochetti
planned to farm out the more complicated effects to shops around town,
"What has helped
me be successful is
having a thorough back-
ground and training in
filmmaking. I'm not
a computer person--I learned film first.
I have held down almost every conceivable
job possible on a film set, at one time: from
cameraman, to running sound, to being
a production manager. I know what every-
one's job is and how those jobs overlap.
That enables me to give more to the
production."--Al Magliochetti
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