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INDEXという雑誌に掲載されたインタビューがあったので
後日、改行など進めつつ、その表紙など追って紹介します。
Here's an interview I did with SYD MEAD from INDEX magazine from 2004 : Syd Mead, 2004 WITH SHAWN MORTENSEN Self-proclaimed visual futurist Syd Mead shaped the retro-tech worlds of Blade Runner, Aliens, and Tron, defining how movie-makers of today see the future. [Photographer Shawn Mortensen met the reclusive designer at his sunny house-cum-design-studio in Pasadena, California.]
SHAWN: Before you began working in film, you were a well-established industrial designer. What inspired you to branch out into Hollywood?
SYD: In the \'60s, I worked on a series of promotional books for U.S. Steel. I designed the typography, the layout, and did all the illustrations ・I had complete creative freedom.
SHAWN: Those books were very influential within the design community.
SYD: Yes. John Dykstra, who did the special effects for Star Wars, got hold of one of them when he was studying industrial design at Long Beach State. Ten years later, in 1978, his then-partner Bob Shepard invited me to lunch, and asked me to work on a science fiction film ・Star Trek. Sometimes you get these incidental links from one thing to the next ・I think that\'s just how life works. SHAWN: You\'re the only person I know who calls himself a \"visual futurist.\"
SYD: I invented the title while I was on the phone with my entertainment attorney. We were trying to figure out what to say for my credit at the end of Blade Runner, since I wasn\'t part of the formal Hollywood system. I was thrilled because they ended up giving me a full-screen credit, rather than just being part of the roll at the end. That was pretty unusual as it was only the second film I\'d worked on from inception to release. SHAWN: Blade Runner imagines LA in 2019. You created a throbbing, congested, post-modern cityscape of chaotic street markets and dilapidated buildings. It reminds me of a hi-tech Hong Kong.
SYD: The whole idea in pre-production was to modify existing designs for machines and buildings by adding new parts and devices. We called that look \"retro deco.\" I used developing countries, like Cuba and the Philippines, as examples. Typically, industrial production is way behind in those countries ・everyone in Cuba drives around in beat-up old cars from the \'50s and \'60s. The film was made on the tightest of budgets, so the production designer Larry Paul went around scavenging for old neon signs and junk.
SHAWN: Where did you come in? SYD: I drew concept sketches for the street sets. I wanted to make the urban fa?ades very dense to create a really compacted feeling. Essentially, we elaborately dressed the existing building fa?ades on the Warner Brothers back lot. SHAWN: How much freedom did you have?
SYD: I worked closely with Larry and the art director, Dave Snyder. And once director Ridley Scott found out that I could draw well and envision the machines for the movie because of my industrial design background, I was pretty much left alone. Every now and then, Ridley would come in with these nice little ink drawings that he\'d done. We called them Ridleygrams. I still have several.
SHAWN: How did you get into the visual arts?
SYD: I started to draw very early on. I still have drawings of cars with drivers and passengers that I did when I was three years old. I\'ve always thought about objects in the context of their actual use. I started thinking about why things look the way they do when I was quite young. By the time I got to high school, I could draw the human figure very well. After I graduated, my first job was coloring animation cells. When my boss discovered I could imagine and paint non-existent situations, I was asked to illustrate the animation backgrounds.
SHAWN: In 1959 you moved to Detroit to work for Ford Motors, where you designed futuristic show vehicles and inspirational artwork for the creative department. I think your early automotive designs influenced what we see on the market today.
SYD: It\'s hard to say what influence I had. I know I was designing cars in the early \'60s that we didn\'t have the technology to produce until twelve or thirteen years ago. Metal bodies and glass sheets are glued together nowadays, but that simply wasn\'t possible back then ・everything was riveted or welded. I just read an article in Popular Science outlining how the automobile is going to change ・I was rendering most of those ideas in great detail forty years ago.
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INTERVIEWs
