Early experimental films •
Over/Done (1970) 24 minutes •
If They Only Knew (1969) 20 minutes •
Navajo Mountain (1972) 36 minutes •
The Words (1973) 26 minutes
Early professional career In 1973, Blalack worked night shifts at Crest Film Labs (later renamed
Crest Digital), operating an
optical printer making 35mm to 16mm TV negatives. For
Hearts And Minds (1974), Blalack animated director
Peter Davis´s smuggled photographs of
Con Son Island Tiger Cage prisoners. The film went on to receive an Academy Award recipient for Best Documentary Feature. Blalack created a first-person subjective
optical effects sequence designed to put the audience in the driver's seat of a Formula One race car for the film
One By One (1975). Blalack formed Praxis Film Works, Inc. during his work on
One by One. After
One By One, Blalack continued to produce optical effects for low-budget Hollywood movies and
optical composites for high-end TV commercials. In 1975, Blalack worked with the two leading visual effects innovators,
Robert Abel and
Douglas Trumbull. Trumbull commissioned Blalack to make a 16mm promo showcasing the creativity of Trumbull's visual effects studio, Future General. While making this documentary, Blalack met Trumbull's cameraman
John Dykstra.
Star Wars (1975-77) In June 1975,
George Lucas chose
John Dykstra to supervise the visual effects for
Star Wars. Dykstra asked Blalack to help build the Star Wars
VistaVision Visual Effects facility. As one of the founders of
Industrial Light & Magic, Blalack's responsibility was to create crucial ILM VistaVision Photographic Optical Composite and
Rotoscope Animation production pipelines that would mass-produce a record 365 VistaVision-to-35mm
Panavision anamorphic visual effects composites. No modern VistaVision photographic blue-screen pipeline existed when
ILM was founded. The modest budget of
Star Wars dictated that Blalack gather obsolete VistaVision optical composite equipment, modernize and debug each mechanical and optical component, devise methods to mass-produce 365 Visual Effects composites, design the Rotoscope Department, and then hire and train the Optical Composite and Rotoscope crew. Blalack supervised the design and fabrication of the world's first and only aerial image
diffraction-limited VistaVision-to-35mm optical composite system. The
Star Wars 365 VistaVision Visual Effects shots contained 1,250 original VistaVision color negative elements, from which more than 10,000
RGB black and white color Separations, mattes, and other intermediate VistaVision composite elements were generated. All of these VistaVision Visual Effects composite elements were photographed and composited during the final seven months of the
Star Wars production. At the
Star Wars 40th anniversary, Blalack spoke to the assembled crew: "All of us changed the direction of filmmaking. Because of you, visions that were once completely impossible are now within reach. And you know, it wasn't always like that. We discovered that building ILM from scratch during production was like jumping out of a low-budget airplane, and stitching up a parachute during free-fall."
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage In 1980, Blalack produced visual effects for 12 of the 13 episodes of
Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, in collaboration with the series producer
Adrian Malone.
The Day After In 1983, Blalack designed and produced
The Day After visual effects. To determine what visual effects the movie needed, the Praxis team created
storyboards to visualize the effects of nuclear detonations and their aftermath, and the missile contrails of US-launched ICBMs, from the perspective of the population of two cities in
Kansas. Praxis calculated that the number of angles and shots that would be required to simulate a
nuclear bomb mushroom cloud on 35mm high-speed blue screen film would not be possible to produce within the modest production budget. Instead, Blalack decided to create both the nuclear bomb simulations and the missile contrails of US-launched
ICBMs in a custom-built, computer-controlled water tank, where the interaction between the iconic mushroom cloud “cap” and “stem” could be separately controlled with precision.
The Day After Emmy (1984) In 1984 Blalack received the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement, Special Visual Effects for his work on
The Day After.
Additional motion picture work Blalack created and produced visual effects for many motion pictures, including: •
Blues Brothers (1980): Worked with director
John Landis and producer
Robert Weiss to design and produce the visual effects for the “Nazis Drive off the End of the Unfinished Freeway” sequence. •
Airplane! (1980): Produced the iconic
opening sequence of the tail fin of a passenger jet swimming back and forth through clouds, set to the theme music from
Jaws. •
Altered States (1980): Worked with director
Ken Russell to design and produce special optical effects sequences simulating the psychedelic effects experienced by
William Hurt's character. •
Wolfen (1981): Worked with Academy Award winner
Michael Wadleigh to design and produce the “Wolf Vision” special visual effects. Wolf Vision incorporated multi-layered RGB color separation optical composites of the
Wolfen POV cinematography shot by
Steadicam inventor
Garret Brown. •
Cat People (1982): Worked with director
Paul Schrader to design and produce the cat vision of
Natasha Kinski's character after she transforms into a black panther. •
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983): Collaborated with filmmaker
Tsui Hark to combine elements of
Hong Kong action cinema with
Western special effects technology. •
RoboCop (1987): Worked as a supervisor with director
Paul Verhoeven and producer
Jon Davison.
Theme park work •
Seafari (1994). Praxis Film Works, Inc. produced motion control miniature photography for
Rhythm & Hues´s mixed-media
theme park ride, with lighting by Visual Effects Oscar winner
Alex Funke. •
Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright (1996). Praxis Film Works, Inc. provided motion control miniature photography for this
Iwerks Entertainment location-based theme park ride, that explored visual themes from the movie
Aliens. •
Akbar’s Adventure Tours – Busch Entertainment, Inc. (1998). Blalack directed live-action sequences in
Marrakech, Morocco and
Hollywood, California with
Martin Short and
Eugene Levy. Praxis Film Works, Inc. produced the visual effects.
Television commercial work Blalack directed hundreds of multi-layered mixed-media USA and International TV commercials, produced by Praxis Film Works, Inc., for such clients as
Cadillac,
Chevrolet,
Coca-Cola,
Dodge,
Hyundai,
Kodak,
Minolta,
Panasonic,
Papermate,
Philip Morris,
Union Carbide,
Sharp, and
3M.
Independent motion pictures The visionary experience, as described by Aldous Huxley (
The Doors of Perception,
Heaven and Hell, and
Moksha) and others, was a lifelong interest for Blalack. He discovered his passion for film-making when he attended experimental movie programs that played on the Pomona College campus from time to time. There he experienced the work of Patrick O’Neil, among others. Blalack would go on to study with O’Neil at CalArts. He came to regard film as a means and medium to open the doors of perception. This interest in the visionary experience underpinned his experimental film work. Blalack was in post-production on
Daddy Dearest, a Praxis Film Works, Inc. production of his experimental 8K motion picture, at the time of his death. The film remains unfinished.
Artworks Blalack created a series of "Living Paintings". These 10-hour, 4K, and 8K
UHDTV pieces were synthesized from tens of thousands of photographs he took in the Jain temples of Northern
India, the Hindu temples of
Angkor Wat, the Buddhist temples of
Sri Lanka and
China, and the Catholic cathedrals of France between 2008 and 2017.
Multi-media conversations Blalack gave multi-media talks at more than 70 universities, film schools, VFX schools, art schools, and film festivals in
China,
Germany,
Austria, and France at the
Cinematheque Francaise. He explored the design and realization of ILM from scratch for
Star Wars, the impact of
VFX on Hollywood studio creative choices, and strategies for aspiring movie workers to optimize their career paths and make use of today's merged media motion picture design and production opportunities. == Death ==