Explaining Hollywood: How to get a job in practical special effects
LOS ANGELES — During the economic recession of the 1980s, Fon Davis — now famous for his miniature model designs on films such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and the “Star Wars” prequels — had just graduated high school and was working at a McDonald’s in Eugene, Oregon.
With less than $50 to his name, a tote bag and a dream, he quit McDonald’s and paid a Deadhead to drive him to Berkeley, where he boarded a BART train to San Francisco and was prepared to sleep on the streets.
He ended up staying in the walk-in closet of a punk rock band’s digs and finding work in carpentry before bouncing from scenery shop to scenery shop — where various set pieces are fabricated — and eventually booking his first studio gig as a set builder at Colossal Pictures.
After more than three decades as a practical special effects artist — building robots, spaceships, stop-motion landscapes and other miniature marvels for such blockbuster projects as “The Matrix” and “The Mandalorian” — Davis now runs his own Los Angeles production company, Fonco Studios, where he helps cultivate rising talent.
Practical special effects are optical enhancements — extreme weather simulations, explosions, miniature model displays and creature makeup, for example — that are physically created on set and filmed in-camera during production. These are not to be confused with visual effects, which are typically generated with a computer and added to the frame in post-production.
Growing up, Davis, who is a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant, had read in magazines about pioneering special effects artists of Asian descent
