Blog
Tribute to a great indie filmmaker
This week we lost one of the truly great indie filmmakers.
Stan Winston died this weekend at the young age of 62. Many would argue that Mr. Winston was not an indie filmmaker because of the many big-budget blockbusters he worked on. But the fact is he was a true indie filmmaker at heart, from his early days tinkering in his garage learning how to create horror and creature effects, right up to the end.
His early efforts were wasted on terrible films. His big break didn’t come until he met a struggling young filmmaker, with an idea for a Science Fiction film about a killer robot, that time travels back from the future.
The name of the project was The Terminator, and young James Cameron had ridiculously little financing, considering what he was trying to accomplish. Despite the budget limitations, Stan Winston and James Cameron created special effects that rivaled Hollywood’s best, while creating a timeless genre masterpiece.
Two years later they did it again with Aliens. On both projects they worked with then mostly unknown actors and tiny budgets, but made up for it with Cameron’s imaginative storytelling, and Winston’s spectacular special effects.
Stan Winston’s special gift was for creating effects and creatures that were at the same time imaginative, futuristic and completely believable.
Although he worked on many big, well financed films - everything from Jurassic Park and Predator right up to this summer’s Iron Man, and won four Oscars in the process - he never lost his love of the challenge of creating clever low budget effects, for cash strapped productions.
He showed how far you can get with the simplest materials, and a lot of imagination and craftsmanship. If you need someone to emulate on your own road to success you could do a lot worse than pick Stan Winston.
Now go make a film. Do it for Stan.
