“JUST WHO THE HELL IS DAVID V. GREGORY, ANYWAY?” 
@followers
Okay, LOL! Someone just asked that recently in a comment on one of my book’s Meta ads. So, sure, Dave is here and happy to answer that…
I grew-up in a small city in central Illinois.
My earliest childhood memory is of watching the Black & White Looney Tunes on an old Philco television. Not only did those 1930s Porky and Daffy shorts nurture my initial sense of humor, but their directors – Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Frank Tashlin – began wiring my young brain in the techniques of visual storytelling.
When I started grade-school, my older sister was already in high school. Her boyfriend, who was an avid shutterbug, gave me a 127-format Kodak camera. That enabled me to become a photographer at 6-years old – learning the basics by the tried-and-true “hands-on” approach.
Two years later, my Uncle Tom in California sent me a cheap 8mm movie camera. Quickly, I began using light meters, drawing animated cartoons on unruled notebook paper, and filming my home-made animations on good ol’ Dynachrome – which was a cheaper 3M-made clone of Kodachrome that included processing in the price (and was therefore more affordable on my meager allowance).
Four years later, while walking home from junior-high one afternoon, a classmate suggested that it might look cool if we filmed a toy battleship in a pool and blew it up with a fire cracker. Not only did we blow that toyboat to smithereens, but doing so fired a few more neurons in my brain – and I suddenly realized that I could actually make movies with real “special effects” by extending the animation skills I’d already developed.
Thanks to encouragement from my junior-high art instructor, I started making crude live-action 8mm science-fiction films that were filled with my own special effects. I was making movies. They were crude but fun, and I was learning.
Desiring to unravel Hollywood’s special photographic effects techniques, I began watching every science-fiction, fantasy, and horror movie I could lay my eyes on. The very same movies and TV shows that had given me nightmares as a small child became the textbooks for my studies.
Much to my mother’s chagrin, I had become an official “Monster Kid”. And it was then that I knew I’d found my life’s calling.
Watching Bert I. Gordon’s seamy special effects in movies like AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and EARTH VS THE SPIDER, revealed how composite optical effects came together. Ray Harryhausen’s “Dynamation” effects in IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and ONE MILLION YEARS BC taught me that frame-by-frame animation of models could bring fantastic creatures to life with exacting precision.
Director Don Chaffey’s films – JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA, ONE MILLION YEARS BC and THE PRISONER – taught me how to direct live action and position the camera with a strong sense of composition. With IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, TARANTULA, and INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, Jack Arnold proved one could make exciting movies on a budget. George Pal’s TIME MACHINE and SEVEN FACES OF DR LAO instilled a sense of humanity and romance, while Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE revealed how it could all come together as art.
I devoured the science-fantasy writings of Ray Bradbury and, thanks to a superb high school creative writing teacher, found my voice.
By my senior year of high school, I reached high academic standards. After graduating, I spent the next few months lighting summer-stock theater. Then, I carried my focus through college – learning film production inside out, fine-tuning my skills, and making many short films that combined live action with model animation.
After graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Film Production, I spent the summer working in the exhibition side of the business by managing a Mid-West Drive-In Theater – all the while mailing resumes and film samples of my work to every special optical effects house in Hollywood.
By late summer, I had received an offer to come to Hollywood to help animate dinosaurs for a new Saturday morning TV series – but, alas, by the time I arrived in August, most of the work for the 18 episode order had been wrapped. No problem, though. I just went door-knocking at all the outfits I’d sent resumes to and landed a position after only three days. I supervised & executed special optical effects for many years and, when technology changed, I continued doing the same in the digital world – even specializing in Stereoscopic-3D.
During that time, I also followed two other paths. First, I spent much of my spare time learning everything I could about the business-side of the motion picture industry – and, I assure you, that’s a never-ending process as things in this industry are always in a state of change. Secondly, I enrolled in the Director’s Training Program at the Film Industry Workshop at CBS Studio Center. That’s a decision I’ll never regret because it enabled me to develop the skills necessary for dealing with that special breed of personnel called “actors” – a subject that university film schools woefully failed to address in those days. In addition, I’d often directed the Splinter and Optical-VFX Units on a several features, television episodes, and commercials.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339782/
www.linkedin.com/in/dave-gregory-50a6b410
I met many of the heroes of my youth – Bob Clampett, Bert Gordon, Ray Harryhausen, Jack Arnold, George Pal, Ray Bradbury, Gene Warren Sr., Phil Kellison, and Don Chaffey. Don and I became particularly good friends from early 1980 to his untimely passing in late 1990. He truly was my directing mentor, and we even developed a feature together.
Despite all the movies and technological advances I’ve seen and even helped to create over the last few decades, I’ve never forgotten the films I studied and appreciated while a teen.
In fact, I’ve remained especially fond of the “Giant Creature” classics of the 1950’s. They were not made within the A-class divisions of the major studios. They were either independent productions – like BEHEMOTH, THE SEA MONSTER – or, at best, they came out of the studios’ B-picture divisions – such as IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA and TARANTULA.
Without mega-budgets, their filmmakers had to be very clever & efficient and still deliver the goods. Even if the seams occasionally showed on their effects, one would easily forgive it and stay onboard for the ride … because, for the audience, the storytelling was usually quite engaging.
Now, I’ve always held that, if one knows how to create visual effects, there is no need to shy away from them.
For example, the reason the Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen science-fiction and fantasy pictures were made so cost-effectively was because Ray knew how to execute the visual effects himself and did pretty-much everything “in house” at cost. Very little of the work had to be sent out to a third party that carried a large overhead. Ray even set a record on THE VALLEY OF GWANGI when he personally executed about 365 stunning stop-motion composite effects shots for what was one of the team’s most tightly-budgeted pictures.
Back then, presenting the impossible at a reasonable cost was the order of the day. And, despite the varying quality of screenwriting, those films all shared many of the same virtues.
First off, the films were sincere. No matter how fantastic the threat the characters faced, mankind was able to hold together and persevere. The stories were not presented as spoofs nor as comedies.
Their straightforward earnestness enabled audiences to discover the fun for themselves. It wasn’t necessary to telegraph it by being silly or by planting a nudge here or a wink there, as we often see today.
A genuine “sense of wonder” was inherent to the work. We respected science. The possibilities it presented fueled our imaginations.
The visual effects were usually spectacular, but they didn’t overwhelm the viewer with so many elements at once that one couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Often, the design of those shots mirrored the principles of Japanese art, where simplicity was elegance and less was more.
The stories were not about flamboyant characters, legends in leotards, nor muscle-bound military warriors with impossible endurance-levels and mental tunnel-vision. They were about everyday people – people that you and I could identify with. At its highest, they were often about people of science.
Unlike the slasher films of the 1980’s, the women in these films were not depicted as bimbos falling prey to a knife or axe wielding madman. In the 1950’s films, the women fought the monsters alongside their men – either in support of them or by guiding them directly (ala Joan Weldon’s Dr. Medford barking orders at James Whitmore and Jim Arness in the underground lair of the giant ants in THEM).
Unfortunately, the makers of films in this genre today have lost sight of what made the original classics special.
But it is my intent to recapture that original tone in our feature film, ATTACK OF THE BLACK SCORPIONS.
Yes, I am passionate about Science-Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. And I am equally passionate about good Visual Effects.
ATTACK OF THE BLACK SCORPIONS will return to the roots of this genre. We will rekindle the tone of the original classics but will use it as a jumping-off point – thrusting our narrative into the 21st Century by coupling state-of-the-art technology with an earnest story-telling style.
Let’s create a modern and immersive creature feature movie with real bite!
thank you,
David V. Gregory
Los Angeles, California
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