28 - Sunday, November 22, 1987 - North Shore News STUNT WOMAN Betty Thomas drops into the scene in a stunt demonstration (above) at North Vancouver’s Thomas Special Effects. A controlled free-fall from high above the parking lot, her drop is regulated by a device called a descender. Later, Thomas ran through a plate of real glass, suffering onty minor cuits (below). s, spills everyday V stunt duo life for N THE WORLD of movies, North Vancouver’s John and Betty Thomas are masters of illusion, plying their technical trickery to choreograph the action for edge- of-the-seat danger and near-miss spills. People diving through windows, cars careering over cliffs, bloody bullet hits, daring prison breaks — all of these and more are their stock in trade, what has made Thomas Special Effects a fixture on big-name movie sets as close as North Vancouver and as far away as Yugoslavia. Movies from First Blood, Never Cry Wolf and Stakeout carry their work, with a mixed bag of stunts, including explosions, weather ef- fects and fight scenes — and the phone at the Riverside Drive warehouse rings constantly, with more productions on the way. “A lot of effects are what we call invisible effects because you don't notice them,’’ explains John Thomas, 40. ‘‘Every time the actor is in jeopardy, the special effects man is there.”’ When the villain was just inches from the road climbing hand- over-hand along the underside of a moving truck in Stakeout, Thomas made it possible with a moving harness system. In The Boy Who Could Fly, the young actor could fly only because of a special travel- ling crane and a supporting wire system. . Stunt woman Betty Thomas, 32, has plunged off buildings, flown through the air Superman-style and driven in high-speed chases in movies and television shows such as Return of the Shaggy Dog and Stakeout. But even an apparently simple gag — as special effects experts call a stunt scene — requires a myriad of planning and prepara- tion; safety is the watchword. For a car driving into a pool, a straightforward enough idea, Thomas counts off some of the items to be considered: ‘‘In the movies you'll have to do take one, take two, take three — how do you get the car out again? What hap- pens if it lands on the driver’s side door and all the other doors are jammed? You've got to have escape hatches. What if the car sinks end-down (instead of settling gently)?’’ The list goes on. For other gags — such as a man on fire or a woman smashing through a glass door — _ the preparations are extensive. For a man on fire sequence, the stunt man is fitted in a special in- sulated suit that protects him from the flames. Sealed in, he is wrap- ped in a. protective cocoon, breathing with the help of an air tank under the suit. . When using special breakaway By STEPHEN BARRINGTON News Reporter glass, which is a brittle plastic, crashing through a picture window is no problem. But real glass is dif- ferent. Explosive charges are placed along the frame of the plate glass at key points, and at the moment of truth the charges are fired, leav- ing a curtain of fragments through which the person falls. Skill and timing make it look like a walk through the park. “The most difficult (effect) is the one with the most chance of accident, close-proximity pyrotechniques (explosions),’’ ex- plains Thomas. ‘‘You’re trying to do the biggest explosion without hurting people nearby or people in it.” Difficult effects aside, though, the impressive credit list of the local special effects company speaks for itself in reflecting the Thomases’ excellent work. Thomas credits the efforts of B.C. Film Commission director Dianne Neufeld and film industry union business agent George Chapman for attracting produc- tions to the area. ‘Without them I'd have moved to Toronto long ago,”’ he says. Set Rye wh veuraennanaeainn ca JOHN THOMAS of Thomas Special Effects (above) sets up his wife’s fall. Stunt man J.J. Makaro (below) is helped into his special protective suit before performing a burning man stunt. Betty Thomas (below left) displays some of the rubber props Thomas Special Effects makes for use in special effects work. mS: