Women in Special Effects: Lucy Cant of Weta Workshop

Previously: Women in Special Effects: Weta Workshop
Women in Special Effects: Weta Workshop Part 2

The first miniature I ever had was a model of the original Battlestar Galactica, which was built by my dad because I was four years old and couldn’t be trusted with an Exacto knife and super glue (still can’t be, for that matter). That, and my brother’s Base Star opened up a whole new world of miniature things that (A) we could destroy and (B) made us feel like giants. We’re short people and have to grab that giant feeling when we can.

Every model and miniature we built wound up on one of our battlefields. Mom would often come home to find my Victorian dollhouses in the living room, surrounded by a Mech army, that old Base Star and some Transformers.

Lucy Cant gets to make miniatures for a living at Weta Workshop, which makes me a little jealous. Here, she talks about getting into the field and how technology is changing it. It’s way past Exacto knives and super glue.

Pink Raygun: Do you ever feel like a giant?

Lucy Cant …more like a feisty elf.

PRG: What specific education or training did you need to work in movie miniatures?

LC: I just completed a degree in Industrial Design from Massey University last year, which is partly how I got this job. I was the Industrial Design department’s winner of the Zonta Design Award, which Weta sponsors, and through that, Richard [Taylor] offered me work at Weta Workshop.

PRG: In a previous interview, you wrote that the move toward technology in model making was one of the aspects that interested you in special effects work. What is the technology you’re referring to and how is it changing miniatures work?

LC: The technologies we are using are CAD and CAM – especially CNC and rapid-prototyping. While there are some aspects of production where traditional model-making will always be the best option, we are trying to make the most of these new methods using them to take care of the base-work- freeing up model-makers to concentrate on finishing and detailing.

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PRG: What are the different types of duties you have to perform in the miniatures department?

LC: My main duties are assessing new files and deciding on the strategy we will use to build them; preparing the files / splitting them up into pieces to build; writing the tool-paths for the parts and a little bit of operating the machinery, too.

PRG: Also in that previous interview, you wrote that you were interested in special effects because of the variety and not being tied down to the production of real life products. How did you get into miniatures, specifically, rather than another area?

LC: Coming from an industrial design background, I like working in 3D with objects and models. It’s also been interesting learning about the production methods of Weta Workshop’s minis – most are very similar to those in product manufacture.

PRG: How much of the product in the miniatures department is constructed by hand versus fabricated?

LC: I’d say the majority is still hand-made, but digital machining is definitely helping get through the work-load.

PRG: Without going into story details, can you give a general idea of the kind of work are you doing at the moment?

LC: We are working on some really exciting props – very hi-tech, very cool. Hi-tech lends itself to machine- production and the work we do in our department as it can achieve that industrial / clinical aesthetic very well.

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