Designing robots is fun but when you are building them for films it gets really exciting.

BRUTALLY REAL: Laing could have relied on CGI, leaving his creations to the magic of computers but he wanted his Terminators to be made up of cold, rusting and imposing steel.

MARTIN LAING is ­production designer for Terminator Salvation and shares what it was like to put Terminators together for the movie.

He is no newcomer, being in the industry for more than two decades, while his Oscar-winning father worked on the sets of greats such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Rollerball.

Laing comes across as a man who really enjoys his work; he could have relied on CGI, leaving his ­creations to the magic of computers, but he wanted his Terminators to be made up of cold, rusting and ­imposing steel.

Were you a fan of the original Terminator films?

Laing: I grew up with the Terminator films and loved them. And I spent five years ­working in James Cameron’s office, working on his next two movies — Battle Angel and Avatar, so I’ve walked past the Terminator models that he has in his room on a daily basis and have actually glued the toe back on the foot of one of them many times because it kept coming off. So I feel that Terminator has been a part of my life for a long time.”

How did you envisage your job on this film?

One of the first things I said to McG, the director, when I read the script was: “Let’s make it black, let’s go dark.” I wanted to turn it into something rather marvelous and rather special. I wanted to bring it into the dark ­reality of life.

GRITTY: The Terminators in this movie are very scary and the cool thing is that they’re grounded in reality, says Laing.

The first three movies were always in contemporary Los Angeles, with the characters running around L.A. being chased by a silver Terminator, whereas in this movie we have the magic and the ability to actually go to ­post-Judgment Day which is something very different and interesting.

In this movie, the bombs have gone off and we’re now living in this post-apocalyptic landscape, seeing the devastation, what the Terminators have done. I said: “Let’s make it real, let’s make it ­gritty, let’s do all those wonderful things that would actually happen at a time like this.”

NO NEWCOMER: Laing on the set of Terminator Salvation.

We did a lot of research, looking at Chernobyl and post-nuclear explosions and really used those references. We tried to research as much as we could to make it real, to so that it resembled what the world would actually look like.

My Terminators are different from what I call “silver sci-fi silliness,” Instead of saying “we’re doing a sci-fi movie therefore ­everything has to be silver,” I said: “We are doing a war movie here so let’s make it real.”

What did you want your machines, the Terminators, to look like?

They would have to be actually made out of steel and metal that would have rusted, and would be oily and greasy and have the power of a locomotive. They would not be shiny silver.

If you go to a train station and you see the wheels, they aren’t silver. They’re all nasty and greasy, so that’s the thing I said to McG: “Turn this into a really dark but cool movie.” And thankfully he said “Yes, let’s go for it,” and I think with McG at the helm, this film is going to be so exciting.

Can you explain as production designer what you actually did specifically to create this dark, realistic look?

Well, in the same way that when you read a book, you imagine it in your head, I’m given a script and I read the script and break it down and imagine it in my head.

But then I’m given the task of illustrating this world and showing how it will come to life. So I jump on the computer, get the old pens and pencils out and just paint away.

The first painting I actually did was of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. I wanted to see what would have actually happened to the landscape. So I took a ­photograph of Los Angeles up on the hill next to the Hollywood sign and then painted over it and created something that ­resembled what would actually happen if the bombs went off.

I then went down to the Capitol Records building, took some photographs of L.A. as it is today and took it back into my own little world and painted over it, knocking buildings in half and blowing them up, again using references of wartime buildings and devastation. I started ­bringing that all together, then took the Terminators and began to re-engineer them.

What are these Terminators like?

James Cameron created the visions but we had to reverse engineer them because although we are post-Judgment Day, we’re actually before Terminator 1, 2 and 3. So our Terminators come way before the ones that we’ve seen in the previous movies.

We had to make ours more brutal. We took James Cameron’s Terminator and just increased the sizes of the joints and made it much bigger. His Terminator, for instance, is six feet tall whereas our T-700 and T-800 are seven feet, three inches — much, much bigger.

NEW BREED: The Terminators seen here are in scale, and (from left to right) are in order of their development by supercomputer Skynet in the film.

All these things are actually spelled out in The Terminator when Kyle Reese jumps in the car and is zooming away; he’s actually explaining how Terminators were much bigger and easier to spot. So we took all the beats from the first and second movies and used them.

We are trying to bring new life to the Terminator world but also be very respectful of the history that was initiated by James Cameron in the first movies. We’re not trying to change anything. We’re not trying to upset any fans, we’re trying to build on the foundations that were already there.”

Can you describe any of your Terminators?

We have hydrobots which are Terminators in the water; something that’s never been seen before. To make them, we ­engineered designs by looking at an eel, to create pieces and joints that would actually make it work, so we used the reality of life to create these Terminators.

How much CGI is involved along with the physical structures?

Well, the great thing was that we were able to do a combination of both. All the designs for the Terminators were created in the art department under my command.

I ended up printing out ­(images of) life-size Terminators and had them standing in the art ­department; so we’d have a huge T-600 standing there looking at people as they came in — it was really good fun.

ORIGINAL: The design for the Hunter Killer largely hails from the previous Terminator movies as Laing believes in being respectful of the history that was initiated by James Cameron.

Then, we took those designs off to the amazing people at Stan Winston’s company. Unfortunately, Stan Winston passed away halfway through the movie but he has a brilliant team and they obviously have the pedigree and ­understanding of the Terminators. They made the original ones and they turned our dreams into reality and they ended up building quite a few life-size pieces of Terminators and hydrobots.

How ominous are they?

They’re very scary and that’s the cool thing because they’re grounded in reality. They’re made of steel. They have rust; they have grinding parts that machines really have today so there isn’t any sort of fantasy which would take you out of the realm of ­reality. You feel that this could actually happen and I think that’s the trick, they’re ominous, they’re dark, they’re oily, they’re greasy, and they have those piercing red eyes.

It all sounds exciting?

Yes it is. After going through the design phase, three months later you see the Terminator hydrobot on the set. That was a magical moment, seeing Christian Bale (who plays John Connor in the film) in an underground ­facility wrestling with a hydrobot. That is the thing that makes it magical, taking a drawing, taking a concept and bringing it into reality.

THE HUNTER: The Harvester is a 50ft tall giant machine that is programmed to go out and grab people.

Do the Terminators have any human characteristics or are they entirely robotic machines?

They are basically killing machines and we have a whole series. There is the Aerostat, which is a flying one that is sent out to search for human resistance members. Then when it finds them, it sends a signal back to Skynet, which then sends out a Harvester — a 50ft tall giant machine that is trained to go out and grab people.

The Harvester in turn has little robots, basically Terminators that shoot out from his hip. In the same way that a shepherd would send out dogs to bring in the sheep, he sends these Moto Terminators to bring the people back to him.

Then you have the Transporter, which is a way of actually taking those humans and bringing them back to Skynet.

How did you come up with the design for the Transporter?

One day as I was driving down the freeway going to work, a cattle car drove past me. You know how bizarre it is when you look inside those punctured holes down the side of a cattle car and you see the sheep looking out?

SCARY: The Transporter that takes captured humans back to Skynet was inspired by cattle cars.

Well, these humans in our world in the film are like the cattle. So we ended up buying three cattle cars from an old farmer. We turned those into our Transporter and it is weird and kind of scary to be inside it. We oiled it up and brought it into our dark, bizarre, scary world and to stand inside one of these cattle cars was rather strange.”

So each Terminator took a lot of individual work and design?

Yes, because each robot has its own job and each robot has been programmed and told what to do. For example: You are the transporter. You bring the humans back, and then the humans are pushed out into our Skynet world; in the same way that the Nazi trains brought all those prisoners into Auschwitz. These poor people are getting “harvested” and herded through this mechanical world, robots are doing natural selection and just plucking people out of the crowd. It is frightening and it’s going to be electrifying.

What was your greatest ­challenge?

One of the hardest things was designing Skynet because this has never been seen before. It is easy to take Los Angeles and blow it up. It’s something that many people would actually like to do today I am sure (laughs).

But to try and project forward and design a futuristic Skynet is hard. That was probably the most challenging aspect of the film because you don’t want it to be too futuristic or silly, which is one of the things that quite a lot of people do when they design sci-fi, they make it a little bit too bizarre.

FINE LINE: Laing says designing a futuristic Skynet was the most challenging aspect of the film as he didn't want it to be too futuristic or bizarre.

We decided to ground this film by putting it up in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, that’s where all those chaps are making the clever computers nowadays, so there’s a good reason in terms of our movie, for them to be the ones that create the system at Skynet.

We have Skynet reclaiming part of the San Francisco Harbour and building up its own architectural world. It is a very clinical, bizarre, surreal, psychotic world. It was an interesting challenge. I hope I’ve cracked it.

Is this job, this career in your blood, would you say? Your father Robert Laing, the renowned production designer won an Oscar for art direction.

Yes definitely. I grew up on film sets following my father around and he used to lock me in the ­child-capture van from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He worked on that film and I remember walking onto the sets in Pinewood (in England). It was great growing up in that world. I ­remember when my father worked on the movie Rollerball, he brought me into the art department and dressed me up in all the gear, put the helmet on me and the huge gloves with spikes on them and it was thrilling. Growing up in that world just made me so excited and enthralled with it.”

There is so much variety with your job, wouldn’t you agree?

Absolutely, every film is different, it is never boring. From Titanic, which was set in 1912, I worked on Pearl Harbor which was set in 1945, and now here we are on Terminator Salvation working in 2018 and currently I’m doing Clash of the Titans, which is Greek mythology, so I am back in 600 BC.

That kind of variety makes it impossible to get stuck in a rut. Everything is just always so exciting and special. I’ve been in the ­industry for 22 years now I guess and every film fills me with ­excitement. But I think Terminator Salvation has been the most fun so far.

Did you dream of doing this as a kid?

No, I didn’t know what on earth I was going to do. I studied interior design and fine art and photography in London and that was really good fun, so I thought I was going to be an interior designer but I was interested in films and then my father helped me to get work on my first movie, If Tomorrow Comes which involved going to France and Hong Kong.

Then I decided to prove to him and to everyone else in the industry over here that I could do it on my own, so I went round to all the studios and showed everyone my work and my portfolio. I was out of work for about six months until I got a job on the John Boorman movie Hope and Glory. I started making the tea and made my way up through the industry, so it took a while to get to the position that I’m in right now as production designer, but it means I’ve done it all.

I’ve made the models. I’ve made the drawings. I’ve done all these bits and pieces so it’s great, because it hasn’t been a quick two-minute acceleration to the top. It’s ­actually taken quite a while and I’ve learnt my craft as I’ve done it. It’s great fun.

In your job, it must be ­fascinating to actually create an atmosphere, through the visual look of the film and the sets?

It is so exciting. It’s so easy these days to use CG effects but with this film, we were given the opportunity to actually build quite a lot and go to Albuquerque to use the real vistas and it’s the reality that makes a big difference.

COMBO SHOT: Laing's challenge to make the machines lifelike and the action heartpounding, and for that he used a combination of models and computer graphics.

I like being able to go on a set and make it authentic, with the paint peeling away and the water ­dripping down. You see the resistance fighters living a horrible life as they’re in the trenches ­fighting the Terminators. It is such an exciting world. We can still utilise the ­amazing CG programs that we have, but just as tools to enhance the sets that we’re ­building.

And I think that no matter what films I do in the future; I’ll always search for a good design movie. I am not the sort of person that would do a contemporary spy movie, with people running through Washington or anything like that. I’m more the sort of person that tries to work on the best script and the best design film that I can get my teeth into and that’s the great thing about this job. It does allow me to go from 600 years BC to 2018 A.D. It is always exciting and I love it.” — Courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing International

· All pictures are from Buena Vista Columbia Tristar Films.

Related Stories:
Come with us if you want to be thrilled