Global Effects Inc. is shooting for the moon and points beyond.
The North Hollywood-based costume and prop designer has been making space suits, hazmat suits and various kinds of armor for movies and commercials since 1986. It has outfitted astronauts in productions ranging from “Armageddon” to “The Fantastic Four” to “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”
But the company’s craftsmanship and attention to detail has drawn interest from the makers of real space suits as well. “I’m getting more and more interest from aerospace companies to do real models for next generation designs of suits,” said founder Chris Gilman. “Companies like Lockheed and Boeing, they’re not model makers.”
The company was hired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Johnson Space Center to fabricate a prototype for a next generation space suit in 2000, and a year later by Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. to make replicas of the Apollo space suits for a display.
“We knew they had done a lot of very accurate work on space suits both for actual NASA contractor folks and for the movie industry,” said David Gump, president of Transformational Space Corp. LLC, a Reston, Va.-based space contractor that hired Global Effects to make a mockup for trade show displays.
To Hollywood and beyond
At a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in North Hollywood, Global Effects workers weld, blow plastic, hammer metal and pour molds. Shelves are stuffed with history books and weapons catalogs for inspiration and accuracy.
Most of the business still comes from movies and commercials. It designed the saddles and weapons used in “The Last Samurai” and the body armor worn by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in last summer’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Global Effects suits also make appearances in the upcoming “Zathura,” a story of two young brothers on an intergalactic adventure.
Those outfits are specially designed and fabricated, but about half of overall revenues last year came from the rental business. Space suits are tough to find. The company has an inventory of 800 it has made over the years.
“You can’t really borrow from NASA,” said Gilman. “I don’t think there’s been a week where we don’t have a space suit on rental somewhere.”
Originally from Manchester, Conn., Gilman grew up around the aerospace industry. His father owned a welding shop and was an aerospace subcontractor who manufactured parts for the Apollo space program in the 1960s. Once the Apollo program was cancelled, Gilman saw his father lay off 40 workers. “I realized I didn’t want to be an aerospace subcontractor,” he said.
After high school, he came to L.A. where he first got a job as a stunt man. Later he moved into props and effects work with the skills he learned from his dad. With his brother, Kerry, he founded the company in 1986 as Diligent Dwarves Effects Lab and later changed the name to Global Effects.
A year later, Gilman designed a cooling suit for the actor who played the beast in the 1987 feature “Predator.” The creature’s full-body latex suit was stifling, so Gilman designed a vest that circulated liquid coolant under the suit between takes, keeping the actor from overheating.
The vest proved to be his big break, winning him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1991. It has since been used in movies from “Edward Scissorhands” to “Batman Forever.” By that time his brother had left the company.
After seeing Tom Hanks in the hit “Apollo 13,” Gilman decided to carve a niche for himself. The production used original space suits cobbled together from NASA castoffs “things the Smithsonian would kill for,” he said.
For the 1998 blockbuster “Armageddon,” the company was hired to make 35 helmets at a cost of $20,000 per helmet. Hazmat gear also is a specialty (the company made 35 suits for the movie “Outbreak,” at $20,000 to $30,000 per suit).
But it’s the aerospace side that most intrigues him. It started when Windsor Locks, Conn,-based aerospace contractor Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. hired the effects company in 1998 to make a prototype model for an astronaut helmet. Two years later, NASA came calling, asking Gilman to build a model of a space-walking suit. “I never thought I’d go into my dad’s business,” he said. “Funny how that happens.”
