Erin Stone
covers climate and environmental issues in Southern California.
Published November 14, 2025 5:00 AM
Steve Costley, Parks and Recreation director for South Gate, celebrates the opening of Urban Orchard Park.
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Erin Stone
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LAist
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Topline:
Urban Orchard Park officially opened this summer — a brand new green space for the city of South Gate and Southeast L.A. as a whole. Two other newly renovated parks also opened this year in South Gate.
How did they do it? The Urban Orchard project cost more than $31 million and took more than 10 years to complete. The funding all came through state, county and federal grants, as well as private donors. The project came to fruition via multiple partnerships between the city and the private and nonprofit sectors.
Parks are difficult to build: Limited space, expensive land, historic pollution, lack of funding, permitting, other red tape — there are many obstacles to building a new park in Southern California. “ South Gate is not a rich community. We don't generate that much revenue on our own, so we're very reliant on partnerships,” said Vice Mayor Joshua Barron.
Read on ... to meet people who are already using the new park.
Maria Mendez walks her little white dog, named Peluche, on a wide dirt path in the city of South Gate’s newest park.
“Me gusta mucho el parque porque tenemos este sembradío de aguacates, limones y venimos a hacer ejercicio en las mañanas,” she said. She loves it for the avocado and citrus trees, and because she can exercise in the mornings, she said.
The park has sycamores and oaks too, a small wetland, a playground and throughout, winding walking paths. Mendez said she and Peluche come here most days. It’s convenient because the park is right next door to the mobile home park for seniors where she lives.
South Gate resident Maria Mendez and her dog, Peluche, walk the paths of the Urban Orchard every day.
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Erin Stone
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This park, though, is in a bit of an odd location.
“If you look around, you'll see you are in between the 710 Freeway and the L.A. River,” said Steve Costley, the city of South Gate’s director of Parks and Recreation. “Not a natural space to think, ‘Hey, let's go plant a park.’”
The park is called the Urban Orchard — 7 acres of renovated city-owned land sandwiched between the freeway and the river. To get there, you have to wind through industrial businesses. The din of the freeway is constant.
But under the new trees and next to the engineered creek and wetland, there’s the sound of birds and water.
Urban Orchard Park officially opened this summer — a brand new green space for the city and Southeast L.A. as a whole. Two other newly renovated parks also opened this year in South Gate.
So how did the small city do it?
A need for more green
South Gate is home to about 100,000 people, 95% of whom identify as Latino, according to census data. The average household income is less than $75,000 a year. And city residents have some of the least access to nearby nature — just 3% of the city’s land is made up of parks, one-fifth the national average, according to data analyzed by the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.
“We're one of the very high-needs cities in all of L.A. County that doesn't have enough park space,” Costley said.
Lower income communities of color across the region and the country have disproportionately less access to green space than wealthier, whiter communities.
The constructed wetland at Urban Orchard Park is fed by stormwater from the L.A. River and helps filtrate and clean that water to irrigate the park.
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Erin Stone
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LAist
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The new Urban Orchard Park in South Gate is sandwiched between the 710 Freeway and L.A. River.
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Erin Stone
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LAist
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“Parks are what we love. Parks are what I think people need. I think parks make a city into a community,” Costley said.
Though the city is still working out the details, a grove of 200 citrus trees, along with vegetable beds and an avocado orchard, will be a source of fresh produce for seniors living in the mobile home park next door.
Dayana Molina, community organizer with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which helped fund and design the new Urban Orchard Park.
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Erin Stone
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LAist
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“We were really trying to address and bring the vision of the community through this process,” said Dayana Molina, a community organizer with the Trust for Public Land, which helped design and fund the new park. “So we heard about food insecurity. We heard about not enough shade.”
Not only is the Urban Orchard adding green space where it’s badly needed, but it will also recycle stormwater. The 1-acre constructed wetland cleans runoff from the L.A. River and stores water in a large reservoir the city built under the citrus orchard, providing 70% of the park’s irrigation.
Any overflow will return to the river channel, cleaner than before. Eventually, the hope is that native fish can be introduced to the park’s wetland and streams.
“This is not just a South Gate park, it's really a regional project that is bringing benefits to the whole region,” Molina said.
Residents — and wildlife — are already benefiting.
Dale De Julio, a retired truck driver who lives next door to the Urban Orchard, now walks there every day and loves to observe the birds.
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Erin Stone
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LAist
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Retired truck driver Dale De Julio lives in the mobile home park next door to the new Urban Orchard. He remembers when the land was an empty dirt lot. He never used to go for walks near his home. Now, De Julio walks the park every day.
“ This has given me an incentive to get out and walk around,” De Julio said. “I need that now that I'm retired.”
He said after years of driving trucks all over the country, seeing countless sights but never having the time to stop and appreciate them, the park is a place he can finally do that.
Just the other day, he said, he even saw a blue heron, a bird he’d never seen in the area before.
How to build a new park
Limited space, expensive land, historic pollution, lack of funding, permitting, other red tape — there are many obstacles to building a new park in Southern California.
The Urban Orchard was no exception, and the process was not cheap or quick. The park ultimately cost more than $31 million and took more than 10 years to complete.
The funding all came through state, county and federal grants, as well as private donors. The project came to fruition via multiple partnerships between the city and the private and nonprofit sectors.
“ South Gate is not a rich community. We don't generate that much revenue on our own, so we're very reliant on partnerships,” said Vice Mayor Joshua Barron.
UCLA research has found that public-private partnerships are essential to the success of greening projects such as the Urban Orchard.
“This really requires, as the proverbial saying goes, a village,” said UCLA professor Jon Christensen, who led that research and studies equitable access to green space.
The Urban Orchard, he added, “is a real testament to the dedication and persistence and creativity that is required to build new parks in Los Angeles.”
That creativity included cobbling together funding from a variety of sources, including $3 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, nearly $8 million from the State Water Resources Control Board, more than $4 million from the state’s Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, nearly $7 million from local Measure W funds, $5 million from Caltrans, Proposition 68 funds, more than $700,000 from the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, and private donations.
Joy Chancellor, 19, of South L.A. plants lettuce in one of the vegetable gardens at the Urban Orchard in South Gate. She's a corpsmember with the Long Beach Conservation Corps, which will maintain the park for its first three years while training young people in environmental jobs.
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Erin Stone
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The first three years of maintenance will be carried out by the Long Beach Conservation Corps, training young people from the area in environmental jobs. The city will have to find a way to pick up the maintenance tab after that.
“It was not a smooth process. It never is when we have complicated pieces of land adjacent to the L.A. River,” said Nola Eaglin Talmage, the Trust for Public Land’s Parks for People program director. “We've got all kinds of different public funding streams, all with different timelines, all with different requirements.”
Eaglin Talmage said a new county motion brought by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath could help streamline the process. And state efforts such as Proposition 4 are also essential to making these types of efforts possible, especially as federal funds for environmental projects dry up under the Trump administration.
“The passing of Prop. 4 is one of the reasons why we'll be able to continue to build green space in Los Angeles,” Eaglin Talmage said.
A bigger reform idea
Places to sit and enjoy nature in the new Urban Orchard Park in South Gate.
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Erin Stone
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South Gate Vice Mayor Barron said there’s another way for small cities to have an easier time building projects that benefit the public — updating outdated tax revenue laws.
“Last year, our residents and businesses paid over $80 million in property taxes, but yet the city of South Gate was only allocated about $5 million of that,” Barron said.
Currently, South Gate receives just 6.14% of property tax revenue collected within the city — a percentage set in 1978 through Proposition 13. After Proposition 13, the state created a formula to divide that tax among counties, cities, schools and special districts, with each city’s share based on its pre-1978 property tax base – a formula that still governs allocations today and mostly benefits wealthier cities with higher property values. That hurts cities like his, Barron said.
Only the state legislature can update that formula, something Barron is pushing for.
“One of the things that I really wish that we could look at is helping cities like South Gate, like Bell, like Cudahy, Maywood — the Southeast L.A. region — be a little bit more self-sustainable,” Barron said.
“All we're asking,” he added, “is to be able to be self-sustainable and not have to always rely on grant money to be able to get projects off the ground.”
New TSA program looks to increase private security
By Bill Chappell | NPR
Published May 21, 2026 9:30 AM
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Scott Olson
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Under the Transportation Security Administration's new program called TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades.
More details: The agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
Why now: The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became a very public headache at airports during the recent government shutdown over Homeland Security funding.
Read on... for more on the program.
Federal officers handle security screening at all but a small fraction of U.S. airports, but the Trump administration is hoping to change that. Under the Transportation Security Administration's new program called TSA Gold+, private companies would play a much larger role in airport security than they have in decades.
The TSA is set to host officials from airports and security contractors to an "industry day" at its Springfield, Va., headquarters on Thursday, as it looks to develop TSA Gold+, a public-private program that the agency calls "transformative."
The agency is billing the program as an update to the Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, in which 20 U.S. airports currently use private security screeners rather than federal workers.
"TSA Gold+ marks a significant evolution in the agency's approach to aviation security," a TSA spokesperson told NPR via an emailed statement.
The agency says airports that opt into the program would be able to tailor security systems for their facility — and avoid the TSA staffing shortages that became a very public headache at airports during the recent government shutdown over Homeland Security funding.
It also says the program would bring "the latest technology" such as AI tools to airport screening operations, to increase capacity and cut wait times, although the agency did not specify how those gains would be achieved. From the details shared so far, the equipment would be the contractors' responsibility — a departure from the current SPP system, in which TSA controls the equipment and oversees the security contract. The TSA says it would perform the oversight role it currently does.
"Industry partners can manage equipment and introduce innovations, while travelers enjoy a smooth, predictable, and bespoke experience," the TSA said as it unveiled TSA Gold+.
Airports currently using the private Screening Partnership Program range from San Francisco and Kansas City to Sarasota, Fla., and Atlantic City, N.J., along with smaller facilities in Montana, Wyoming and other states.
Calls for privatizing airport security screening have come from President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, echoing a recommendation in the conservatives' Project 2025 handbook for a second Trump term. But there are also signs of bipartisan interest in some level of private control over airport security, as seen in Atlanta, where city leaders recently voted to explore joining the Screening Partnership Program.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, touted that bipartisan interest on Wednesday during a hearing on TSA Modernization. But Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which represents TSA officers, said he opposes further privatization — including the TSA Gold+ program, warning that it would hamper accountability and transparency.
Under the new program, Kelley said, contract workers would earn less than TSA officers. He added that while many transportation security officers hold security clearances, under the new plan, the government "would be ceding direct operational control of the most sensitive technology in the aviation security enterprise to private vendors."
The White House budget released last month promises to save some $52 million by privatizing airport screeners and requiring small airports to enroll in the SPP.
But officials at the hearing urged lawmakers to preserve airports' ability to choose.
Chris McLaughlin, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, noted that the SPP has been in place since aviation security underwent drastic changes following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led to the creation of the TSA and the SPP system.
"We've had federalized screening for 25 years, almost," McLaughlin said. "Large airports like San Francisco have had an SPP program for 25 years."
Both airports' arrangements work well for them, he told Garbarino.
"The system has been safe for 25 years," he said. "It's important that airports have options."
The new "Gold+" program echoes the Trump administration's promise to bring a "golden age of travel" to the American public. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy touted those plans earlier this week, as he unveiled $970 million in funding to improve passengers' experiences at airports, from adding family-friendly security screening lanes to improving restrooms and children's play areas.
The money for those projects comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a Biden-era law aiming to update airports' aging infrastructure.
Copyright 2026 NPR
May gray skies return this morning for coasts and some valleys.
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Mel Melcon
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Cloudy beaches sunny elsewhere
Beaches: Mid-70s
Mountains: Mid-70s to 80s
Inland: 83 to 91 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None today
What to expect: A marine layer will cover SoCal coasts today, bringing some cooling to the region. Elsewhere expect mostly sunny skies and highs around the mid 80s.
Read on ... to learn more.
QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Partly cloudy then sunny
Beaches: lower 70s degrees
Mountains: Mid-70s to 80s
Inland: 83 to 91 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None today
A marine layer will cover mostly the coastal areas today, lowering temperatures a degree or two. Otherwise expect a sunny afternoon elsewhere across SoCal.
L.A. County beaches will see temperatures in the lower 70s today, whereas Orange County could reach up to 79 degrees along the coast.
More inland, the valleys will see highs in the mid 80s. The Inland Empire will see highs from 83 to 91 degrees. In Coachella Valley, temperatures are expected to reach up to 100 degrees.
Keep up with LAist.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.
Fleet Week, Exit the King at A Noise Within, the UCLA JazzReggae Festival, MAINopoly in Santa Monica and more of the best things to do this Memorial Day weekend.
Highlights:
Tour the U.S.S. Iowa and check out the three visiting battleships at San Pedro’s Pacific Battleship Center during L.A.’s annual Memorial Day weekend Fleet Weekon the waterfront. Plus, there are exhibits to walk through, food stands to try, and music for the whole family.
The name of this Eugène Ionesco classic alone — Exit the King— should give you some sense of where the always-on-point folks at A Noise Within were going when they chose it at this moment. The political satire borders on the absurd, with the L.A. Times likening the vibrant characters to “those in a deck of wild cards designed by Salvador Dalí.”
The nouveau bard of Kansas City, Kevin Morby, returns to his once-adopted hometown of Los Angeles on the heels of his newest release, Little Wide Open. Brooklyn-based Liam Kazar opens for him at The Wiltern.
Eat your way down Main Street in Santa Monica at MAINopoly, the annual Monopoly-themed food festival, which will allow drinks while you walk and eat thanks to a new city permit. The popular food-and-bar stretch near the beach is experiencing a little revival with the reopening of dive bar favorite Circle Bar, plus newish hot spots like Triple Beam Pizza and June Shine.
Happy long weekend! The Late Show with Stephen Colbert plays the funnyman’s swan song tonight, so my calendar is booked to stay up past my bedtime. Closer to home, the Yoko Ono exhibit (which comes to us straight from the Tate Modern in London) opens just in time for Memorial Day weekend, so watch this space for more on that.
There’s music for lovers of every genre this week, according to our friends at Licorice Pizza. On Friday, Yungblud and special guests Warning rock the Greek, and Dethklok plays the Palladium; jazz trumpeter Chris Botti begins his residency at the Blue Note.
Saturday, Bright Eyes performs I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn in their entirety at the Hollywood Bowl with openers the Moldy Peaches; American Football is at the Wiltern; Belgium’s Ultra Sunn plays the Belasco; Italy’s Mina is at the Echoplex; DJ KSHMR plays the Palladium; and then, for a different sort of “Kashmir,” Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening takes over the Greek.
On Sunday, brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack for the millennial dance party of the week at the Forum with Kesha, Chromeo and Sizzy Rocket. There’s also the big Day Trip afternoon concert at L.A. State Historic Park with Joseph Capriati, Toman and Cole Terrazas. For a more mellow Sunday, singer-songwriter Katelyn Tarver is at the Echoplex, R&B singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger plays the Novo, or classic crooner Paul Anka is doing it his way at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.
Through Monday, May 25 Pacific Battleship Center 250 S. Harbor Blvd., San Pedro COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy L.A. Fleet Week
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Tour the U.S.S. Iowa and check out the three visiting battleships at San Pedro’s Pacific Battleship Center during L.A.’s annual Memorial Day weekend Fleet Week on the waterfront. Plus, there are exhibits to walk through, food stands to try and music for the whole family. Not to mention those cute sailors in their whites.
Topanga Days
Saturday to Monday, May 23 to 25, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. 1440 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga COST: ADULTS $31.80; MORE INFO
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Fadeout Media
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Topanga Days
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Topanga Days is the easiest way to time-travel back to a simpler time when folk musicians roamed the hills, winning a yodeling contest was the biggest bragging right and you spent all year coming up with your parade costume. Those days are here once a year at Topanga Days, headlined on Saturday by New Orleans icon Cyril Neville and peppered with cherry-seed-spitting and bubble-gum-blowing contests, tons of other music, food, and, of course, the parade.
Exit the King
Through Sunday, May 31 A Noise Within 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena COST: FROM $49.75; MORE INFO
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Craig Schwartz
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Lucy PR
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The name of this Eugène Ionesco classic alone — Exit the King — should give you some sense of where the always-on-point folks at A Noise Within were going when they chose it at this moment. The political satire borders on the absurd, with the L.A. Times likening the vibrant characters to “those in a deck of wild cards designed by Salvador Dalí.”
K-Expo
Saturday and Sunday, May 23 to 24 L.A. Live 1005 Chick Hearn Court, Downtown L.A. COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy BLND PR
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K-Pop fans will flock to the K-Expo at L.A. Live, where you can see free exhibitions and events featuring 100 Korean brands and companies across content, beauty, food and technology all weekend long. Stick around Saturday night and grab a ticket (from $47) to the mega K-Pop concert at the Peacock Theater, featuring Jay Park and P1Harmony.
MAINopoly
Sunday, May 24, 1 p.m. Main Street, Santa Monica COST: FROM $28.01; MORE INFO
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Courtesy MAINopoly Santa Monica
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Eat your way down Main Street in Santa Monica at the annual Monopoly-themed food festival, which this year will allow drinks while you walk and eat thanks to a new city permit. The popular food-and-bar stretch near the beach is experiencing a little revival with the reopening of dive bar favorite Circle Bar, plus newish hot spots like Triple Beam Pizza and June Shine. I also heard a rumor that something new is finally coming into the old World Cafe space (!!).
Arroyo Secodelic Festival
Friday to Monday, May 22 to 25 Various locations, Highland Park COST: VARIES; MORE INFO
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Courtesy Arroyo Secodelic
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As LAist's Robert Garrova reports, a new four-day music festival takes over Figueroa Street in Highland Park this weekend. The Arroyo Secodelic Festival will feature 65 bands, with acts hailing from Los Angeles, Mexico and as far as France and Holland. Highlights include Flamin' Groovies, Fear and Adolescents.
Angel City Chorale Spring Concert
Sunday, May 24, 4 p.m. Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach COST: FROM $17; MORE INFO
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Mel Stave Photography
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Angel City Chorale
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Enjoy the healing sounds of Angel City Chorale as they perform a new show with the theme "The Red Thread" as “a tribute to the beloved age-old parable and celebration of the invisible threads that connect as humans, our hopes, joys, resilience in the face of adversity, connection to nature and a shared planet Earth.”
Kevin Morby
Friday, May 22, 8 p.m. The Wiltern 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Koreatown COST: $50-$60; MORE INFO
Kevin Morby plays the Wiltern on Friday.
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Jim Bennett
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Getty Images
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The nouveau bard of Kansas City returns to his once-adopted hometown of Los Angeles on the heels of his newest release, Little Wide Open. Morby's latest effort might be his most realized, fully embracing the Technicolor sweep of his indie-Americana sound — striking the sonic equivalent between a Terrence Malick film and Robert Frank's roadside photographs, seen through a passenger car window of a cross-country train. This time, Morby tapped Aaron Dessner of The National to serve as producer — who has most recently done the same for Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Sharon Van Etten — alongside a constellation of collaborators, including Justin Vernon, Lucinda Williams, Katie Gavin, Mat Davidson and Meg Duffy. Brooklyn-based Liam Kazar opens. –Gab Chabrán
UCLA JazzReggae Festival
Monday, May 25, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. UCLA Wilson Plaza COST: $26.14; MORE INFO
Three little birds told me to get down to the UCLA JazzReggae Festival on Memorial Day. The yearly music fest draws students and neighbors alike for a full day of sunshine, food, music and jammin’. The fest is fully organized and run by student volunteers, and has been since its founding 40 years ago.
Forest Lawn Memorial Day remembrances
Monday, May 25 Various locations COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Forest Lawn in Glendale is one of several locations hosting Memorial Day events.
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David McNew
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Getty Images
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Honor veterans across Los Angeles as Forest Lawn hosts Memorial Day remembrances at each of its six Southern California locations: Cathedral City, Covina Hills, Cypress, Glendale, Hollywood Hills and Long Beach. The parkwide events will celebrate the lives of those who served, with patriotic music, wreath layings, presentations and retirings of the flag, keynote addresses, presidential proclamations, invocations, giveaways, coffee and sweet treats. All events will include American Sign Language interpreters.
Monica Bushman
produces arts and culture coverage for LAist's on-demand team. She’s also part of the Imperfect Paradise podcast team.
Published May 21, 2026 5:00 AM
Edward Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a scene from the 1991 film 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day.'
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via film-grab.com
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Topline:
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is back in select theaters this weekend, in celebration of the movie’s 35th anniversary. Considered one of the best action films and best sequels of all time, it’s also celebrated among film experts for its groundbreaking use of CGI visual effects — most notably for the T-1000 character, a liquid metal cyborg masquerading as an LAPD officer.
Where to see the film in LA: American Cinematheque, The Academy Museum and The Vista are hosting screenings of Terminator 2: Judgment Day starting on May 22, but they’re already selling out. Additional screenings are on May 29 at Los Feliz 3, May 30 at Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and June 6 and 7 at The Vista in Los Feliz.
Read on ... for behind-the-scenes details from the film's Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor.
You could call it a fulfillment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous promise from the first Terminator movie in 1984: “I’ll be back.”
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the bigger budget, multi-award winning follow-up to that first film is coming back to theaters in Los Angeles starting this weekend, in celebration of the film’s 35th anniversary.
Considered one of the best action films and best sequels of all time, it’s also celebrated among film experts for its groundbreaking use of CGI visual effects — most notably for the T-1000 character, a liquid metal cyborg masquerading as an LAPD officer, played by Robert Patrick.
Where to watch ‘T2’ on the big screen
While the American Cinematheque’s first two 35th anniversary screenings of Terminator 2 are already sold out, as of this article’s publishing time, tickets to screenings on May 29 (at Los Feliz 3) and May 30 (at Aero Theatre in Santa Monica) are still available.
Tickets for screenings on May 22 at The Ojai Playhouse and June 6 and 7 at The Vista in Los Feliz are also still available, and Rialto Pictures also lists screenings on July 2-5 at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana.
And while the screening at The Academy Museum on May 27 (with the film’s Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren in person) is sold out, we have you covered with some highlights from Muren’s interview with LAist below.
Making the impossible possible with CGI
Terminator 2, director James Cameron’s follow up to his surprise 1984 hit, The Terminator, was the first (and still only) movie in what would become the six-film Terminator franchise to earn an Oscar win or nomination.
Ultimately, the film took home four Oscars — for visual effects (for Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Gene Warren, Jr. and Robert Skotak), makeup, sound, and sound effects editing — and also earned nominations for cinematography and film editing.
The visual effects studio responsible for the T-1000 character’s CGI effects was Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), founded in 1975 by Star Wars creator George Lucas. Dennis Muren headed up their Terminator 2 team, which consisted of about 35 artists.
Muren remembers first being taken with visual effects at the age of 6 or 7, watching The War of the Worlds (1953) in Los Angeles. He made his first film — a “creature feature” called Equinox — the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Pasadena City College, and would go on to work for ILM on visual effects for movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and (fittingly) the 2005 version of War of the Worlds.
A scene from 'Terminator 2' (1991).
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via film-grab.com
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ILM and Muren began development on the CGI techniques that would be needed to pull off Terminator 2’s T-1000 character in movies like 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes and 1989’s The Abyss, which was also directed by James Cameron.
“ILM has been so good at being able to really do the impossible,” Muren said. “And we kind of joke about that, but we've got many different ways of doing things.”
When the opportunity for Terminator 2 came up, Muren had also just returned from a year-long sabbatical he spent studying computer graphics, and said he was confident ILM had the tools needed to make the T-1000 character a reality.
“We were ready to input the film digitally,” Muren explained. “[To] do all the manipulation in a computer instead of with optical film running through printers and going to labs for processing.”
And when ILM got that digital system for “compositing” — combining live-action images, practical and CGI effects — working seamlessly, Muren says, “That was an incredible tool.”
But that didn’t mean that pulling off a shiny, shape-shifting, liquid metal character successfully would be easy.
“It's just complicated,” Muren explained. “You've just got this reflective material [and] how are we supposed to be able to see depth or shape when it's deforming?” But at the same time, Muren said, “that's what was exciting about it.”
Muren says the trickiest scene for the team to figure out is when the T-1000 walks through a cell door made of metal bars. While it happens in a matter of seconds on screen, it amounted to 14 to 16 weeks of work for the visual effects team.
“I always said that shot, even as we were doing it, and we got close to finishing, I said, ‘This is an absolutely impossible shot,’” Muren explained. So when they got it right, he said, “It was like a new world.”
Today, while he says Jurassic Park (1993) is the film he’s now asked about most often, he always reminds people: “T2 was really the breakthrough film.”
