In business since 1978, Vancouver’s Thomas fx does physical effects for ‘everything from television commercials to feature films, worldwide.’ The brainchild of Betty Thomas and the late, great John Thomas, the company is now in the hands of Betty and Stewart Bradley, the exuberant ceo, co-owner and day-to-day general manager of the operation.

Bradley, who has been with the company for ‘about 15 years,’ was a Toronto studio brat as a ‘kid.’ Doing ‘stills, catalogues – mostly modeling,’ he spent so much time at ‘all the studios downtown in the fifties that [his] public school principal called [his] Mom and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘

Nearly half a century later, Bradley is still working the business and obviously has not lost that outgoing energy that got him out of going to school as a kid. ‘In mechanical effects, we’re the largest and oldest shop in Canada. We’re one of the first support service industries in b.c. to help the whole industry live, breathe and grow,’ he says.

Bradley remembers being the subject of ‘the National Enquirer Midnight News, years ago.’ He explains: ‘We did the most expensive commercial to [that] date. It was a Peugeot commercial up in the Rocky Mountains in the middle of winter, dropping Peugeots from a C130 cargo plane with parachutes and rockets. That was a million bucks, a long time ago.’

This groundbreaking work is typical of the specialty for which Thomas fx is ‘known worldwide’ – aerial rigging. ‘We specialize in flying, manipulating camera, set pieces, individuals over cliffs, off buildings, across canyons, out of airplanes – whatever it takes. Jim Carrey paragliding to dropping airplanes on a wire,’ Bradley says.

This attitude, the ceo explains, comes from the company background. ‘We come from the mountains and we come from the marine. And I came from stage and industrial rigging. John Thomas, the mentor, who passed away in ’94, was the visionary. He also is a West Coast boy, came from the mountains. We work so well with certified mountain guides who are all aerial riggers.’

Although often doing this sort of work for commercials, Thomas fx is best known for its efforts on the movie Cliffhanger. In Bradley’s opinion, without their West Coast background they would have had a lot more trouble [on the film].

‘On Cliffhanger, we went to Italy to work. They’d never had motion control in the mountains before. So we put rigs over 2,000-foot cliffs. They’d never seen it before. They were quite nervous about it. And we were quite comfortable, because we’re big, brawny [guys with a] West Coast logging background.’

Aerial rigging is at the top of a long list of services Thomas fx provides. It also produces ‘computer-controlled equipment, breakaway glass, icicles, explosions, weather, articulated half-weight soft dummies, and snow.

‘We have different types of snow. But primarily, the one we manufacture here, is a biodegradable, perfectly white, Hallmark Christmas card snow,’ says Bradley. ‘We’ve done I don’t know how many snow projects. We have people representing our snow in Toronto and Montreal, as well as our other products.’

Thomas fx also sports ‘Canada’s only motion base’ and does laser scanning and vr portal work. Plus, its ‘3D virtual-reality copy stand is the only one in Western Canada.’

Located in North Vancouver, ‘right near the water,’ Thomas fx has a ‘large art department background’ and is able to ‘help production design.’ In fact, Bradley says the company also has ‘a stable of directors.’

He explains: ‘We’re built on mechanical effects, which evolves, of course, into where should we put the camera for this effect and where should we put it for that one. These are mainstream directors and second-unit action directors. You work up the ladder. You work sideways. From an effects point of view, or a stunt-co-ordination point of view, we have all that facility.

‘And our talent pool is huge. Somebody can come into town or fax us a set of storyboards and we can budget it and get it back to them in short order. They can come to town and we can have everything set up to go,’ Bradley says.

Doing a mix of local and international work, the ceo says they are ‘looking forward to the ability for offshore companies to come and do one-stop shopping.’

Bradley, who is ‘always going to trade fairs and reading trade magazines,’ puts a lot of the company’s time and money into research and development to keep Thomas fx on the cutting edge.

‘We love solving visual problems. That’s my personal passion,’ says Bradley. ‘I love taking meetings on how do we get there, the logistics of how to do it. You come with your briefcase and your boards and you walk out with film in the can.’

At the moment, Thomas fx is working on ‘building a whale spout.’ According to Bradley, they have been dropping ‘pipes and large objects in the ocean to affect whale splashes.’

‘There seems to be a run on whales these days,’ he says.

Thomas fx is pleased with the amount of work coming through Vancouver and has maintained excellent relations with its competitors. With ‘enough work to go around,’ the companies ‘pass work back and forth’ and there is ‘no backstabbing going on,’ he says. •