assembly, a twenty-foot tail, thighs, legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios outside London in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747. Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning on- and off-set effects with various specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned." After the completion of principal shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The head measured eight feet in length. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers, and by handthus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression. Real World War II era flamethrowers were used for the dragon's fire breathing effects. The animals used for the dragon's vocalizations included lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, alligators, pigs, camels, and elephants. Phil Tippett built a model for the dragon's walking scenes. He did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure, rather than in between, as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films. Ken Ralston was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminum skeleton for a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying in order to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles in order to convey the sensation of flight. Casting Peter MacNicol first met Robbins in the office of casting director, Debby Brown, who'd seen MacNicol's work as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She'd left a note backstage for him, encouraging