Dave Thomas builds optical illusions for a living. He’s created a 30-foot structure of graded arches that on camera looked three times as long and a foot-high tunnel that appeared full-sized on “CSI: Miami.” He modified a shipping container to resemble, onscreen, the interior of an aircraft carrier. He built a Plexiglas platform that enabled Jesus in “The Watcher” to walk on water and he plastered Dr. Evil’s in-studio lair.
“I’ll say this: You don’t wanna watch a show with somebody that worked on its set because they won’t shut up and watch the movie,” Thomas said. “I’m always going, ‘That’s fake. That’s fake. That’s not.’”
The Redondo Beach resident works according to the unpredictable whims of showbiz.
Hours are irregular and can run long, as filming hinges on the coordination of up to 50 people, the right natural lighting, and time-constrained permits.
Thomas, 57, has a portfolio of projects so extensive he can’t cite them all from memory. The list includes sets featured in such box office hits as “Jurassic Park 2,” “Tango & Cash,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Bubble Boy,” “Fun with Dick and Jane,” “Austin Powers,” “Vegas,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” and “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.”
Last year he wrapped up a seven-year gig building sets for “CSI: Miami,” which – spoiler alert – wasn’t filmed in Miami but in Redondo Beach, Marina del Rey, Mar Vista, San Pedro, and Long Beach.
Thomas, who hails from a small Oregon town, was living in the Marina del Rey harbor and earning an income doing plaster jobs in Malibu when a fellow marina-dweller, who made movie props by day, offered him a “crazy” career suggestion.
At the time, he wasn’t interested. But after returning from a three-month crewing stint aboard a ship in Mexico, Thomas thought he’d give sets a short-lived shot while he hunted for another job.
“I never really wanted to go into the studio and stay there. I knew the hours were nuts, but then I did a couple jobs and I saw those paychecks,” he said, laughing.
Ten months later, Thomas was not only certified as a set plasterer, but also as a propmaker. Dual certification was his ticket to becoming valuable on location, and now the jobs roll in.
Working on films means “paychecks with zeroes,” but the pressure is tremendous.
Thomas remembers doing a 27-hour shift on the set of The Island and an uninterrupted 17 hours building the British Admiralty Ship for Pirates.
Of all his projects, that was the most grueling. Thomas re-surfaced the deck of a barge for an entire month, working through the night to build steel masts and cover them in wood. Rough seas damaged the ship on the first day of filming and Thomas and his team had to re-build it that night, in time for shooting the following morning.
He also had one day to build a hunter’s shack for “CSI: Miami” because the production had a fleeting permit to shoot in Redondo Beach’s Wilderness Park.
“Sometimes you only have the talent for a few days or permission to film for so long, so you’ve got an imaginary gun up to your head to get things done,” Thomas said. “Sometimes you look at a project and its budget and you think there’s no way it will get done. But somehow, it always gets done.”
