We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines

painting. It’s done because the client has a need and you’re lucky enough to be employed to fill that need and to make whatever changes are necessary. You have to be flexible enough so that if someone changes their mind or changes direction, you’re able to say, ‘Okay, this is a change and I’m going to do it.’”
    Once Scheffe’s sketches were done, they became the working version for Pike and his team to use. Three cars were purchased from a local collector, and parts were culled from a variety of vendors. The shopping was divided up, with members of the team showing up to work on a given day with pieces they had found that matched the drawings they had been given. The result, they hoped, would be a vehicle that appeared to be simultaneously haphazardly and meticulously put together. “We had a crew of about ten, fifteen people in my shop that built the cars and made sure they looked good,” Pike says. “It had to look homemade, like Doc Brown made it in a garage. Plus, we had to make sure that the car still worked after we took stuff off and put stuff on—that all the gags worked and we didn’t destroy thecar. It had to move and have functionality for all the effects to help tell the story that they created. The car was unique in that a lot of people were looking at it and coming up with ways it could work. You just can’t put a piece of metal on the back and say, ‘This is going to be the plutonium chamber.’ It has to work. The ‘plutonium’ has to be able to go into the engine somehow. There’s a lot of logistics with each decision that’s made, whether in function or in design.”
    Larry Paull visited the shop once or twice a week to ensure the team would make their deadline and to offer feedback on the aesthetics. As go-between, Scheffe made daily visits. “Kevin had a great crew, and of course, they had to suffer with my sketches,” he says. “But they did a great job and everyone had a can-do attitude. I still remember all those people in his shop. I remember the electronics guy, the welders. There was a spirit on that show of, ‘We’re going to make this work.’ People tried so hard, and you can see it. You can really see it in everything.”
    The Filmtrix team’s work with the time machine wasn’t limited to the vehicle build. The crew was responsible for managing all aspects of the vehicle’s mechanics, from wiping fingerprints from the stainless-steel body, to replacing dented fenders with pristine ones from the other cars. The A car received the most attention, of course, as it was the one that would be seen the most in close-up shots where the actors’ faces were visible. Throughout the shoot, the C car was systematically cut into pieces to accommodate filming. Consider the perspective shot when Marty first travels to 1955 and hits the scarecrow on Old Man Peabody’s Twin Pines Ranch, where the camera is serving as Marty’s eyes looking out the front windshield of the DeLorean. Because a camera is large and requires multiple operators, it would have been impossible to fit the device and requisite personnel into theDeLorean’s tight backseat. The only possible solution, to capture the shot in the way Zemeckis intended, was to remove the rear of the car and film from behind Fox’s head.
    But for all the visual spectacle of the DeLorean, its greatest achievement may be its vibrant display as it prepares to travel through, and returns back from, time. This was achieved through a perfect synergy of the special and visual effects departments. For an example, one needs to look no further than the scene at the Twin Pines Mall when the DeLorean is first revealed. Getting the time machine up to eighty-eight miles per hour wasn’t the effects team’s only challenge, although, perhaps contrary to what conventional wisdom might suggest, even that cinematic feat required some finagling. Although
Back to the Future
fans have attempted to figure out the significance of Marty having to