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Dreamworks designer John Bell reflects on creating Back to the Future's 2015 future world

On May 22, 1986, a tag line, “to be continued…” became a part of Back to the Future lore.  The powers that be at Universal Studios had decided that the adventures of Doc and Marty would indeed continue.  Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) artist, John Bell was commissioned in 1986 to provide concept sketches of a new Back to the Future film before any storylines were developed.

Before Bob Gale’s “Number 2” script was drafted, John Bell had been creating images of the next film.  Concepts for the town square, future buildings, hoverboards and even Doc’s future lab were drawn up.  In 1988 when the sequel was officially given the green light, Bell’s artwork was pulled out of storage.  Production designer Rick Carter was so impressed with Bell’s work; that Bell was asked to provide more design consulting for most of the film’s future sequences. 

Bell’s career in Hollywood production and visual effect design has spanned over 25 years and after working at several different firms is currently at Dreamworks after some time back at ILM.  BTTF.com is proud to host this exclusive interview with never before seen concept art.

When was it that you first got involved with Back to the Future?   I have read that it was 1986 that they first started to kick ideas around.

Yeah exactly, it was 1986.  I was at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) and we were in between projects. I had just finished working on Willow’s development/concept art. The ILM producers came in and said “Bob Zemeckis was ready to start a second Back to the Future. There is no script yet, all we know is we go 30 years in the future and there’s something called hoverboards.”  They asked me “what does that look like?

So at that point I started thinking of different buildings in the town and what I thought a hoverboard could be and just did a wide variety of different sketches.  I did about 25 or 30 color sketches and a real paying project came in so we took that artwork that we were developing for Back to the Future and sent them down to Zemeckis’ office. We didn’t hear from them for two years.

Then 1988 rolled around and they (ILM producers) said, “Ok its green lit they want to do the project.”  We (ILM) met with the production designer Rick Carter and a couple other people came up to visit ILM and we looked at the sketches I had done in ’86.  They liked a fair amount of those and they wanted me to do a few more. So I started to crank out a few more, and we did little maquettes of a couple of the hoverboard riders and the hoverboards.  

I showed those a few weeks later and the production designer asked, “Can we have John come down to LA for awhile for three weeks to work with us to work on the look of the future?”  So I went down there and three weeks turned into like four months.  I ended up staying with the production art department.  It was great!  I got to design a whole wide variety of stuff. I also got to storyboard the hoverboard sequence so it was really exciting.

I was wondering if you worked for Universal/Amblin or ILM at the time.  For the first film most of the concept work was done at Amblin.

Yeah I was ILM at the time. I started at ILM in 1985.  So like I said in 1986 I was doing some Willow work and got into the Back to the Future stuff.

I was looking at the ILM book Going into the Digital Age and they have a couple of your very early concept art pieces including one of your hoverboard maquettes.  Can you tell me a little about the early hoverboards?

The early models of the hoverboards are really extravagant. There were a lot of pieces on them and a lot of moving pieces were proposed. They really had a more substantial appearance to them and they (production)  knew the prop department  were going to have to build many of them for the different stunts so they kept pairing them down and simplifying and simplifying until it got to be what was in the movie. In the movie it had a couple little details but it was really the graphics that drove the different looks of them.

By the time at the end most of the boards had the same basic props on the bottoms: hover discs, control module boxes.   The Griff Pitbull was really the only one that had action to it with the little motors on it.

Yeah those little motors… at one point they were a lot beefier. But Bob wanted to pair them down to make them more I don’t know if sleek is the right word, but he just wanted to pair them down.

In the book too there is a picture of Doc’s lab in the future, 30 years in the future.  Looks like a mad scientist’s lab, kind of looks like a cross between the BTTF Ride room and Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. It is a high angle looking down and Doc has on his yellow overcoat from the end of Part 1 and Marty is there in jean jacket and its just one of the early concept sketches you did of scenery. At that point as you said there was no script really.

1988 was the first time I had read a script. At that point 2 and 3 were just supposed to be one movie. There was never going to be a third one.  So it was a really big film and the studio pressured Bob to cut it into two pieces.

At that time it was called Paradox right?

Yeah, exactly, I don’t know where that came from.  I just remember it being evident throughout the whole film production.

While I was reading an old copy of  American Cinematographer it was the first place I saw it mentioned that you did a lot of concept work really early on.  I would like to explore some of the early work some more. It mentioned that you did a few of the buildings and the town square.  Do you remember any of that?  Did you do a couple passes at it for rough ideas?

There were a couple… they weren’t the big featured buildings. It wasn’t the courthouse.  It wasn’t the Café 80s. It was a couple background buildings.  There was a theater in the first film at the end of town that got reused as an art museum.  So it (concept art) was just a graphic treatment that we threw on that building.  Nothing more than that,  just a couple buildings.

Just pull out the old blueprints and put some stuff on top them to get a rough idea…

Yeah.. I am looking through the Industrial Light and Magic book and I see that sketch (Doc’s lab)  you were just talking about.  God, I forgot I did that… man, oh man, that’s funny.

Something like that never showed up in any of the scripts.  So it was just something you threw together.  Maybe you thought Doc would have a lab in the future?

They must have said “We’re going to see Doc’s lab in the future..” I must have just taken a stab at that.  Gosh I don’t remember that drawing at all laughing…

Did you sketch other “scene ideas” or is that going back too far?

That type of stuff was more done in 1986 that is when they really didn’t know the script.  All it was  there was  going to be the future and hoverboards. I just drew everything, scenes of the town with the cars, and with people hanging out and some close ups what I thought the hoverboard riders might look like.  It was just all over the place.  I think the feeling that was in those drawings got translated into the movie. We thought it’s not going to be like Blade Runner.  Because Blade Runner is more of a big city vision of the future. This is a small town vision of the future so all that heavy technology is not really going to get into those backwoods small towns as prevalent as the big cities so maybe it’s more graphic and optimistic.  That was really Rick Carter, he said, “I want this thing to optimistic. I am tired of visions of the future being gloomy. I like what your drawings had, your drawings had a lot of color and graphic quality to them and I think that is the way to go with it.”

When I look through all the books and concept art it looks like you did most of the hand props from the future. Honestly it looks like a large percentage of 2015 was your vision.  I know it was a team effort, but you were everywhere!   I mean, the Café 80s - that was you, right?

Yeah, the Café 80s - definitely.  Rick Carter, again, I have to attribute all that to Rick because when I came down there, he just kept handing me different things.   I would be designing the Café 80s one day and the next day it would be the litter bug, then the next day it would be graphics for Hill Valley, and then next day it would be designing the taxi cab. He really gave me a wide range to work in. I can’t thank him enough for that.

Everywhere I look, you did Marty’s Watch, the remote dog walker, Griff's future bat..

That’s right… man oh man..

The traffic light, the little future fax mail boxes things….

I know, I know… its funny because the movie was just on out here about three/four weeks ago on TV.  We’re sitting there and my kids are watching it with me and under my breathe I am kind of snickering about it… “I did that…I did that…  that’s mine…I worked on that…” (laughing). It was funny because you forget stuff.  Rick Carter really just kept throwing me a lot of bones.

When you were doing the hand props, did you ever work with John Zemansky the prop master?  I guess he is the one who ended up getting everything built and sourced out.  None of it was built in house by the artists was it?

He had his own team and if a drawing was approved it got copied off and got sent over to him and before you knew it you would walk on stage or walk into the art department and they are carrying around the prop of a drawing you had done last week.  So there wasn’t a lot of give and take.  It wasn’t him going, “Hey John how does this look… or hey Rick Carter how does this look?”  It puts the pressure on you to get the design nailed. 

Did you do  the McFly video glasses?

I think Doug Chiang designed the heads up display eyeglasses.  That the Martys are wearing at the dinner table when there were three Martys.  He designed those I know that.

In terms of the DeLorean time machine for Part 2, you designed the “hover conversion” version?

Yeah, Steve Gawley in the model shop at ILM said, “Hey John nobody’s designed the bottom of the car.  No one knows what the underside looks like.”  So I got to design the underside of the DeLorean.

I guess they put it on the model and built it full size on the bottom of the fiberglass car?

Yeah. exactly.

For Part 2, the big prop you did was the taxi.  Was that one of your personal favorites?

I was really happy with how it turned out. It started out as one really simple side view sketch of a car I was just making up. It wasn’t even a Citroen. But they saw the sketch and liked the sketch and thought if it could be a basis for the car.  Mike Scheffe said, “It looks like a Citroen DS19.” So we pulled out pictures of that and they were pretty darn close so I took a DS19 and remapped my sketches got it to fit on there and they said, “ok that’s it.”  I did a few sketches of it and Mike Scheffe was the guy who actually oversaw the whole building of that car.  He worked on that thing for months with the team that built it.

A lot of the cars Tim Flattery designed, he also oversaw the building of many of the cars he designed.  I didn’t know if you worked in that capacity as well, it sounds like you couldn’t.

I didn’t at that time, I normally would, but Rick Carter kept throwing me different things.  That taxi was one day, and the next day was Café 80s and then something else.

The amount of concept art with you name on it is quite large. It is unbelievable; I wondered did he crank a drawing out every half hour or something ??? It is amazing the body of work you produced.  I keep wondering how you come up with the stuff…

I don’t know maybe fear. So many good artists out there you have to keep coming up with fresh ideas. A lot of talent out there.

Did you work with Michael Lantieri at all?

Michael Lantieri and his team. There were some props; I am trying to think of which ones. There were some props I would go down to his shop and over see…

Probably hoverboards?  Michael was heavily involved with those.

Yep, for them it was trying to get the colors just right. I wanted them to be metallic or metal flamed and he would say, “nah we can’t do that.”  So they kind of wimped out on the colors for what I would have chosen for it but they still turned out good. I have no problem with them.

The actual final designs of most of the hoverboards are actually photographs. I know the spike board with the question mark most of those were hand painted, but most were photographs.  The Mattel board started with the lenticular pattern material then they saw the costs were high and they made a photograph of the graphic so a lot of the boards were photo boards.

Exactly, Mattel came into it kind of late in the project and we really had to change the design of them… the look of the board.

Oh, that’s right I saw an early sketch of yours where it was called a Swatch board.

Right, so I think they were looking for different product placement groups to get involved and Mattel signed on late and we went to the whole Barbie color scheme.

Then there was another Mattel an orange board for the other kid.

Yeah that’s right, I think they just winged that one together.  Because it wasn’t going to be the featured board they just needed something similar.

Did you ever get any hoverboards after doing so much on them?

I never got a hoverboard.  I did get a couple souvenirs. My girlfriend at the time was the costume designer so she made me a couple Doc Brown shirts.  The one from the second movie with the train pattern on it the yellow blue magenta white colored shirt. She gave me one of those and she gave me one from the third movie.  It was a Doc Brown shirt that was kind of mustard color with cactuses.

Yep, and lassos!

Exactly…. See I designed the prints for those.  So she made shirts for me.

I know a lot of guys are trying to make replicas of the Doc shirts.  The shirts were used as uniforms for the Ride tour guides.  People are trying to make replicas of it so they are scanning in the uniform shirts and trying to pair and match them up. They are trying to find if it is something real or art pulled from a 1930s magazine…

(LAUGHING)  OH NO!!   No it was I.  I drew a three quarter view of a streamlined locomotive that’s what we turned into the print. 

I didn’t know that was yours… that is cool.

New Trivia!!

As the artist working on the movies I don’t know if you look at ebay or not but there are lot of people who sit there and sell replicas.  Some fans just want to get as close as they can to the movie not being able to afford the real props. Others are opportunists that crank stuff out just to sell it.  As the artist what do you think of people selling replicas of something you built? 

You know people are going to do it regardless. I think they’re not going to make enough money off this stuff to retire. I can’t get too upset about it.  I wish I got a nickel off every DeLorean model that ever sold or hoverboard model or maquette anything that I would have designed in my film career.  Any Explorer from Jurassic Park or those other props it would have been great to get paid for any of that stuff, it just doesn’t work that way.

You sign on to work in films you kind of bite the bullet.  You get a royalty in a way that if you did a great job they keep giving you work and more and more responsibilities. You get rewarded internally at the end of the day you go “well I designed that stuff and it’s nice that people get fun out of it.”

For Part 2 it looks like you storyboarded most of the hoverboard scenes?

I mainly focused on that, anything that had to do with the town.  That was really where Rick kept me located. 

Speaking of all your work on the town square, what did you think when you walked around the 2015 set how was it to walk around it?

It was crazy!!  Up that point you just see my drawings of the café 80s or the courthouse drawings and different buildings, but walking out there on the backlot was phenomenal to see someone could take these drawings and turn them into a full blown color representation were remarkable. It was remarkable!  And then for them to take the sets apart… first they built the biff future, the plaza hotel. After they got all that done with shooting they dug it all out, they dug the parking lot out and that became the lake in front of the courthouse. That whole transformation is just a couple weeks.

Did you do anything with the designs of 1985a the Biff timeline?

Jim Teegarden really handled a lot of that. There were a couple other people who worked on that set I can see their faces but I can’t remember their names several women in the art department. Teegarden was kind of a playboy ladies man type of guy so Rick thought he would be the perfect guy for it.

There is some wild stuff in there.  Lots of small details, every time you watch these movies you can see another new detail!

It's just remarkable all the detail everyone puts into it.  You put all that incredible detail in there and then the shot is only up on screen for a second or 2 but still has to read as something believable.

For Part 3 did you do any work for any of the props or anything?

Part 3 was a little more limited for me. Marty Kline and Jim Teegarden had a big input on 3. My main sequence I worked on was the train crashing at the end when it goes over the cliff. Over seeing the scale model of that. I was part of that team working on that whole sequence. We had to replicate the ravine in Sonora and we found a quarry.  Ken Ralston Effects supervisor found a quarry up in Navajo in the northern California he was out one morning and came across this quarry and it was perfect for crashing our train.  So we got out there and set dressed the whole area to make it look right and took our scale locomotive out there and set it off the cliff.  There were two of them we sent off. That was pretty exciting stuff, the locomotive was big and the coal car had to be 14 feet long it was big.

It is over 20 years since Part 2 was released.  What do you think about all the current fandom that still exists around this film franchise?

It is very flattering that there are people out there after all this time that still enjoy it.

I am getting close to the end here. One thing I was wondering, did you get to work with Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale direct?

Rick was very good involving me anytime he could with them. So if I had drawings to present he would invite me to come in and pitch the idea to show them the sketches.  He wanted everybody in the department to have as much interaction with those guys as possible to get their feedback from the horse’s mouth and not a filter all the time.  Rick was a very generous man letting people do that whenever possible.

Did you know it was going to be a big hit when you were working on Part 2, that it would have the appeal it did?

Not really, the first one was such a big hit; we knew we would have to really screw it up bad for it to be a bomb.  No there was a great momentum from the first film and it was only 3 years that passed till the second one started up so not that much time had passed. We were pretty excited to be a part of that.

Last question, is there anything special from working on the films you want to share with fans?

For any film project it is about the people you are working with. You are with them for two years.  When there is good chemistry you can’t beat it and I had the same experience on Jurassic Park the people were just incredibly generous and talented and nice that it makes you feel like “wow how did I get so lucky to be part of a team like that.”  That is what I remember most.

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