Heating Up The Big Screen
for Charlie Wilson's War
Martin T. Charles, SagaBoy Productions, Los Angeles, CA
With more than 50 feature films to his credit and extensive experience working with many of the world’s foremost directors and stars, Hollywood graphic designer Martin T. Charles of SagaBoy Productions is at the top of his field.
To stay on the cutting edge, Charles continues to search for new, innovative ways to create the fantastic scenery, props and backdrops that frame those Oscar-winning performances. Key to his recent success has been the Roland SOLJET 54” inkjet printer/cutter which he introduced into his environment for the production of recent films including Charlie Wilson’s War and Miami Vice.
“I have the best job in Hollywood because I have a great passion for my work, and I am always searching for new ways to communicate visual graphic design,” Charles said. “If there was a one-and-only/must-have printer to a designer, the Roland SOLJET printer/cutter is that printer. It is far superior in its ability to print beautiful images on almost any material quickly, and the cutting technology is unmatched.”
Roland’s SOLJET printer/cutter is the inkjet of choice for many of the world’s top graphics professionals. Combining award-winning Roland digital printing technology with precision vinyl cutting into one device, the SOLJET printer/cutter is tailor made for the high demands of the film industry.
Charles took full advantage of his SOLJET for his newest project, Charlie Wilson’s War, which takes place in the 1980s and unfolds across continents and in U.S. legislative chambers. According to Charles, the most important scenic element in the film was an impeccably constructed set of the U.S. Capitol’s Speaker of the House Lobby.
“The real Capitol building is enormous and impressive, and we had to recreate it on location,” he said. “Since the Capitol hasn’t changed in over a hundred years, we had the sense we were recreating history. This was an interesting challenge for us.”
What made it even more interesting was that art directors and designers were not allowed access to the building itself and instead had to rely on volumes of photographs to identify graphic elements and determine accurate room measurements. Central to the building’s appearance is an intricately designed 2,000-square-foot tile floor and 2,500 running feet of wallpaper and additional ceiling art. To wrap this interior required thousands of feet of digitally printed graphics.
“Our SOLJET performed beautifully throughout production,” Charles said. “When you see the film, you will think that you are there at the Capitol. The as-built set was dead on to what it should have been – down to every crevice and corner. And because we were replicating such a famous and historic place, all the graphic elements of the original site had to be there – in perfect order.”
For Miami Vice, the SOLJET proved critical to the creation of hundreds of film graphic elements from vehicle and boat graphics to tiles, floor graphics, police car vinyl, illuminated restaurant café signs, beer bottle labels, billboards and more.
“The largest graphics were a series of giant 15-foot murals, and the most unusual graphic I produced was not really a graphic at all, but a near identical match to an exotic wood veneer needed to replace a panel in this very expensive condo set,” Charles said.
He continued, “The graphic design on this project was ultra important to Michael Mann, the film’s producer/director. Every element had to enhance the scene at hand. In the end, we were able to meet these requirements and deliver the exceptional graphics the film required. In the fast-pace world of film-making, the Roland SOLJET printer/cutter is right at home.”
About Martin T. Charles: Martin T. Charles is owner of SagaBoy Productions, a Los Angeles-based graphic design firm serving the film industry. Charles holds a BA in communication design from New York’s Pratt Institute. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 and has since served as graphic designer on more than 50 feature films including Miami Vice, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Be Cool, 50 First Dates, Seabiscuit, Catch Me If You Can, Murder by Numbers, Stuart Little and That Thing You Do, among others.
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