The Fashioning of Fantasy: Chris Barnardo - Part 1

Show Transcript

Announcer  0:04  

Welcome to frame of reference informed intelligent conversations about the issues and challenges facing everyone in today's world, in depth interviews with salt counties, leaders and professionals to help you expand in and form your frame of reference, brought to you by the max FM digital network. Now, here's your host, Rauel LaBreche.

Rauel LaBreche  0:25  

Well, welcome to another edition of frame of reference. We are really blessed and honored today. Folks, I have to tell you, when I approached the today's guest about potentially being a guest on the show, I worked through a customer service person that works with his organization, his company, and just kind of on a whim, said, I wonder if he would be willing to do this. And she was willing to approach him. And he said, Yes. And at that point, my, my life hit a new high, because it says I'm such a geek, those of you that have listened to this podcast before know that I am just a tremendous geek. And whenever we talk about one particular subject, which is Star Trek, I really turned into Uber geek at that point, my clothes change. I have a cat cape that miraculously appears. But enough about me. My guest today is Chris Barnardo. Chris is the President owner, big poobah I don't know exactly CEO, co founder of a company called the wand company, which is in the UK. So this is actually I think, our first international podcast, which is a wonderful thing in and of itself. But Chris, I cannot from the depths of my heart as a Trekkie as a just a human being that our little talk that we had this morning, I'm so excited to have you on the show. And I know that any Truckee anywhere will be blessed by listening to this podcast, mostly because you're going to talk and I'm going to shut up. So But Chris, thank you so much for being here. Chris Barnardo is smiling across the face for doing this through a Skype session. So it's wonderful to actually talk to him to him. But thank you Chris, for being here in

Chris Barnardo  2:07  

the title pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me on your show.

Rauel LaBreche  2:10  

So Chris, you know we I sent you the spec on the show and we always kind of start out with this rapid fire roar Shakti and, you know, questions, and I know you had a chance to answer some of these but I'm going to try to throw you off here. This is free association, whatever comes up. Okay, so we're going to start out with weird things and go on from there. Okay. And probably tie some into Star Trek even but okay, Chris, favorite bird. You have a favorite bird?

Chris Barnardo  2:35  

A favorite bird? I guess that would be something like a J. Okay. Something something like a J.

Rauel LaBreche  2:43  

I mean, like a blue J

Chris Barnardo  2:46  

I think in the UK we don't have Blue Jays. We have a like slightly bigger, different colored one. But I mean, it's, it's great. My wife. In bed I have woodpeckers in my garden which come and go and they're always excited. There's something special about when you see a J It's it's different. You don't really see them around that much.

Rauel LaBreche  3:02  

You know, they're bullies. I didn't realize this. Yeah, Blue Jays will attack other birds nests and rob their eggs. And they're they're really kind of nasty little birds. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ruin your blue. I mean, there still are beautiful to look at. I'm not going to argue about that. But yeah, it's it's intro when I read that I'm like, Oh, that's so unfortunate for such a beautiful bird to be such a bully. That's just not wrong.

Chris Barnardo  3:26  

I'm a COVID. I think that that part the crow COVID family, you know, like magpies, for example. They're all part of that same thing. And they're kind of carrying feeders to make pies. Or maybe when you see any any bird like that when you sit up close, it's always so spectacular. I live in the countryside. So we get a lot of owls in the night, eating away outside our house or kind of like hooting it off between each other. Wonderful,

Rauel LaBreche  3:50  

wonderful. How about a favorite piece of music?

Chris Barnardo  3:54  

Well, yes, there's that one of the Nocturnes by Chopin is probably my favorite piece of music. We used it a few times in our Star Trek,

Rauel LaBreche  4:06  

sort of is that what's under the tricorder?

Chris Barnardo  4:09  

Yeah, that's the piece. I mean, it's a sublime piece of music. I'm not gonna embarrass myself by trying to tell you which one it is. It's one of the Nocturnes and it is absolutely gorgeous. It's simple, but it's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, so yeah, I love that that kind of thing.

Rauel LaBreche  4:24  

I think I even mentioned that to Charlotte that when I first saw that tricorder video, I thought, what a wonderfully sublime piece of music to use for something like this.

Chris Barnardo  4:33  

If you look back at the communicator, we did some communicative videos. We're doing a communicative video, it's spinning in space slowly at orbit. Right. I use that piece of put that piece of music then and there is the reason for that was it was kind of a fan like nods to 2001 Space Odyssey chairs when were sure. Probably the most accurate kind of filming of spaceships in space which were in complete silence. So they had to put something there, which was some classical music. Of course, since then sci fi demands that we have roaring engines in space, which as we know would probably not definitely not happen.

Rauel LaBreche  5:13  

Well, it's the same thing with I remember seeing a post by someone saying, you know, why is it they have inertial dampeners Why is it every time they get hit by a disrupter blasts? Everyone shifts around? Yeah, you know, I actually got I became a smart Alcon one of those and said something about Well, I'm sure even a notional dampner systems have an overload point where they just can't compensate anymore. But even if you don't accept that as a rationale, remember it is a movie and they have to make it exciting. Are you be going oh, oh darn disrupter blast hit offs and doing nothing and I would fall asleep quite quickly.

Chris Barnardo  5:44  

Yeah, the the actors that do it I hurt saw an interview John Luke Picard. Obviously, Patrick Stewart rather. And he was asked. So when when the starship accelerates? How come? You're not just squished onto the back of the Leos? Or I don't know. Maybe, you know, magnetic boots?

Rauel LaBreche  6:09  

Way to go, sir. Patrick.

Chris Barnardo  6:12  

Your legs would just share off.

Rauel LaBreche  6:17  

He needed levar. Burton there to tell him no, no, Patrick. It's the inertial dampeners. Come on now.

Chris Barnardo  6:24  

Get into the into the lingo, right?

Rauel LaBreche  6:26  

Goodness, great, especially the captain, for goodness sake. And what's just Captain stay to what is he

Chris Barnardo  6:31  

says this dialogue was his initial dump as offline. Right? Right. That's gonna be quite serious. Because every micro, you know, like micro asteroid that hits the thing is gonna shift everyone inside and

Rauel LaBreche  6:44  

we geek out already. It's their favorite thing that you like to do in your free time.

Chris Barnardo  6:49  

I ride my motorcycle, I think and do DIY. I'm a great fan of building and making things. And so I think in my free time, if I had endless free time, I'd probably be building a car or I'll be building a water feature in the garden or a shed or a bit of construction work. Sure. Oh, yeah. That's my free time is filled with anyway. And I. And the other thing is I because I love my job. So designing things, drawing the illustrations to read manuals, and things like that often, I have to very difficult, blurred line between my hobbies and my actual job, which is a lovely thing to happen.

Rauel LaBreche  7:27  

Yeah, yeah, it is. What is the old saying, if you, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. So yeah, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Chris Barnardo  7:36  

And I think recent, I have to say for anyone listening recently searched and said that If you enjoy your job that much, you're gonna live longer. So go out, find a job that you really enjoy, try to find something you enjoy. And if you can't find joy in what you're doing, I guess it's the right deal.

Rauel LaBreche  7:50  

Right, which is a difficult thing to do. You know, we talk about situational and conformational biases, you know, I really believe you can choose to just continue to focus on the things you hate doing. And let that become everything becomes things you hate doing at that point, or cam, at least if you don't break that mindset. And so you know, find the things that you like, and keep on trying to focus on those as much as you can,

Chris Barnardo  8:14  

I guess, if you're doing your normal job, and it's not, it's not something that you it's not something that you like, or you feel your cuts out, if you actually look for the things within the thing within the job that you do within your life that you would find joy in those particular things, or, I mean, my kids used to my kids probably still do. They're more grown up now. But they used to play the computer games that they play the video games. They play it over and over and over. And I say, Well, why play that game like 100 times? They say, Well, we're trying to ace it. Right? We're trying to do everything perfectly on it, right. And they found that joy in something even a repetitive task like that they found that joy and looking for something that they could get exactly right. So I think there is something to be found in anything that you do.

Rauel LaBreche  8:59  

Yeah, we had a book that my daughter and I would read called taxi dog. And it was wonderfully illustrated with every picture. And it had hidden other pictures. So if you looked in the clouds, there was a dog, you know, that was informed by the cloud. So if you look into the, you know, corner of something, there'd be a little drawing of something there, you know, rabbits head or something. And that was always a challenge. You know, every time we'd read that book, it seemed like, not only could you find the things that we found, but we'd look and usually we'd find yet another thing, or at least something that you know, you turn the book around to go, oh, that's what that thing is, you know, so there are there's a lot of truths. I think there

Chris Barnardo  9:37  

is and I think you'll I think a lot of people would find that if they did even their dream job. It would there would be days, even maybe more than days when they actually hated it, and they they got to really hate what they were doing. I know when I was a kid I loved diving for example, I diving off high boards, you know, five meter boards into the swimming pool doing somersaults and things My mother said to me You should Go. And you could do that as a, you could do that as your hobby, you could go and join a diving club, and go on to the diving club and spend hours standing on the side of the pool being shouted out for not doing it properly. And, you know, up, if you don't do it like this, you're going to lose the competition. And to me, it was just a big turnoff. I just actually spoiled what I loved was locking about the water of jumping off dangerous looking high boards. Yeah. And I think that if you most jobs, that if you do them enough, and you don't see something great in them, then you're going to find it sooner or later, you're going to hate it, it's going to turn to turn horrible. So by the same token, almost anything you can do, you can, it's the people you meet, it's the people you work with the suffering, try and make something out of it. Anyway, what do I know, I do a job that I love.

Rauel LaBreche  10:45  

But you managed to keep loving it. And as we were talking this morning, you know, it was so obvious that there are things that are a lot of work. I've been reading, you know, the blog on the tricorder. And the one in particular where you talked about being making the molds that are necessary and the tools

Chris Barnardo  11:02  

or the amount of work? Oh, well,

Rauel LaBreche  11:04  

you know, and then I mean, the technicality of that I'm reading through that going, Oh, my God, how do you even know to check for these things? And I imagine that you have to have a team of people, or at least vendors that have teams of people that you can go to and say, What's the best way to do this? Or how do we accomplish this? Yeah,

Chris Barnardo  11:21  

that is exactly the case. So for our company, we're very small team. And but our team extends outwards to the people that we work with the subcontractors and people. So we worked with the same factory for the last 25 years. That's before we started the one company which has been going for 12 years. So and we work with the same contractors in terms of our warehousing and things like that. So you get to make these people part of your team for the tooling. early on because of CAD, we felt like well, we can originally we used to design the parts by just literally doing two dimensional drawings in Illustrator, and then sending them to the factory. And then when the factory sent back their their CAD or whatever they did, we would go over it, crawl over it with a fine tooth comb me and Richard, and Richard and I, and then we would carefully look at each thing I think, does this work? Does this look right? Is this the right dimensions? And we would send back a whole bunch of corrections. And then when our own CAD came along, we said, well, we can just do that ourselves now. But you missed the whole skill set of will that mold filled properly? Will that how will that shape work? Does that shape make to this shape? How does it work? Exactly. So what we, what I found we do is what I would consider what I would call design occurred. But that's what I do anyway, we already have, we have engineers internally here at the one company that can do a better job than me, but I would design a principle. And then it would go to the factory. And they would say well, we can necessarily 100% make this part. So we'll make it slightly differently. And then when it comes to the molding, it goes to the tool shop. And they will make just adjustments themselves about where to put the various gates and sprues. And things to get the thing to fill properly. I mean, it is extremely technical, you sort of in that blog, just making the tool takes 42 days. I mean, I haven't posted yet, because I'm waiting till I post on the first shots which are coming soon. But those guys will sit with a lolly stick and a polishing buffing thing at the end of it going backwards and forwards in the tool polishing the inside of the tool for days, it's with different levels of different levels of grit, you know, from a sort of slightly coarse one. And this is tool hardened steel, they're polishing away with a lolly stick. And you know, a popsicle stick and a bit of cotton walk over it with these oils. Unbelievable randomly,

Rauel LaBreche  13:45  

right. And you wonder I saw how much job satisfaction is there in that, you know, they must find a way to recognize that this is a higher purpose, this is really going to look cool when it's done. And that just keeps you do

Chris Barnardo  13:57  

because those guys, a lot of them are working on projects that they actually have no and most things that are sold in, in around the world if you you know, he's all products from another country or wherever you would have a clue what they actually were or like them or whatever. So one of our first jobs that we did when we went to the factory was to explain for example, I'm doing the communicator, what it was, show some video clips of it being used, show up and try and get across the concept of what we're saying. Because we felt that so many times in the past props are made by factories that don't really understand what they're doing. Right. And they make weird little mistakes that for them don't feel like anything, but to the fans looking at it. They're just like they jump out your mile.

Rauel LaBreche  14:38  

I remember seeing one of the comments someone made about the texture on the communicator, and it wasn't quite right. You already knew it wasn't it was a little too deep if I remember right, yeah. And because the capex isn't the capex that they originally made that isn't even available anymore. So we're trying to simulate it

Chris Barnardo  14:53  

by the way, but he's a weird thing to say because because of that comment, I looked up I looked up our paths. First of all for The texture of the communicator, we had probably about 100 emails going back and forth between us in the factory, that was the first thing, we went for us very expensive patterning technique that cost $9,000 per molds to pattern it. And once you've done that, there is no going back, you either start a game with a tool, which is which is at least 15k on its own. And then on top of that, you have to texture IP. So we went backwards and forwards, we had hero comm.com were absolutely enormously helpful, gracious and lent us a piece of original codec. So there's only a few pieces left in the world, apparently. So we had a piece of the codecs. We then got this laser mold texturing company to make a block at some different different depths, we took a very, very accurate scan of the texture of the kydex. And I think I showed one of the blogs, but it's a tiny piece about a few millimeters by few millimeters with the accuracy. Anyway, they replicate the texture as far as I can see emails went back and forth of photographs of the text saying have you got this bit right is this bit right? And then we get the codecs. And because the texture is textured onto a piece of metal, because it's lasered onto the metal, they did a rubber cast of the metal and sent it to us next to each other and took a photograph of them together with the same lighting. And genuinely the rubber one does look shallower. I've looked back at the video at the pictures that I've got on my system. And it looked about half as shallow half as deep as the kydex. So I said to the guys, I know we're at something like 60 microns, can we go to 120 microns, we just make it we're talking 120 microns is is point one, two of a millimeter. Okay.

Rauel LaBreche  16:48  

And you could even pick that up with your eyes. That's

Chris Barnardo  16:51  

and that as opposed to point oh, six of a millimeter. So it was a very small difference. And they said, Yeah, okay, no time for a going round again. And I could definitely see from looking at the rubber cast that it just wasn't very deep. And then of course, the injection molding comes, it looks much to date, probably about twice what it should have been. And by that time, it's just, it's just so too late in the game, right now you either stop and start again. So I'm gonna throw another 30k at it, or I'm going with it. It's not the end of the world, it looks very close. But certainly I've learned that lesson for the next time around and we are going to make the new. What we did this time was we had injection molded parts made little squares made with the texture so we could look at the real thing.

Rauel LaBreche  17:34  

You know, and that's amazing to me, because I I mean, I have the computer I was so honestly, almost salivating and it was like a Pavlovian dog when that thing arrived. And I'd look at it and look at I have other units, I have playmat copy of that. And I have a master replica replica version of it. And yours is so far superior to that, that I you know, and then the fact that it's a Bluetooth and it can connect to your phone and whatnot. And I'm thinking to myself, Okay, what, what level? Do you have to be at where that is the thing you have to point out? That that's just not that's a little too deep. It makes me almost want to to, and I get that? Hopefully, it's a constructive comment. But I wonder I think I think

Chris Barnardo  18:17  

it I think is constructive. And I, I learned something when we when we got into manufacturing is that nothing is manufactured perfectly. Everything has defects in it to some level. And when you start to do a sort of QA document a quality assurance document for a company, which you have to do, and say what level of defects are you prepared to accept in the product? Because if you say zero, what are you going to do? Look it under a magnifying glass or a microscope? Or is it? Is it what the guy can see in the factory with his eyes? Is he looking all over it? What exactly are we doing here? So at the moment, we're making a series of poker balls for Pokemon

Rauel LaBreche  18:58  

brothers. So I'm trying to feed my son with like one of those. He's a big poker man from

Chris Barnardo  19:02  

Elko just they sprayed in a clean room, because even just a speck of dust on the surface because they're sprayed with like an auto pay auto color paint, and even a speck of dust on the surface can can spoil the look. But the question is, at what level do you look at it. So for some of our products, we have a thing where there can be a defect, but it can only be say, quarter a millimeter in size, and it can't be within 10 centimeters of another defect. And if there's more than two or three defects within the grasp of your business and fail, and you have to be quiet, you have to really work it out. So that was a big shock to me. So I think with it with the communicator and with the tricorder. The other thing to bear in mind is that they are replicas of a prop and the Prop was hand made, and the ones that remain now and in the case of the communicator, and in fact, the tricorder is just one left. In fact, the phaser also, they're often very beaten up, bent and they're funny shape. They're not perfectly symmetrical. There's a whole bunch of things So when you look at it, you have to make some judgment calls about what you're going to do. For the for the phaser. One of those judgment calls was to make the grip narrower than the one that had been on the show. And the reason is that over the years, the either the phaser body had been sandpaper down or had been filled with shaped like a banana. On one side, it looked fine. On the other side, the handles stuck out beyond the body. Now, our goal is to do two things. One is to make the three make an accurate replica. We like to put functionality into our products. That's the second thing. And the third thing is we'd like it to feel like a real product that if you were actually on the Starship Enterprise, or in Starfleet, this is what you would be issued with. Now those three things are at slight odds with each other. Because the prop itself was designed to be filmed. Lots of props that you see in the films in the old days, I mean, nowadays is a bit different with 3d printing, but many of the Doctor Who ones that we saw and obviously the Star Trek ones, they're actually quite badly made. I mean, they're sometimes they're just bits of cardboard with with writing and I remember seeing it at San Diego Comic Con, someone was selling props as a kind of Prop store. And they were selling the the Nokia phone that pears Brosnan stubble oh seven use to control his his BMW that time. And when he is sitting in the back of controlling it. Literally it is two shells of a plastic with a cardboard thing. There's just like you would print on your computer stuck into it. Because either you don't see it. Or when you do see it, it's you're looking at something slightly different. It's a cheat. So if you are going to replicate that Prop, it would it would look rubbish, frankly. So you have to make decisions when you replicate a prop, which bits you're going to keep and which bits you which bits are your high spots that you're going to actually aim for. And I think for us with the communicator, the previous ones, and I never want to rubbish other people's work because I know everyone has different constraints and as different tasks everyone's doing. But we felt that we had a duty to maintain the correct proportions of the thickness, we had to get the grill right. And they were some very hard and difficult tasks, which I can understand why previous people might have struggled with it, we had to find new suppliers for the grill. Actually, in the end, we used a company that welds spectacles and makes money on a thin wire. So the wire rather well. But these things are not trivial. And often I think when fans look at something and say why didn't you just do X? It's a bit like watching a film and say why didn't they why did they do exactly that? Why did they shoot that bit of the film right probably no one noticed that that wasn't quite right until right at the end and then it's too late to do anything about it and with the benefit of hindsight you may have started from a different point of view you would have gone to a different supplier you would have done something differently but usually by the time things appear that aren't quite right you are right up to your neck in it Yeah, I mean you're so far down the the kind of rabbit hole when I

Rauel LaBreche  23:05  

find it like editing you know, no matter how many people I have Edit Copy, it seems like there's always just one thing that everybody missed, you know, a period or a commas in the wrong place or there's a D where there shouldn't be a D you know, you just and you slap yourself thinking why did I catch that

Chris Barnardo  23:23  

when you're doing things like when I was in design advertising you're in you're doing a corporate a corporate like report and accounts for a company you'll everyone will read it 100 times it's 1000 pages of nonsense and you go through it and you it's all copy edited and stuff the CEO of the company will pick it up it'll it'll fall open or the page with his name spelled correctly. That is the typical thing I

Rauel LaBreche  23:46  

just have to Murphy's Law Right? Any design okay, we point we have gotten so far off track but that's the way it's gonna go. I think favorite book. I think we talked about

Chris Barnardo  23:57  

illustrated man by Ray Bradbury is why? Well, as a child we went on holiday stay in this house and the previous owners of the house had left some books in a book cupboard. We had no television when we went there no phone actually in those days, we had to go to a phone box, a call box to make a call if we wanted to know mobile phones. And I was young and I looked at this bookcase full of all these great I mean books by different authors adult some grown up books, some more children books, and I spotted this book illustrated man by Ray Bradbury. It's a it's a book of short stories about a guy's covered in tattoos. And every night when he falls asleep, his tattoos come alive and tell a story. And I think it is there was a was there a show called creep show or something like that in the US where they had a kind of comic that flew on the flew around and then stopped at a page. Yeah, it's very, I think that was taken that idea was was complete it I think if that is the show that is completely copied from illustrative man. He basically he lies down to sleep he travels around with moves around with fairs and traveling circuses. And he every night they bed down in front of a fire with some you know, like beans in their meal and the the tattooed on his body come alive and start to tell all these stories. And the stories are just regular. And I thought really prophetic science fiction stories with a lot of I mean, Ray Bradbury writes with a lot of fantasy stories as well. And they're all short stories. They were probably written for magazines like astounding stories, and astounding and things like that. In the old days when they wrote the side sci fi stories, they could easily get them published in these magazines. Sure. And they if anyone's interested in sci fi, and hasn't read Ray Bradbury, then you really need to, I mean, that one illustrated man. There's another one called Rs for rocket, and they really are superb, you know, standout stories

Rauel LaBreche  25:50  

are just literature, you know, that gets that level, you're just reading outstanding literature. So well, this is our segue question, then we'll probably have to take a break for the commercials to fit in. But I'd like to use this as kind of a segue into the deeper parts of our conversation. But is there a favorite memory that you have from childhood or just a thing that you think about or run across in your daily life? And it reminds you of that, and then you just I find that all of those things tend to make us reflect back to our roots, or they make us just smile, because we all of a sudden go back to that place. Is there something

Chris Barnardo  26:27  

yeah, there is. And it's funny because it's it's a lot of those members, I have a sense around that house used to stay in it's it's actually made out of two train carriages old fashioned 1900 train carriage really?

Rauel LaBreche  26:37  

Yeah, that must be like Pullman cars kind of thing, or the British version of that,

Chris Barnardo  26:43  

that the train carriage themselves or the, the wheels taken off when they had bricks underneath. And they raised them about about a yard above the ground. In front of the house is a is a is a large piece of grass like a field, and then there's a sea wall. And then it's just the sea after that. And this mad builder in the 1900s took these old trains at those in those days that were old. I mean, the kitchen window has the word smoking etched onto it, for example, on the glass. And each bedroom is a train compartment and the doors open into the main room, they're two next to each other, and the main room is in between them. Anyway, going to that place was magical part of my childhood, my parents are both doctors. And in the summer, my mother would take most of the summer holidays off, and we would go and stay there. And in the evening when the tide is low, and the sea is flat and calm. We had a small thing he used to just paddle around in rowing and looking for crabs and basically, and then coming back, the house had a tin roof. So it was it was like in the evening, it'd be like a fire break. And you would lay in bed with the windows open, you could hear people talking on the beach, and just the magical sort of, I mean, I bet painting a picture here of this thing. I'm sure it wasn't like that every every day. But certainly those times with a quiet noise of the tide being right low in the sea being flattened, silky, you know, when sunshine just glinting off it really magical. So yeah, if I ever get if I ever can't sleep or anything like that, sometimes I lie in bed. And I think of that instantly, you know, just asleep and dreaming.

Rauel LaBreche  28:12  

That's interesting, too, because it's a very strong aesthetic. So it strikes me that even