Yes they are. S.S. Wilson is a target shooter and weapons history buff. He insists on accuracy. Of course, we never use live ammunition on a movie set. Blanks only!

No, sorry, we just made the name up out of thin air.

Eight to ten feet.

Underground, along with the fuel and water storage tanks.

Okay, this answer may be longer than even die-hard Tremors fans want, but here goes.

In all honesty, there really is no answer. We’ve built Burt’s house four times, and never where it really is supposed to be relative to Perfection. So, instead of an answer, here’s another Burt bunker history.

Tremors 1. The exterior of Burt and Heather’s house was built many miles from the town location, because we did not have enough land at the town site. In reality the front door faced East. In reality, Heather looks off to the North when she trains her binoculars on the town. We used camera tricks to make it seem like you could see the town from Burt’s and vice versa.

When Val and Earl look off toward Burt’s from Chang’s roof, we did the same camera tricks. In reality they are looking East, so those point-of-view shots of Burt’s make it look like the front door faces North (movie reality), unless you assume the sun behind Chang’s is rising, not setting, in which case Burt’s front door would face South. See what a can of worms you’ve opened with this question?

The interior of the basement was built on a sound stage. We have no idea which direction anything faced in the basement, because we never saw the upstairs entrance to it.

Tremors 2. We built only the interior of Burt’s basement, not the exterior, and we didn’t see the stairs, so, again, we have no idea which way the building is oriented in movie reality.

Tremors 3. Again, Burt’s exterior was built many miles from where the town was built. This time, in reality, the front door faced more or less North. The interior was built on stage, but again, we have no idea which direction the entrance stairs face relative to the outside.

Tremors: The Series. This is the only Tremors where the outside of Burt’s is actually connected visually to the inside. In reality, I’m pretty sure the entrance stairs faced generally North or Northwest; i.e., that’d be the direction you face as you go up the stairs.

So, depending on which Tremors you’d use as reference, Burt’s front door could face North, East or South. In the series, it’s pretty definite the entrance and the basement stairs face North. Is that all clear as mud?

BTW, for the series the exterior of Burt’s compound was built on a hill barely a hundred yards from the Mexico location town site. So now we had to use camera tricks to make it appear further away than it really was. Movies are so hard.

This is kind of a long answer, but hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

We had the longest time and the biggest budget (about 11 million) on Tremors 1.  On Tremors 2 and Tremors 3, we’ve had much lower budgets and much less time, but we’ve also had the ability to do computer graphics which didn’t even exist when we did T-1!  (Big expensive movies of course take much longer to make than ours do).

There are four main phases to making a movie:

First we have to write the script.  It takes about three or four months to get it right.  We always do many drafts, re-writing the script at least six or seven times, trying out different scenes, ideas, lines of dialogue, etc.

Next comes what’s called PRE-PRODUCTION – around three to five months.  Pre-production is all the work we do to plan the actual filming of the movie.  In pre-production we work with a growing staff of people designing costumes, designing and building monsters, designing and building sets, finding and buying props, cars and all the other things we’ll need.  We cast the actors and hire the crew.

Next comes PRODUCTION, when the cameras start rolling.  It’s the most expensive part of the process, because we have around a hundred people working 12 hour days.  On Tremors 1 we shot for about 50 days.  On Tremors 2 we had to shoot the same amount of action in only 28 days!  On Tremors 3 we had only 24 days!  We had to do it in less time to save money.  It was hard, but we got it done.

Finally comes POST-PRODUCTION.  On Tremors 3 we have about three and a half months.  The director and film editor take all the film we shot and edit it together, picking the best takes of the action, trying different ways of cutting shots together.  Then all the sounds effects are created.   The music is written and recorded.  Finally all the sounds and music are mixed together into one sound track and we’re ready to make prints videos, or DVD.

In movie reality graboids are about thirty feet long and about five feet in diameter at their widest point.  Amalgamated Dynamics has constructed only two of them full length (the one Val digs up in Tremors 1, which was only the top half lying on the dirt; and the split-open graboid in Tremors 2).  The other times you see them full length, they are 1/4 scale miniature models made to look large.  However, in the upcoming Tremors 3, we have an all new computer- generated graboid and he looks pretty darn cool in the tests we’ve seen so far!

Shriekers are about 3½ feet high and five feet long.

Partly by tradition, most directors don’t do sequels to their own movies. Sequels usually have lower budgets (as was the case with Tremors 2 and 3) and if the first film was a hit, the director has many offers to do bigger movies (as Ron Underwood did after Tremors). All three directors of the Tremors films are part of Stampede Entertainment. It’s run by Nancy Roberts and her plan was to have all three of the original Tremors creators directing. That’s why Steve Wilson directed Tremors 2 and co-writer Brent Maddock directed Tremors 3.  The execption is that Steve Wilson came back to direct Tremors 4.

No one has ever been seriously hurt during a stunt or during a shot.  A stuntwoman sprained her ankle leaping into the bucket of the bulldozer in Tremors 1.  A crew member was in a car accident, but that was not on the set.  We are extremely careful and make sure that everyone on the crew is constantly informed of the dangers.  One thing we’ve always worried about is someone falling into the deep pits we must dig for the graboids.  One the pits are covered they look just like natural ground.  So we keep them roped off with construction cones and police tape until just before we’re ready for a shot.

The guys at ADI have a whole range of things they use, depending on how close the shot is and what we want the audience to feel or learn from the shot.  The most common items are pieces of foam rubber, nylon stockings (they make good intestines) filled with various things.  Sometimes they use food products like canned pumpkin.  All of these things get mixed with their graboid blood formula developed specially for Tremors.

Only sagebrush and Josuha trees. The original town was torn down soon after production. The local people contributed labor in return for getting to use the lumber, etc. Even the fake rocks we built (for the pole vaulting scene and climax) are gone. However, Lone Pine is a beautiful place to visit and a zillion other famous movies have been shot there. As for the other films: the Tremors 2 oil field office location was torn down. We thought the Chang’s Market built for Tremors 3 was going to survive. It was bought by a movie ranch and rebuilt on their land, but we’ve since been told it was later destroyed by fire. Oh well.

Tremors was filmed in Lone Pine, CA. The snowcapped mountains behind Perfection are the Seirras. The large dry lake visible in a few shots in the climax is Owens Dry Lake. Tremors 2 and 3 were shot on several locations near Valencia, California, just north of Los Angeles.  We could not afford to go back to Lone Pine where we shot Tremors 1.  One location on Tremors 3 is the same one we used in Tremors 2.  Can you spot it?  It looks very different because we were shooting in fall instead of spring.

I had a job working as an editor at a navy base in the middle of the Mojave Desert. On weekends, when they weren’t shooting at the gunnery ranges, I was allowed to go hiking out there. One day when climbing over large boulders exactly like those in Tremors, off of which the people pole vault, I had a thought. “What if something was under the ground and I couldn’t get off this rock?”  I wrote that thought down on a scrap of note paper and filed it away.  That scrap of paper sat in a file folder for a number of years and was resurrected after Brent and I sold Short Circuit. Nancy Roberts, then our agent, told us “Now for the fun part. Get out all those old ideas”, So we did. And one of the ones she liked the best was this note that eventually became Tremors.

From time to time fans point out similarities between the Tremors monsters and other monsters they’ve seen in the fantasy-SF universe. Such coincidences are inevitable, but we did not work from any pre-existing ideas or artwork in creating the monsters. For Tremors, the Graboids were roughly described in the script. Brent Maddock and I felt that anything moving through the ground would have to have a streamlined shape. I had a desire that the mouth be really unusual and “open like a flower.” Since earthworms move in part by bracing themselves with stiff backward-facing hairs, we added the concept of the spikes on the sides of the creatures. From those sketchy descriptions, Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis created the initial concepts which became the Graboids. Woodruff and Gillis have an extensive knowledge of the animal world and incorporated many real-world details into the final wonderful design they executed.

I came up with the idea of graboids turning into smaller monsters (instead of bigger) while driving in the desert on a trip.  For the Shriekers, we knew that we wanted bi-peds, the heat-seeker organ, and the same fantastic mouth design. Here again, Woodruff and Gillis brought us many sketches and concepts. The whole production team — including Maddock, Wilson, Chris DeFaria, and Nancy Roberts had input on the final look. After the movie came out, one fan wrote to say the Shriekers looked very much like a bi-pedal creature drawn by a well-known SF artist, but here again, this was just a coincidence.

For a more in-depth look at the world of monster design enter the world of  Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis by visiting The Monster Makers web site!

We get a lot of fans asking why they can’t buy rubber Graboids and Val and Earl action figures or video games.  Some of you have even offered to help design or even manufacture them.  Others have helpfully suggested lower-budget ways they could be produced.  Still another asked if we just had a small leftover graboid in “hardened clay” he could buy.  (Sorry, the graboids were constructed full size; the clay versions are gone, and the casting molds are huge.  Even the ¼ scale graboids are pretty big.)

In answer:  we wish we could get Universal to think like our fans!  You have to believe us when we say we’re just as frustrated as you are.  We don’t control the Tremors “franchise.”  Universal Pictures has the final say over all marketing and merchandising.  I hear from sources inside Universal that the various marketing departments are expressing increased interest in our “franchise.”  In English, that means they’re recognizing that there are a lot of Tremors fans out there. Nothing is definite, but here are some of the things that are being considered at Universal: Toys, action figures, collectibles and video games.  The Tremors series is being considered for promotion in these areas, and deals may be discussed with toy companies, game designers, etc.

Universal is also planning some fun stuff for the official Universal Tremors 3 website, which should be up soon.  They might give away props or other collectibles from Tremors 3.  So be sure to watch for that site.  And feel free to e-mail Universal directly with your thoughts and wishes. Show’em you care!  Tell’em what you want!

May 2010 update: Obviously this did not happen.  We understand that some Tremors 4 props were sold on e-bay, notably Hiram’s bicycle, but have no more information than that.

Michael’s TV show, Family Ties, was very big at the time. The studio heads said we should read him because he was such a well known star. We were doubtful, since his character on the show couldn’t have been more different from Burt, nor is Michael at all like Burt in person! Little did we realize what a chameleon-like actor Michael is. Well, he blew us away when he came in to read, and we’ve benefited from the association ever since. BTW, any of you nitpickers notice Burt’s name is misspelled in the T-3 trailer?

Okay, some of you say it’s north-south, and some of you say it’s east-west. We think it’s north-south. Here’s why. First of all, that’s the way the original town was built in the Lone Pine area. Chang’s Market was on the west side of the street. North was toward Nestor’s trailer (Nestor was the guy pulled through the spare tire.)

That having been said, what does reality have to do with anything? Burt points out in Tremors 1 that there are cliffs to the north (the ones through which Val stampedes the last Graboid) and mountains to the east and west. What we meant was the north end of the valley ended in cliffs and the other got narrower and narrower as the road wound toward Bixby. S.S. Wilson proposes that the obviously non-standardized map to which Val refers is not oriented east-west, but oriented to make the long valley easier to display on a wall, with Perfection at the South (right-hand) side. In movie-reality, Chang’s then ends up on the East side of the main street.

The clincher in our argument comes in Tremors 3. Burt refers to geologic survey maps in discussing the path of the current crop of Graboids. Using his laser pointer, he says, “They’re moving down from the north, just like last time. Jasmer quadrangle straight down to Calypso quadrangle. So clearly, Perfection Valley runs north-south. Also on the map for those into topographic symbols, slopes are indicated on the east and west sides.

We have adhered to this north-south orientation in Tremors 4.

Graboids are neither girls nor boys. They are hermaphroditic. That means they have characteristics of both sexes and don’t reproduce in the normal male-female way of most creatures on earth.

Guess they have to ride the school bus to Bixby. We should’ve put a school bus full of endangered kids in T-1 or T-3!

Well, our idea way back in T-1 was that, before moving to Perfection, Burt and Heather worked hard, both made good money, and were shrewd investors. Their fear of impending World War III caused them to retire early and move to the valley for it’s desirable “geographic isolation” as Burt says in T-1. The capital outlay for firearms, fuel and water storage, etc, was large, but upkeep, taxes, and expenses would thereafter be low way out in the boonies. Since then, of course, in T-2, Burt made a lot of money killing graboids, and even more killing shriekers in T-3, so he’s pretty well set financially.  In T-4, we lay groundwork for the possibility that he also inherited money from Hiram Gummer’s silver mine.

Some of you have noticed that certain things about Burt’s basement bunker changed between Tremors 3 and the TV series. You are correct and, as usual, very observant. Let’s back up to the beginning.

Tremors 1 – Basement has no safe room or shooting range. Entrance stairs briefly glimpsed on wall adjacent to the wall the Graboid comes through.

Tremors 2. Our production designer Ivo Cristante, duplicated the T-1 basement – with some deliberate differences. For example, he put a repaired section of wall to indicate where the Graboid came through in Tremors 1, although, if you analyze it, you realize it appears to be the wrong wall. In Tremors 1 the Graboid came through the wall opposite the gun wall. Here, the patched area is in the wall next to the gun wall. Okay, we’ll say Burt decided to move his gun wall during the repairs. He also moved his reloading equipment and added wood paneling to the wall behind his easy chair, perhaps to make room for mounting his stuffed Graboid trophy head. He also put up all his other hunting trophies.

We didn’t see the stairs, shooting range, or safe room, but we can assume they were on the unseen fourth wall.

Tremors 3. We see the wall we didn’t see in Tremors 2, revealing the safe room, stairs, and shooting range for the first time. The gun wall, repaired wall, and wood-paneled wall are oriented the same as in Tremors 2, but Burt seems to have become more PC and removed all his hunting trophies.

Tremors – The Series. As fans have noted, the entrance stairs are not in the same position. They’re now across from, instead of next to, the safe room. The reasons had mostly to do with differences in building sets for television versus for movies. But one fan has proposed that when Burt rebuilt his bunker after it was blown up in T-3, he moved the stairs to the opposite wall from the safe room. Hey, we buy that! Seems like something Burt would do. He situated the stairs to give himself a better field of fire toward the compound entrance. You know how Burt likes a good field of fire.

Also he replaced the Tremors 3 “drawbridge style” safe room door with the sliding door because it was simpler, more reliable, and took up less room. Finally, it’s been suggested that his firing range is in a different position in the series than in Tremors 3. But we think it’s in the same place, relative to the safe room. Are we wrong? Heaven knows we’ve been wrong before.

Now, a question for you observant fans, have any of you noticed what’s different about Chang’s market in the series?

Well, we don’t really know. But it’s definitely many miles long, say 30-50 miles, and several miles wide. Some more hints about the size will appear in Tremors 4.