Background information on the Multipass project.

Path: Props Home > The Fifth Element > Multipass Background >

As Seen In:		The Fifth Element
Time Spent:		Way too long.
Date Added:		Sept 2003

I started researching the MultiPass back in 2000 (more than four years ago) when it occurred to me that I could leverage my computer graphics and design skills to produce a precise and accurate reproduction of the prop. Another primary motivator was a high resolution scan of the prop that was found in a “making of” book entitled "The Story of The Fifth Element". The book was widely distributed in many languages, but due to demand, the only commonly available version is in French. I often refer to it in my notes as "The French Book". The book clearly showed the face of the pass and the graphics contained therein. This was the missing component that I had been searching for ever since I saw the film on the big screen.

I began by tracing the basic outline of the prop in Adobe Illustrator. This turned out to be a tad difficult, as the scan of the pass was a little tweaked and required some straightening. Another interesting problem was the clipping path that was put in by the book publisher. Essentially, the makers of the French book cut out the picture of the pass to place it into their book. By cutting out the photo, they sliced off some details, and skewed others. This required me to reconstruct some of the shapes, and draw my own conclusions about the set up of the pass. For example, I concluded that the “button” in the lower left had corner of the pass was perfectly round. In the French book, it appears a bit uneven, but I concluded that this was an artifact of the clipping path. Another interesting artifact of the published picture was the unevenness of the curves at the tips of the arms. In the French book, they are different shapes. In my version, the curves are unified.

Once I had the basic outline of the pass down, I set about to figuring out which pieces of the pass sat on which layer. From the various screen captures, I concluded that there were three main layers. There’s a mid plate, on which the graphics sit, a top plate and a bottom plate. Oddly enough, it took me a good deal of time to figure out which pieces sat where.

One detail I struggled with is the size of the pass. It was suggested that the pass is based on a standard credit card. The MultiPass functions as something of a credit card in the movie, so it’s a reasonable leap of logic. The pass almost looks like a credit card with a plastic wrapper. This often leads people to believe that the main part of the pass is removable from the twin armed housing. In mid 2004, this theory proved to be correct when I acquire a "made for production" set of Multipass graphics. I am unsure if they were used in the film. They may have been, but I cannot confirm. I have added pictures of these graphics to my website. With the original credit card theory in mind, I scanned in a credit card of mine, and resized the pass so that the credit card would fit where the graphics go. This seemed pretty reasonable to me.

At this point, I concentrated on the graphics. I decided to reconstruct every detail of the graphics in adobe illustrator, save for the pictures of Korben. This seemed reasonable to me as a direct print out of the scan from the French book looked pretty crappy. I took my first stab at it, and posted my results to the internet. With the help of a large number of people, the graphics were polished and perfected over the span of a month or two. Fonts were found, colors were isolated, and problems were solved. The main “MULTIPASS” logo was entirely scratch built, as no font was discovered that matched it.

The next big breakthrough came when I stumbled upon a piece of Evergreen styrene at my local hobby store. It was a stepped styrene that is commonly used by industry professionals when kit bashing and scratch building. I originally suspected that the stepped part was scratch built, but an industry friend insisted that no prop maker would scratch build such a common pattern. I ended up purchasing a few different types of styrene, and nailed it on my third try. The reason this was such a critical breakthrough is because it allowed me to confirm with utter certainty what the size of the pass is. The pass in the French book clearly shows a number of steps on the inside detailing of the MultiPass. By scanning in a sample of styrene I had found, I resized the French drawing so that it’s stepped pieces matched exactly. Victory was at hand.

I then spent a great deal of time trying to track down the dome that is used for the button. While at a fellow hobbyists house, he showed me a couple of “Google eyes” that seemed to be of the right shape. I knew I was on to something. These are the eyes that are used on stuffed animals and dolls. They have a very thin vacuuformed clear shell with a black disk underneath it for the pupil. I ended up scouring Wal-Marts, fabric stores, and the internet to find google eyes with the same dome shape as the one seen in a couple of key Fifth Element screen captures. I found one that is very close. Though I was not 100% sure that this is the item the prop makers used to build the original multi-pass, it’s pretty darn close.

Almost a year later, another discovery was made. I don't recall what lead me to it, but I was browsing through the Plastruct catalog and stumbled upon their selection of clear hemispheres and domes. There was a part that looked pretty close, so I ordered a few to try them out. When I unwrapped the dome, I was shocked. It looked perfect. Even stranger, it dropped right into the laser cut samples I had of my kit. It was a perfect fit. The only bummer was that it had a big ejection port nipple in the middle of it. I figured out a technique to eliminate this flaw, and it works great. However, when I look at screen grabs and reference pictures, I think the nipple is still there. It's a mystery.

I now had my stepped styrene, and my clear button. From there I constructed my first prototype.

My first prototype was built using styrene. I used .030” thick styrene for the three layers. It turned out pretty good, but the yellow button proved to be problematic. One drawback to the google eyes I chose are a tad too big for the pass as I had sized it. I sanded down a number of google eyes to get it to be the right size, but always encountered problems. I’d either sand it too much on one side, sand too deeply, or just screw it up somehow. This was a bummer, but I plowed ahead and built my first prototype. I had not yet found the LED, so I used a piece of styrene to simulate it. You can see pictures of my first prototype on my website:

../multi_pass_prototype/index.html

As you can see from the prototype, it’s far too thin. The doughnut is also way too thin. However, this proved to be a good learning exercise.

A trip to Home Depot yielded a chain and clasp that matched pretty closely the one seen on screen. Not everyone used a chain to hold their Multipass, but I wanted to cover that in case it ever arose. You can find the chains in the ceiling fan section of any good hardware store. They sell them as replacement pull chains, and come with a few clasps.

In the mean time, my search for the LED began. I went to a few electronics stores and described what I needed, which always resulted in shrugged shoulders. I ended up going to digikey.com and requesting a print catalog. I knew I was looking for a rectangular LED with a white border. Their catalog offered about 10 different varieties that seemed somewhat close in dimension. I ordered one of each, and was very pleased to find that one of them was dead on. I measured the LED and compared it to my drawings, and it fit perfectly. This confirmed for me that the scale I had chosen for my Multipass was accurate.

I built another prototype at this point to see if I could get the LED to fit into the body and to work. I built this using .040” styrene. It turned out very nicely, but there was not much room at all for electronics. There was barely any room for anything! This got me thinking that maybe it was too thin. In comparison to the one “beauty” screen capture of the prop sitting on Korbens counter, it looked as if I had the thickness nailed at .040”, but I couldn’t make sense of the electronics.

I built another prototype using .050” styrene, and it was way too thick. I then built one using a combination of .050” and .040”, but it was still too thick. I concluded that the pass must have been built using .040” styrene, and that some movie magic was done to make the electronics fit and work.

After experimenting with a radio shack PC board kit, I figured out how they must have done it. I then incorporated room for a PC board into my kit, and moved ahead.

I decided to take a stab at the graphics on the back side of the pass. Using my DVD captures, I got some really good shots of the pass from the airport scenes. I sat down with adobe illustrator and worked out the details. However, there is one section of the graphics that is very weird looking, and hard to nail down. I’m not sure if it’s some kind of holographic strip, or perhaps a reflective foil surface or something. Either way, I cannot figure out what it is. To solve this problem, I simply incorporated a screen grab into my graphics. That weird portion of the backside of the pass is lifted directly from the DVD.

An unfortunate thing happened while I was developing the backside graphics for the pass. A fellow fifth element enthusiast posted to the internet some screen captures from a high definition version of the movie. These screen captures revealed to me many new details, namely that there was a matching step pattern on the back side of the pass. This totally screwed up my design, and forced me to rethink many of my assumptions. After a few changes, I figured out how to make it work. All was good in the world.

One of the last details to be resolved was the rod that is on the left side of the pass. From different screen captures of different passes, the rod appears to be either yellow, red, or some weird speckle texture. Some passes don’t have a rod at all. I went back to Plastruct and ordered a few different colored rods in a few different thicknesses. Ultimately, I settled on the 1/8” acrylic tinted rod. I personally think the rod on the Korben pass is yellow in many scenes.

I still had a few issues with the thickness of the pass, namely around the doughnut area. I unearthed a screen grab of the “birth of Leeloo” scene that showed a pretty decent side shot of Munroe’s pass. It seemed to me that if the pass was three layers thick, two additional layers in each direction would make the doughnut shape perfectly. That reminds me, another detail I discovered from the high def screen caps was that the doughnut extended out the back of the pass, as well as out the front. My original designs did not include that.

That pretty much wraps up the design process. The next step was to find a laser cutter who would cut the parts for me. This proved very difficult. Out of the tons of cutters I contacted, about three of them got back to me. After that, it was a matter of shopping for quotes and samples. It turns out that not all laser cutters are alike. While some cutters cut smoothly and don’t do much melting, others offer sloppy cuts and heavy melts. I finally found an outfit in northern California that would handle my job.

Bummer is, adobe illustrator files are not handled well by their software. Long story short, the drafter at this company had to redraw the pass parts from scratch. This proved to be a harrowing experience, as I was adamant that every detail be matched with utter precision. I didn’t want there to be any misinterpretation of my designs. This process took about six months from start to finish. One of the reasons it took so long was because I was such a low priority job for them. They were basically working on my project when they had free time. This is totally understandable, and I have no problem with that. It just sucks to be me. After a long wait, some samples started coming down the line. When I got the first one, I almost went through the ceiling at how cool it was. It looked great. However, when I compared it to my drawings, I noticed that there were many subtle differences. It took many phone calls, e-mails and drawings to get everything back on track. Of course, the more complex my project got, the higher the costs went. I discovered a way to simplify the design and eliminate one shape altogether. The only drawback is that the builder has to make a couple cuts into one of the pieces. I tried to make it so that the cuts would be simple, and I think it panned out that way.

The last hurdle to jump came from an unexpected source. It turns out that when the laser cuts styrene, it actually burns away some of it. So, my pieces were a mm too small on every side. Another round of corrections and samples fixed this, but I was at my wits end. I was hoping to have this project wrapped up at the end of November 2003, and here it was May of 2004.

In a recent twist of good fortune, some more internet research and rock-turning led me to a laser cutter that can deal with adobe Illustrator files directly. They are also a tad cheaper than my previous contact. This granted me the freedom to experiment more with my design, perfect it, and get it cut the way I wanted to.

In my version 1.0 pass, I had to sacrifice a few details to get it done. The curves at the end of the arms are not quite perfect. This was due to the re-interpretation process by the drafter working at the laser cutting place. Another item I didn’t even notice until after production was that he made the lower “arm” too thick. To save costs, I duplicated one of the plates twice, placing the burden of “accurizing” it on the builder. Bummer. With the new cutter, I eliminated this altogether, and had each piece cut to perfection. I also tightened up some of the tolerances so that the parts fit together a little more snugly. This version 2.0 pass is now available.

To make matters worse, I recently stumbled onto another change I need to make in the design. On the back side, there is a small circular cutout that I neglected to put in.

Even today, some mysteries remain unsolved. For example, I am unsure if there is a contour to the top arm. In some screen captures, the shading indicates that it is rounded out. For example:

I believe the profile of the pass to be something like that illustrated in this diagram:

Another unsettled debate is regarding a small cut or layer in the bottom arm. You can see the detail in the picture below, and it’s even more clear if you look at the picture above of David’s pass as it’s sliding into the airport slot. Though I am aware of this detail, and believe it to exist, I simply could not find a way to make that detail work with my design of the pass. Believe me, I tried!

However, now it’s all done. The only thing that remains is for me to do the graphics for the other characters in the film, and finish my online tutorial.

As a bit of an update, I must mention that my "made for production" set of graphics allowed me to reproduce the back side perfectly. I scanned it in at a really high resolution, and traced out all of the detail that I was capable of. For the weird blurry part, I simply incorporated the scan directly into my graphics. It looks awesome!

For all of you who followed this project, and helped with its development, I thank you deeply. Without the encouragement, help, and attention to detail of all the helpful people around the globe, this project could not have been completed.

Here’s an incomplete list of people who assisted in one way or another with this project:

Tim Arp
Ted Smith
Kim & Chris
Barry Jones
Chad Chavez
Michael Davis
Mark Worley
Richard Coyle