Goodbye Harry Wiessenhaan

Sad news to report today: Harry Wiessenhaan, the special effects supervisor for the 1999 Wing Commander movie, has passed away at age 75 on Monday, August 5. You can read his obituary here.

Mr. Wiessenhaan was the man who brought special effects to the Netherlands, forming a company called Special Effects Verstraete & Wiessenhaan in the 1970s. He and his team would go on to work on hundreds of films, both local productions in the Netherlands and major international projects shot in Europe. His work was often a family affair as evidenced from Wing Commander's credits, which include his brother Edward (special effects coordinator) his son Rick (stunts coordinator) and others. Wiessenhaan's team were experts at a variety of types of SFX work including pyrotechnics, weapons, bullet hits and wire work, all of which were put to good use in Wing Commander!

It isn't often remembered that when making Wing Commander Chris Roberts prioritized locking down top talent for behind the scenes duties which is how the project ended up with talent like Peter Lamont, Ron Cobb… and Mr. Wiessenhaan's special effects team! While his son notes that he preferred to avoid the press in favor of focusing on his work, he did seem to be particularly proud of the wire work done for Wing Commander's explosive decompression scene. The sequence required that Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. 'fly' as they are bing sucked out of the Tiger Claw's hangar into space. His now defunct website once boasted several behind the scenes images of the complicated stunt being shot:

He also showed off his work on setting up the Tiger's Claw bridge set to move in precisely the way Star Trek's Enterprise did not. He posted the below picture noting it was a "40 ton set being shaken and stirred".

An April 1999 Cinefex article ("Space Ace Engagement") notes his involvement with the creature team, rigging the Kilrathi bodies to take bullet hits during the gunfights at Pegasus and aboard the ConCom.

Foam latex was selected over silicone for the manufacture of Kilrathi skin appliances. "With all the stunts and explosions going on:' said Williams, "it was going to be too easy to tear silicone, which can be rather difficult to repair. With all the bullet hits involved, there was a lot of on-the-spot rigging. Fortunately, we took all the molds along with us so the chest pieces could be remade after special effects supervisor Harry Wiessenhaan's crew blew holes in them. We would pack blood bags and guts inside, then cover the bullet hits with a thin layer of plaster painted to match the armor.

We would like to send our condolences to Mr. Wiessenhaan's family and friends; the Wing Commander community will always be grateful for the effort and professionalism he put into making the effects of our movie better than they had any right to be!

We believe that these shots of a camera on a rig line posted to his former company website are probably from Wing Commander and are archiving them here for posterity.