Burtt, Barron, and Braeden: Behind the Scenes of Colossus at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival
June 30, 2025
As I’ve written about at length, I’m a superfan of the presentations Oscar winners Ben Burtt and Craig Barron host at the TCM Classic Film Festival every year. Their sound and visual effects deep dives are always entertaining, and they’ve grown more and more popular each festival.
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Most of Burtt and Barron’s programs have focused on movies familiar to me, like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and Them! (1954). Not so at TCMFF 2025. In fact, I had never heard of the sci-fi movie they were dissecting, Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970). Originally, I planned on staying for the intro and skipping the feature, as there were two competing screenings that interested me. But once I saw how long the line was, I decided to stay—and I’m glad I did!
Colossus centers around America’s brand-new defense system, the supercomputer Colossus, which becomes sentient right after it assumes full control from its creator, Dr. Forbin (Eric Braeden), and the US government. The machine links with a Russian supercomputer, expanding its power and shutting all humans out as it attempts to put an end to global warfare—with drastic, extreme measures that go against Forbin’s orders. The film, while over 50 years old, feels very relevant and timely today with the quick rise of AI and the chokehold technology has on us.
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Not only was star Eric Braeden in attendance, which was a thrill (and he indulged us in a special treat after the picture), but I found myself wholly engrossed by the movie, which I did not expect. Below are select highlights from the presentation and short conversation with Braeden.
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The Evolution of Sci-Fi
Colossus is pure sci-fi, a genre with roots in cinema’s early years. From robots to machines to AI, science has long fascinated filmmakers and audiences. To put the film into context, Burtt and Barron shared a timeline of movies involving AI through the late 1960s, from A Trip to the Moon (1902) to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and everything in between, so we could get a sense of how the technology evolved over the decades.
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Burtt explained that while AI was generally considered the villain on screen, it oftentimes was campy, a treatment that started to change around this time. “2001 was the last [sci-fi AI] film before Colossus, and it was maturing into a more serious concept for motion pictures that there was a real threat out there,” he remarked. “We weren’t falling in love with computers anymore.”
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The Cast and Crew
D.F. Jones wrote the Colossus trilogy of books, the first released in 1966. Universal producer Stanley Chase optioned the work and hired James Bridges to pen the script. (Bridges later wrote and directed 1973’s The Paper Chase, 1979’s The China Syndrome, and 1980’s Urban Cowboy.) Joseph Sargent, who had transitioned from acting to directing shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., came on board to helm the adaptation and brought most of the cast and crew from the TV side of Universal, including art director John J. Lloyd and cinematographer Gene Polito.
Eric Braeden on the Colossus set.
Colossus marked Eric Braeden’s first lead film role; before this, he gained notoriety playing a German officer in the 1960s TV show The Rat Patrol. (Since then, he’s starred in over 4,000 episodes of The Young and the Restless, and he also appeared in 1997’s Titanic.) Chase reportedly said of Braeden, “It was important to avoid casting actors with preconceived notions. We wanted actors who were not predictable to moviegoers and what they would do in certain situations, allowing audiences to engage with the characters without any prior conceptions,” which was a smart idea for a modern, documentary-like sci-fi thriller.
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Colossus Speaks!
On the sound front, prior to this movie, computer voices usually consisted of actors whose vocals were filtered through a radio, which could add a sci-fi echo. But Universal’s sound department wanted something more unique and customizable for Colossus. So, they utilized a tool called a Vocoder, which had never been featured in movies before.
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Bell Labs debuted the device, created by Homer Dudley, at their 1939 World's Fair exhibit. Its original intention was to record the human voice and reduce its bandwidth, simplifying it so it could work with the technology of that day, mainly telephone lines and radio broadcasts. I’m no tech wiz, but how I understood it, the Vocoder deconstructed the human voice into a simpler form—think energy bands and frequencies—that were transmitted and then reconstructed on the receiving end; basically, the signal was compressed and then decompressed.
Ben Burtt and Craig Barron presenting Colossus at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival. (Photo by Kim Luperi)
But First: The Vocoder Goes to Work for the Government
But long before its Hollywood days, right after its public unveiling in 1939, the Vocoder disappeared—and for good reason. It became classified as part of top-secret Pentagon operations during WWII. From there, it morphed into a five-ton system called the SIGSALY, used to encrypt live voice communication for secure communication during wartime.
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Burtt and Barron shared an example—a humorous fake exchange between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt—to demonstrate how the device worked. (Apparently, these two had real conversations over the SIGSALY during the war, but Burtt and Barron couldn’t locate them; they likely haven’t survived.) The result sounded like a dehumanized, alien voice, as the SIGSALY couldn’t reconstruct humans’ natural intonation. Of course, that dehumanized sound element made it perfect to use—later on, after it was declassified—in movies. (Before that, though, it was shrunken down and used a lot by musicians who wanted to merge together voice and instruments, like a guitar.)
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For Colossus, Universal hired famous voice actor Paul Frees, whose vocal stylings and mimicry was featured in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the falsetto voice of Josphine in 1959’s Some Like It Hot, the narrator of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, and much more. They simply ran his voice through the Vocoder and voila: Colossus.
Part of the control room set.
The Setting
Fun fact: Colossus filmed at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California, and Barron was actually there while they were shooting the movie! (He was a high school student but involved in the computer graphics department.)
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Initially, Colossus was set in the future, but “the future turned out to be expensive,” Burtt joked, as production designer John J. Lloyd would have to worry about crafting details big and small for a futuristic setting. Instead, producer Stanley Chase suggested a present-day (1970) setting, a move that kept expenses down and the film more accessible to audiences.
By the time that choice was made, however, Lloyd only had about one month to design the movie, including the circular Colossus control room set! Several custom props, including the video phone, Colossus monitor, and teletype were created for the film and functioned as drivers for the story, as well.
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Speaking of the video phone sequences, Burtt mentioned they were especially notable because they had to be filmed on more than one set at the same time so cameras could be on actors on both sides of the conversation if, say, the control room was speaking to the White House. Burtt termed it a “zoom call of its day.” That required an abundance of attention to lighting, color, and synchronization, as they were filming off TV screens and coordinating action between the two sets.
This is the scene the infamous matte painting was used in. Can you tell? I can't!
One Complicated Matte Painting
On the visual effects side, the computer activation sequence at the very beginning of the film was actually a mix of live action and elaborate matte painting, crafted by Albert Whitlock. Whitlock was well-known for his miniature effects and matte work, collaborating with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. By the 1970s, he was at Universal. Not only could he create fanciful science fiction scenes, but he was also a master at forest, trees, skies—you name it. “Whitlock was known as Universal’s secret weapon,” Barron remarked, “for his extraordinary ability to create convincing matte paintings that could transform modest film sets into grand expansive environments.” (He’d go on to win an Oscar for 1974’s Earthquake.)
Of all the remarkable art Whitlock crafted throughout his career, he claimed his work on Colossus was his most complicated matte painting shot ever. And after Barron walked us through it, I could see why! To start, with matte paintings, a black matte is put in the camera to mask out that part of the frame while filming the live action. In the film’s opening scene, the giant computer being turned on was part of the matte painting. Whitlock had to get the perspective of the long hall correct so he could extend the live action, particularly the lights coming on, into the painting, as basically an animation inside it, to ensure it lined up perfectly with what was happening on set. Most matte paintings were static to avoid this exact type of simulation. “It’s a tour de force shot for Albert Whitlock,” Barron raved.
Eric Braeden chats Colossus with Burtt and Barron on stage. (Photo by Kim Luperi)
Eric Braeden Remembers Colossus
Braeden came to Hollywood from his native Germany in 1960, appearing in bit roles in movies and TV series under his birth name, Hans Gudegast, for most of the decade. Chase approached him for Colossus while he was filming 100 Rifles (1969) in Spain. He had five days off, dashed off to do the screen test, flew back to Spain, and received a call from an agent a few days later telling him he won the role. “It’s a moment of extraordinary jubilation,” Braeden recalled. “Then he [the agent] said, ‘But—.' I said, ‘But what?’ ‘He wants you to change your name from Hans Gudegast to Eric Braeden.’ And I said, ‘Tell him to f*ck himself.’” Obviously, he was not happy with this request. However, his wife, Dale, who knew how tired he was of playing stereotypical German roles, talked him into it. (His legal name remains Hans Gudegast.)
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Braeden said he was “overwhelmed” seeing the film now and praised the crew, including Chase for putting the movie together and Joe Sargent’s “wonderful” directing. “James Bridges, you know writers get so little credit, they get so little credit,” he added. “Without their foundation, where the hell would we be in Hollywood?” (As an aside, he also mentioned that he saw someone he didn’t know on set every day, standing next to Sargent. As it was a closed set, he asked who it was. “It was [Steven] Spielberg,” he revealed. At that time, Spielberg was an up-and-coming director.)
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Burtt and Barron praised the film’s technical effects and asked Braeden about some of the visuals used in the movie. “You two explained it so well before,” he remarked. “I have no idea how they do it. I just have no clue. It's just extraordinary and both of you understand it far better than I do. And as an actor you really—yes, you understand the role—but you don't understand the craft that goes into making a film.” That said, while he didn’t recall seeing the two different sets used for the video call scenes, he did remember the Colossus monitor being a live effect (for them to see and read on set, as opposed to being added later) and Paul Frees performing the voice of Colossus live. “I just now realized all the stuff that went into making that film,” Braeden marveled. “My goodness, and how impressive on the part of Stanley Chase, the producer. All these people don't get enough credit. We as actors, we do.”
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The legacy of Colossus has certainly lived on. Braeden recalled a memory from Titanic: He just finished a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio and heard someone behind him exclaim, “Never!” Thinking someone was being rude to him, he turned around and said, “What?” “That’s the last line of Colossus,” Titanic director James Cameron enthused. Clearly, he was a big fan!
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“Well, we have a little surprise here for you,” Barron told Braeden as the program was wrapping up. “You do?” Braeden inquired. “Never!” “I've been having some problems with my computer lately,” Barron began… And with that, Colossus appeared on the big screen: “Greetings Dr. Forbin, it’s been 54 years, two months, and 17 days since our last conversation…” It was a very fun exchange, with Colossus marveling at how much humans are interested in AI—so much so that it's writing a sequel, The Return of Colossus! I’d be a little scared to see what that would actually be like…
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I See a Dark Theater is a website dedicated to classic movie-going—and loving—in the City of Angels. Whether it's coverage on screenings, special presentations, or Q&As around Los Angeles that you're looking for, or commentary on the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of classic cinema, you've come to the right place for a variety of pieces written with zeal, awe, and (occasionally) wit. Enjoy.
