Meet Fon Davis of Cypress Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Fon Davis.

Hi Fon , we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My father was from Oklahoma and met my mother in Vietnam during the war. I was borin in Saigon, at the Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Force Base. My father brought our family to California in 1975 after the war ended. It was there that he took me to the drive in theatre to see Star Wars. After the movie, I became fascinated with special effects. I went to the library and checked out a book called “Star Wars: The Making of the Movie”. That is where I dicovered model making was job and I wanted to grow up and do that job.

I started buying every magazine that I could find on special effects. Adding to my enthusiasm, I notice these three Asian model makers, Greg Jien, Larry Tan and Ease Owyeung, pictured in behind the scenes pictures. I would think in my child’s brain “They let us do that???”. After high school, I moved to the San Fransisco Bay Area with $15, a tote bag and my dreams. This was the home of Lucasfilm and a handful of other studios. I freelanced for nine companies, working really hard to build a diverse portfolio, including time at Colossal Pictures. That is where I met a number of artists in stop motion, who helped me get on to my first feature film at Disney’s Skellington Productions, The Nightmare Before Christmas, followed by James and the Giant Peach. Skellington shut down in 1996.

From there I was able to easily transition to Industrial Light and Magic’s Model Creature shop in Marin, where we worked on some of the biggest movie franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator and Jurassic Park, as well as joining the crew on original features like Mars Attacks, Galaxy Quest, Deep Impact, The Island and Pearl Harbor. It was a dream come true!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
…Until it wasn’t.

The time between feature films slowed through the years. Many of us filled our time at my home shop called Fonco. After a decade at in ILM’s practical division, the departments were sold to the Kerner Group, which spiraled the newly founded company in to a wild set of dramas covered very well in this cineSOURCE article by Doniphan Blair: https://cinesourcemagazine.com/index.php?/site/comments/the_kerner_collapse_hubris_hustle_or_outright_scam/

During the “Kerner years” I rejoined a bunch of the Skelington crew at Laika Entertainment in Portland, Oregon for Coraline. When that show wrapped, I realized Laika was the only game in town and I’d have no work until their next movie if I stayed in Portland. So I moved back to Marin and started work at Disney’s Image Movers Digital with Doug Chiang who I had met on the Star Wars prequels. The crew there was absolutely delightful! OK new plan, I will work at IMD to retirement! I loved it there!

…Four years later IMD shut down.

A group of us from ILM started working at Fonco in Marin full time. That worked for a number of years, but the course had been set for the SF Bay Area. The industry slowly fell dissolved in front of my eyes. Fonco died slowly and quietly. I lost my business, my home, initiated a divorce.

So I swore I would never run a company again and moved to the epicenter of the entertainment industry, sunny Los Angeles California to work at New Deal Studios. I was there for one year and they folded in to a mobile effects company. So I started renting space at at a newly founded Vanaheim Studios. After a couple years, they folded. So I took over the studio space and officially launched Fonco Studios in Los Angeles.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We started thriving in LA’s rich creative environment almost immediately. So many artist entrepreneurs like myself come to Los Angeles, it was easy to find artists, collaborators and clients. Because of my background in special effects features, our specialty has always been “the unusual”, like fantasy/sci-fi visual story telling through performance, sets, props, miniatures, creatures, robots and effects. Our Slogan is “That’s impossible, …When do you want it?” We are where traditional art and technology meet.

With our production offices, art department, stages, standing sets, sound, post production, set, prop, and costume shops, we worked primarily in film and television as an “À la carte” studio, filling in the blanks for productions to make them whole and achieve their goals.

As the years passed we solidified our place in a diverse set of industries, including full productions, theme parks, live performance, activations, museums, product development, robotics, and even aviation. That diversity combined with the resilience of Los Angeles, has enabled us to weather many storms.

We did not just build a studio, we built a community of artists working with local educators, like LA and Glendale Unified, The Stan Winston School of Character Arts, and charities like Dwanta Claus and The Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation.

So in the end, if you want to find challenging creative work at a company you can stay with until retirement, sometimes you have to create it yourself.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
My advice to anyone moving to Los Angeles: You can find almost anything here, good or bad, but you need to find it. It won’t often find you.

In my first year in Los Angeles I went to every party and event I was invited to. The more I went, the more I was invited. By the end of that year I had to schedule each night with alarmes on my phone, to hit everything I was attending. It was a great way to quickly meet new friends and collaborators.

Find your tribe, find your place and if you are like me, you need to find the best restarant in every nationality LA has to offer.

Because food feeds your mood.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.foncostudios.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fonhdavis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FonHDavis
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fonhdavis/
• Twitter: https://x.com/FonHDavis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@foncostudios