Although Dykstra stood 30-feet away, he got what they call sunburn from the radiant heat.

BD: So tell me what it was like for you to work on this particular film and the visual effects challenges.

JD: From the get-go, what we always do is translate the written word into something visual and, of course, Quentin's great to talk to because he's a total visualist in the way he conceives of the storytelling aspect. So we were trying to figure out how to impart the presence of this character in this scene in the theater in a way that would impactful. His initial idea was to have Shosanna's image on screen and have the fire consume the image. Well, by traditional standards, you would set about doing that by shooting the screen and then shooting the fire as a separate element and doing an optical composite to put the two pieces together. But he wanted very much to have that happen in the environment with the audience watching the actors, the stunt people and the extras. So it was a challenge because, technically speaking, fire is very bright and if you want to have fire with any detail in it, you have to expose it in an f/8 or an f/11. And when you do a projected image, you’re limited by the brightness of the projector, and, of course, that usually is in the realm of an f/4 or f/5. So it was trying to figure out how to create this image in situ, which was one of his prerequisites, or at least that's where he wanted to start, and make all of the components synchronize. And we had to figure out how to make the screen burn at the rate that you choose to have it burn and have it start at the point you want it to start and have it integrate with the action of the image that's being projected because it's all happening at one time.

BD: So what was the solution?

JD: We worked hand-in-hand with the special effects guys and we came up with chemistry to make a screen that would be opaque and flat enough to be able to project onto and get a credible image, and, at the same time, burn in a consistent fashion. Not only in terms of how quickly it consumed but also how quickly you could ignite it. So we worked and worked and worked on getting control of the burning of the screen. In parallel with that, Lester Dunton, who was in charge of specialty projection, and Wassili Zygouris, who was the projectionist supervisor, figured out how to get projection that was bright enough to compete with the actual fire. So we also worked on the materials component of the screen burn to see if we could find something that would burn less brightly and with more color. So, as you can see, there were a lot of components and trial and error.

That was combined, of course, with the conflagration that happened after the fact. Not only did we have to burn the screen in sync with the projected image but we also had to create the fire that existed behind the screen once the image had been consumed. So from my point of view that was also a big undertaking. It was incredible: we had a big set on stage in Rudersdorf, which is a cement factory in the Eastern part of Germany. And we had this great big rostrum set up, and on the rostrum there were around 15 technicians each with their own set of values running to a giant propane gas tank outside. And that whole package, then, was choreographed timing wise to the projected image… And the wall of fire was divided into component pieces. It was quite amazing, but I stood 30-feet away from it and I got what they call sunburn from the radiant heat.