Lake Workshop Sports An Oscar

The applause in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel subsided March 2 as Hayden Lake’s Marty Mueller positioned himself behind the rostrum.

“This is pretty cool,” he said into the microphone, appreciating the hefty Academy Award for scientific and engineering achievement actor Richard Dreyfuss had just handed him.

Three giant Oscar statues towered behind Marty as he shared credit for his MSM 9801 IMAX 65mm motion picture camera with his Northwest crew - John Stafford, Gordon Gruel, Steve Robinson, Joe Christy and William Nixon - and with his family, especially his wife, Barbara.

“She’s the visionary. Plus, she’s a pretty good machinist,” Marty said, weeks after the ceremony, back home in his workshop on Hayden Lake’s eastern shore.

Marty and Barbara are an inseparable team at home and at work. He’s the piano, she’s the music. That synergy fuels everything the couple does, including the MSM 9801.

Back in 1990, the Muellers decided to build a competitor to the IMAX camera, which shoots the larger-than-life images that fill movie screens six stories high.

Marty envisioned a camera easier, more efficient and lighter than the 100-pound model then in use. Cameras fascinated Marty, just as cars had when he was a teenager.

His ability to build cars had landed him in Stanford University’s engineering school in the mid-1960s. But he liked machine work. He left Stanford after a year for trade school.

Marty fell into movie industry work in the late 1960s when a man who sold motion picture lab equipment hired him as his machinist. Marty was expected to design whatever odd devices customers wanted.

“It was a great opportunity, constantly being in over my head,” he says.

He developed printers that made copies that were better than the original films. He designed the printer that makes single frames from film images for the hand-held Viewmaster projectors.

One day he realized he’d spent 10 years in L.A. when all he wanted was a machine shop in the woods. Marty met Barbara about that time and knew she was his other half.

Barbara had run her own weaving business in Chicago and convinced Marty he could run his own shop. They opened a tiny machine shop in L.A. and found that Marty had earned a solid reputation in the industry.

In 1980, the Muellers moved to a secluded wooded spot near Fourth of July Pass. The work orders kept coming.

They vowed to stay small. Marty designed and assembled. Barbara researched, cut parts, managed the business. No order was out of the question.

“We were too dumb to know we couldn’t do something, so we’d find a way,” Marty says, grinning with Barbara at their string of successes.

They built six photo-finish cameras for Washington horse race courses and a camera that shoots larger images than normal for a Japanese special effects company. They created a state-of-the-art camera to shoot three-dimensional films for a magician.

After years of working to order, Marty decided in 1990 to build a camera no one had ordered. But a smaller, sleeker IMAX camera was tougher than he’d expected. For the first time in his career, he failed.

Barbara didn’t let him stew. They weren’t working under contract and had bills to pay. They had planned to develop the camera, build three and rent them out. Barbara wouldn’t change the plan.

“She picked me up and dusted me off and I tried again,” Marty says, rewarding his partner with a grateful smile.

His final version - the MSM 9801 - was 50 pounds lighter than previous IMAX cameras. Its lenses snapped in quickly and easily. Cinematographers began using it where no IMAX camera had gone before over cliffs, on helicopters.

Movie companies rented it to shoot “Yellowstone,” which is in theaters now, and “Zion - Treasure of the Gods,” which will open later this year. Nova rented the Muellers’ MSM 9801 for a film on special effects that will be out this year.

Last year, IMAX bought the three cameras that had made its equipment obsolete.

Marty was invited last fall to explain his camera to an Academy committee. He learned in December that he was one of 23 scientists and technicians the Academy would honor this year.

The prestigious plaque sits in the Muellers’ Hayden Lake shop now, Oscar’s gold shape glittering among the gray tools. Work goes on. The IMAX project is finished, sold, history. There is a new generation of cameras to start working on.

“There’s always something someone needs,” Marty says. “We’re explorers, not maintainers.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo