- 24 minutes ago
Creativities
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CreativityTranscript
00:00I've always wanted to do a vampire film and I've always wanted to do one in New Orleans,
00:05so when I got the call there was no way around it. We were doing it.
00:18I'm Mike Fontaine and I'm the prosthetic makeup designer and I'm working on the final death
00:26design of Remick. I first became aware of Michael Fontaine when I watched a film
00:32called Green Room. I hadn't been that viscerally moved by makeup since I saw the thing I think
00:38and kind of like left a you know left a mark on me so Green Room was one of the
00:42inspirations for
00:43our movie. Ryan and I were having a conversation early on and I started to get a sense of what
00:49his
00:50vision was from the film. The process for me always starts with the script and initial images that
00:56come to mind and we worked together to really find a point of view for what the designs would be.
01:03He really got the movie you know got what we were trying to achieve.
01:07It became very clear in the beginning that Ryan didn't want to hold back.
01:10He kind of just let me go for it and he never stifled the creativity. He only just encouraged it
01:16and let us go bold and do all this really wild stuff that I wasn't sure in the beginning if
01:21we'd be able
01:22to do. I'll usually create something and show him and he'll come back with an idea and once we hone
01:28that in process turns into drawing and painting and sculpting designing that process takes several months.
01:37Once he signs off on the sculpture it goes to New York and there's an amazing team that works around
01:44the clock to make molds and to cast these pieces into silicone that then will be brought to set in
01:51New Orleans. These are what Sammy's claw mark prosthetics look like when they come shipped.
01:56So here we have Sammy's lip prosthetics. It's made out of this very very thin silicone. This is the piece
02:03that goes on Miles lip to kind of create the shape that his lip is swollen and split down the
02:09middle.
02:11I personally hate real violence. I can't stand it but for me this is sort of an abstraction.
02:18I always go back to like the art side of it where it's the colors and the texture over it
02:23being a wound
02:24so you see like reds and purples and yellows and oranges and then you can see how he sculpted the
02:30piece and you can see where like skin is supposed to be heavy here like if you're scratched you have
02:35more weight hanging and then there's some like skin that would protrude out so if you don't really
02:40think about it as a wound it's not as disturbing. I'm just interested in what will be interesting
02:47artistically you know if there's a wound how can that shape be almost a beautiful shape or something
02:53that is compositionally balanced and if there's blood you know how can the blood be a pattern that
02:59is almost like a you know impressionistic painting. For the bite wounds I was looking at animal attacks
03:05you know what happens when you know something like a shark bites someone's skin. We were studying
03:11real burns and you know some of the stuff was really gruesome but I went more to reality than
03:17stuff that was referential from movies. A lot of blood, a lot of bites, a lot of thinking on your
03:23toes on
03:24this show it's going to be a really cool movie. Can I say the craziest thing I had to work
03:32through
03:32probably the blood for sure it didn't quite resonate okay you're doing a horror film there's
03:37going to be blood all right yeah of course it's a horror movie there's going to be blood everywhere.
03:41You don't really realize how intrusive the blood is you gotta reapply it you know and it dries on you
03:48and it's extremely uncomfortable. I didn't even know I had a pet peeve as much as I do about fake
03:53blood.
03:54I do but I got through it. I tell you seeing my clothes bloodied wasn't easy. There's a lot
04:04of blood there's gallons and gallons of blood there's you know bloods that are formulated to
04:08be used in the mouth there's bloods that are made to be pumped through tubes there's you know bloods
04:14that dry on the skin and flake off so pretty much every fake blood product that we could think of
04:19has
04:20somehow made its way into the film. Today's sticky. Sticky business. Going to the bathroom is an
04:26escapade. The blood is very sticky but it's really cool because I don't really have to care about like
04:32how I look. I feel like there's a lot of freedom and just being covered in blood and sweat. It's
04:37been
04:37a bonding experience for all of us cast and crew alike. One of the challenges of this film particular is
04:44that there is such a large cast and almost everyone in the cast goes through some form of
04:50transformation or injury. Everyone has to go through a very elaborate process of all of this
04:58stuff being built and being made custom for each character. Just a little bite I mean it wasn't that bad
05:03it was a little you know a little nibble. And keeping track of the continuity of what happens between
05:09all these injuries in the course of one night and then filming out of order is really challenging.
05:15But he also has this rare ability to still move on the fly because I get a lot of ideas
05:21in a moment.
05:22What's your idea man? He was able to improvise better than anybody I'd ever met in that line of work.
05:30Becoming a vampire. Not something I maybe thought I saw myself having to do but man was it cool.
05:37I mean when I first showed up with my bite Ryan almost threw up which I was like sorry get
05:43it
05:43together. You wrote this. The cast has been unbelievable with the makeup. They looked at
05:50it as something that was fun and something that was adding to their character. It definitely informs
05:55and it definitely lends a whole array of things that you can't really account for until it's on.
06:01Remick he's always putting on a front. So for me Jack's normal face is the mask. And the makeup,
06:10the prosthetics, it's not adding something to his face it's taking away. So it was all about peeling
06:16back the layers of what Remick is. So I wanted to almost excavate the vampire that his face is being
06:23torn away. Even though makeup is an additive process we're trying to create the illusion that it's
06:30attractive. And as the film goes on the facade breaks down more and more and more until the end
06:36we see what he really is which is something that's barely human at all.
06:40In this stage Jack will be wearing this piece and he'll have fangs that actually go over his mouth
06:47that this piece will blend into. And there'll be a plate on his head that a resonator will be attached
06:53too. So there's a lot of elements going on. The teeth change the arrangement of your face in a way
07:01that you can explore and lean into for the role. I lived for the teeth and the lenses and the
07:08blood.
07:09The contacts themselves are the most stunning things you'll ever see. They're hand painted and
07:14the detail is so insane and then you put them in and that's a whole other story. Because the pupils
07:19covered Nathan can't see in them. So Nathan is quite a trooper here putting up with all of our
07:24torture. I couldn't see because those lens you just you can't see out those lenses. They're very
07:28specific colored lenses. I had to be guided on set. I don't have to dance with the contacts. You know
07:35the Irish scene? I can barely dance when I can see. You know what I mean? A very early conversation
07:41I had
07:42with Ryan he talked about something called tapetum lucidum which is the reflective quality that you'll see
07:48in animals eyes sometimes at night. Like a cat will look like it has glowing eyes. So he wanted to
07:54do
07:55this in the vampires and I thought it would be really cool to do that practically with a contact
08:00lens but no one's ever done that before. The only person I could think of that would be worth asking
08:05something like that is Christina Patterson and Christina came back and said that she's actually been
08:11secretly working on developing that exact effect in a contact lens for a long time now and that she's just
08:17at the cusp of perfecting it. She had these reflective lenses that actually bounced light
08:23back and it looked amazing. It looked beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
08:30The most interesting prosthetic I think is cornbread because he gets shot in the face and his whole jaw
08:36is missing. How do you actually like hide someone's jaw in this thing that makes it look like his jaw
08:42is
08:42gone. It was my first time using prosthetics. The one that I wear is like a muzzle. You can't move
08:47your
08:47mouth. You can barely breathe. I'm sure it looks cool but functionality is rough. We kind of like
08:53reconstructed Omar's face in a way that still looks like his face but is actually in a completely different
09:00area than where his face actually is. So it was almost like his face was built out and that created
09:07this
09:07illusion of depth. Here we go in three, two, one, action! I really was excited when I saw you know
09:15Omar stand up in the doorway and all the blood came spilling out onto his costume.
09:22Right now we're working on the Remick Burn Double. We created a burn suit. It's basically a combination of
09:30prosthetics and a suit. All of this is hand painted. We have airbrush and there's plastic layers that are
09:37actually burned that we lay on top. Lauren here is going in and bringing some of these things to life.
09:44We have burned pieces of plastic and burnt fabric and silicone foam rubber and all these different
09:50materials. Hair and everything has been glued together and layered to kind of create this translucent burn effect.
09:59You'll be witnessing that level of expertise and artistry that Mark Fontaine and his team were doing
10:04on a daily basis. It was mind-blowing every day. He's a true artist man. He sculpts at night always
10:11iterating. I just love working with him and I can't wait for people to see you know what he was
10:14able to
10:15do on this. I wanted to really bring the horror element. That's what I was excited about and that's
10:20what I felt like a big part of my responsibility was on this. To me the cast and crew around
10:25you,
10:25that's the first audience. I want to walk on the set and have everyone react to what they're looking
10:32at. Whether it's they're excited about it or scary, it doesn't matter. There's a reaction there. That's
10:38what I'm really going for. Let's go to bed. I'm tired.