WICKED HORROR: FX Maestro Tony Gardner Talks Cult of Chucky
Exclusive Interview: FX Maestro Tony Gardner Talks Cult of Chucky!
Tony Gardner is one of the premiere FX artists in horror. His career stretches from operating the cat Binx in the seasonal favorite Hocus Pocus, to building the equally iconic half-corpse in Return of the Living Dead, to Lost Boys, to Aliens and more. Since Seed of Chucky, he’s been at the center of the Child’s Play franchise, creating the dolls for that film as well as Curse of Chucky and now Cult of Chucky. Gardner has even stepped in as a producer for the new sequel.
We talked with Gardner recently about the process of creating the great—and varied—new looks for Chucky in the film, as well as what fans can expect and so much more.
Cult of Chucky is now available. Be warned. The interview will go into some mild spoilers.
Wicked Horror: One of my favorite things about this franchise is that each movie feels completely different from the one before it. Cult definitely continues this trend. When did Don Mancini first approach you with the idea and what was your initial reaction?
Tony Gardner: He actually had a couple of idea right while we were finishing Curse. And this was one of them. They were all equally cool, they were all standalone films that were almost completely different genre homages, in a way. They were all so exciting, but the idea of an insane asylum just opened so many doors to what’s really happening and what’s going on in people’s minds. So I was very excited and hoping he would go down that road and obviously I’m glad that he did.
WH: What was the experience like stepping into a producer role for this one?
Gardner: You know, I kind of feel like I’ve been part of financial management on the last two films. Just making sure things happen on time & on budget, and making sure all the time on set is maximized. It’s just a larger extension of what we do with the animatronic character himself. It was just sort of an expansion of a job that already existed for me. It’s nice being there from the beginning when things are being scripted. Just planning out what’s possible and what’s not, what’s not too time consuming, what’s financially possible and if there are ways to go around some of the financial restrictions.
Offering up alternate options, whether it be digital or otherwise, to pull of a sequence that we had in mind, like the finale with the three characters. It’s really just being part of the organization of everything from the beginning.
WH: This definitely feels like one of the most FX-heavy Chucky movies to date.
Gardner: A fair bit. I think that’s why I got pulled in right off the bat, because we had to figure out how to make it work with a limited number of shoot days. This was a very complicated story that Don wanted to tell with a lot of different characters and what could essentially have been its own 2nd unit. How do you integrate that into 1st unit as much as possible so that it’s cohesive? I think any time someone comes in with that much of a large-scope idea and that much drive and enthusiasm, you have to support that.
WH: And Chucky himself in this one, well…
Gardner: Himselves?
WH: Yeah, I was gonna say. He looks very similar to the first few movies in terms of that overall look, going back to the early days of the franchise. How hard did you work on that?
Gardner: That was sort of my obsession, to be honest with you. You go back to the beginning and have the chance to start over, literally. The focus was really Child’s Play 2 more than the first one, because of some of the design and aesthetic changes. He’s gone through such a transformation starting with Bride in particular. When we got into Curse, I was really taking Don’s concept of “Chucky has a Good Guy face stretched over his own.” I took that literally and I think trying to do that weird plastic surgery look didn’t really thrill people. Lesson learned on my end, obviously. So I really, really wanted to make sure that the Good Guy doll was back to its original proportions of the first few films. Size of the hands, everything.
There were some concessions made due to the aesthetics of the set, with everything being so white and washed out. Don really wanted the hair to pop more on camera in a more contrasted way. So it’s a little more orange as opposed to orange-brown than it was in the first film. There was no luxury of him going from a Good Guy doll to a more human doll, where he’s becoming more of a human being and his eyebrows are getting hairy. This one had to go back and forth from a Good Guy doll to a fully animated one, but one who is capable of conveying extremely evil expressions. There’s a bit of a bag under the eye to give him a look that’s a little more like Brad Dourif. It gives a little more of that evil character and at the same time helps us mechanically as well.
WH: It really does look great in the film.
Gardner: Oh, thank you.
WH: In general, with this being such a rapidly changing industry, how would you say the effects have evolved over time in this franchise?
Gardner: I think the best advancement has been everyone willing to be open to digital enhancement. We can do rod puppeting on certain scenes and eliminate a rod or a puppeteer out of the frame, as opposed to limiting how he’s framed, so that you can cut somebody out of the shot. We’re able to do that now and it really opens up the door for more articulation and faster shooting time. It takes so much less time to set up a shot. People’s willingness to embrace that technology is a help for us and it has really made a difference in the last two films.
We used it very sparingly in Curse of Chucky, just things like when his head pops off and his body stands up. A couple of things where you’re seeing him full-frame in the shot. We were on a practical floor, so we couldn’t be underneath it or do anything other than rods or marrionetting. Doing that to a minor degree on that film really opened up everybody’s eyes to how it could be used on this one. And when we get to the scene at the end where we have three characters going and we have green suits or green rods, it’s really been a huge asset for us.
WH: You kind of touched on this a little bit in terms of being a producer, but with there being so much FX work in Cult of Chucky, was there ever anything you didn’t think that you’d be able to pull off?
Gardner: I think what made it nice for me on Cult is that we had Adrien Morot on makeup effects and then we had Doug Morrow doing the applications in the FX shop, so we had people that we knew were solid and easy to work with handling most of the blood and guts. Sometimes there’s a real overlap. We knew we’d have our hands full with all the multiple versions of him, shooting out of continuity, and then that whole finale sequence in the office. We had a lot on our plate with just the dolls alone, so having those people on the makeup effects was a huge peace of mind for me.
WH: Going back a little bit, how familiar were you with the franchise before you came on board with Seed?
Gardner: Oh, I was super familiar with it. When the first one had come out, I remember thinking “A killer doll, I don’t know…” But I remembered the Karen Black movie called Trilogy of Terror, with the little doll with the knife, and that was a really great idea. I was excited to see how suspenseful it was and how much of a story there was in the first one. I’ve watched all of them since. And then when David Kirshner was going to Universal to pitch Bride of Chucky, we had just worked with him on Hocus Pocus. He asked if we could do a display that he could take in to pitch them the idea for the movie. He brought in all these sketches he had done of Tiffany and asked us to build a Chucky doll holding Tiffany, sort of standing on a threshold for a wedding, a display to put in the room while he pitched the film to the producers.
So that was my first experience with who these characters were and what they were about. I really enjoyed that short experience, so when Seed came about and they asked me if I would be interested in manufacturing the dolls—even though they came to me three months before it had to ship—I was excited. I don’t know what I was thinking, but yeah. I really loved the franchise and admired what David and Don and Kevin Yagher had been able to achieve. I think going in blind was really good too, because I didn’t have any idea how complicated it would be to have three characters talking, having conversations and arguments and throwing things at each other.
WH: Yeah, I mean, that’s the one movie in the franchise where they’re in it more than the human characters.
Gardner: Yeah, and having conversations! Having to figure out the eye lines of a puppet, and we did that all through the floor. All of it. All the controllers, the sets were all six feet off the ground, and we were all underneath it looking at monitors. It was a very new experience and very stressful, but very enjoyable.
WH: In general, you’ve had an insane, insane career. From Aliens to Return of the Living Dead and Lost Boys and so many more. Do you think you’d even be able to single out an effect you would say you’re most proud of?
Gardner: Boy. A lot of times, in those films from the eighties and nineties, they were the first times for me doing those things. Darkman was the first time I did an overlying prosthetic appliance makeup. It was exciting because it was new and it was challenging. I think that holds true for all of them in general, especially in regards to the ones I like the most. I think I would probably go back to Return of the Living Dead and the half-corpse. That’s something that I’m super proud of. I’d been hired fresh out of college to work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller for Rick Baker.
Through happenstance, within a few months of that, I was asked to build this animatronic half-body. And I’d never done anything animatronic before in my life, ever. I had Bill Sturgeon over at Rick’s, who was an amazing mechanical designer, help with the hands. I did the head myself and I took it on set and was able to operate and puppeteer it on set. It’s a really exciting experience to be able to follow something all the way through and have it succeed as well as it did.
WH: That effect is still incredible. It still looks so lively. And Cult of Chucky is incredible work too. You really knocked it out of the park with this one.
Gardner: Thank you, I stressed about it. I really wanted to be true to the whole canon and the fans. I really reached out to the fan base for feedback and tried to incorporate them in what we were doing. We had Garrett Zima as our historian for what we were doing. He had an original doll from the second or third installment, access to great reference material for us. He was also helpful for feedback.
We put it out to different Facebook pages and groups and people would be in contact with us a lot, asking questions or whatever. So we started asking them questions about things and getting that feedback and a sense of right and wrong within this world. And I hope we did it justice for the fan base because that’s what this one is really all about.
HAIRSPRAY: Special Thanks
Alterian Inc. thanking all of the talented artists responsible for bringing Edna to life.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Three Rounds with Chucky
Three Rounds with Chucky:
Everyone's favorite devil-doll joins EW for a killer night out
The star of ‘Child’s Play,’ the scariest killer-doll franchise of all-time, downs some brew (and takes a stab at some questions) in our filthiest and most fatal interview ever
With his distinctive blue overalls, ginger hair, and maniacal stare, Chucky is hard to miss as he walks through the door of Los Angeles’ Black bar to hoist three rounds with EW — at least, he’s hard to miss once you remember to look down. Not that the only-needs-one-name movie megastar has any regrets about his lack of stature preventing him from, say, fully enjoying amusement parks. “I don’t like roller coasters,” he says. “It’s hard to flee the scene of the crime when you’re strapped into it.” Chucky’s not joking. In 1988’s Child’s Play, the “Good Guys” doll was possessed by the spirit of a serial killer and embarked on a murder spree. That cavalcade of carnage has continued through six sequels, including 1998’s Katherine Heigl-costarring Bride of Chucky and the just-released, Don Mancini-directed Cult of Chucky (now available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital platforms), which features franchise veterans Fiona Dourif, her father Brad, Alex Vincent, and actress-turned-poker-tournament regular Jennifer Tilly. In person, Chucky is doll — sorry, droll — company, but rumors of a short fuse prove true. The star becomes increasingly irritated by the presence of photographer Jeff Minton (apparently, Chucky’s publicist neglected to mention a snapper would be present) and turns positively terrifying after EW asks what it is like to work with Tilly. “The woman’s a genius,” says Chucky. “But she doesn’t want it getting out. For poker. Crap, now I’m gonna have to kill you. Seriously.” Oof, let’s hope he’s a good drunk.
ROUND 1: Pabst Blue Ribbon
JEFF MINTON FOR EW
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Cult of Chucky is set in a mental institution. Do you think you might benefit from therapy?
CHUCKY: I can’t think of anything I’ve ever done that would make me need therapy.
How do you explain the longevity of the Child’s Play franchise? What’s the special sauce?
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s on account of me. What can I say? Chicks dig me.
How do you think you’ve evolved as a performer over the course of the franchise? Do you feel like you’ve grown? (No pun intended.)
I’ve gotten really into improv. Comedians come up with the funniest s— when you pull out a knife on stage. But yes, I’ve evolved. I’d like to take on King Learone day. And Newsies.
What did you spend your first big movie-star paycheck on?
Bail. And a fitted tuxedo. In that order.
How do you relax?
A little light stalking. Maybe a simple strangulation. And some weed. Notnecessarily in that order.
Are you a good cook? What’s your go-to dish for entertaining?
Hamburger Helper, but instead of hamburger, I use people. No, seriously. I rarely entertain.
What’s the best and worst thing about being famous?
The best thing? Meeting the fans. The worst thing? Getting rid of their corpses.
What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done while drunk?
Hooking up with Katherine Heigl.
What do people say to you when they recognize you in the street?
“Hey, Chucky, what ever happened to Katherine Heigl?”
ROUND 2: Bloody Mary
JEFF MINTON FOR EW
As you don’t have a birth certificate, are you ever worried about being deported?
Not really. It would give me a chance to experiment. I’ve always wanted to kill on an international scale. I’m so famous here in the States. Sometimes I miss the anonymity, you know? The simple things, like being able to roll out of bed and kill someone on the way to Starbucks.
While we’re on that subject: How old are you exactly? (My editor made me ask.)
Let me put it this way… I take a baby aspirin every day. Gotta stay smart about heart health, you know?
Do you ever wish you were a different doll?
Sometimes I wish I was a Ken doll. Only because I wouldn’t have to wear these f—in’ overalls anymore.
Who would win in a fight between you and Annabelle?
Annabelle’s a showboat — all sizzle and no steak. She can make the lights flicker. Big deal.
How do you feel about the Babadook becoming a gay icon?
Hey, I did it before it was cool.
How come we never see you and Brad Dourif in the same room?
Contractual reasons. We don’t get along.
What’s the first thing you would do as president?
I would encourage the Senate to bring me a plan to boost infrastructure over the next 10 years that would result in government-subsidized training, job growth, and bipartisan support. I’d also make murder legal.
ROUND 3: “Fireball and a knife”
(This turns out to be a request for Fireball whisky and an actual knife, which Chucky uses to fatally stab EW’s photographer.)
JEFF MINTON FOR EW
Uh, I guess you’re ready for this interview to be over. Just a few more questions before the police arrive: What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?
Scrub the blood from my fingernails. Start the day fresh, you know?
Have you ever met Chuckie from Rugrats?
No. I don’t hang out with babies as a rule. And cartoon babies? Forget it.
Which celebrity do you most want to meet? And why?
The Biebs. So I can finally put an end to our long national nightmare.
How come you’ve never been a pitchman for Chuck E. Cheese’s?
Because those animatronics freak me the f— out.
Whose posters did you have on your wall when you were growing up?
Bundy, Dahmer, the Coreys. You know, all the greats.
Do you ever worry that you’re giving ginger-haired people a bad name?
Do you ever worry that you’re giving journalists a bad name?
How are things between yourself and your girlfriend Tiffany these days?
None of your damn business. We’re just good friends. Next question.
What’s your favorite sexual position?
The Reverse Chucky. It’s my own design. The Dirty Puppet is a close second.
What are you packing “downstairs”?
I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.
Which superhero do you most identify with, and why?
Loki. Take a f—ing guess.
Editor’s note: Senior writer Clark Collis disappeared two days after filing this interview.
JEFF MINTON FOR EW
DREAD CENTRAL: Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse – Exclusive Interview from the Set: Tony Gardner
Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse – Exclusive Interview from the Set: Tony Gardner
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is the first zom-com renowned makeup effects designer Tony Gardner has worked on since 2009’s Zombieland. Five years later, Gardner’s appetite for destruction hasn’t lessened one bit – and he’s got even more to play with this time around. From setting an especially gory scene in a strip-club called “Lawrence of Alabia” (which is also the location of this interview), to a lonely road littered with the carcass of an undead deer, Gardner had his toil more than cut out for him.
Gardner’s body of work is impressive, to say the least. He’s been in demand steadily since the 1980s (his first show was with Rick Baker on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”), into the ‘90s (Army of Darkness), up to right this minute with the Marlon Wayans parody Fifty Shades of Black.
We caught up with Gardner in a Los Angeles parking lot in the middle of night, while he was in the middle of preparing for the shooting of a zombie attack scene with tons of oozing extras.
Dread Central: Just how much of this is practical effects, and what do the zombies look like?
Tony Gardner: There was a decision early on to try to achieve as many of the effects practically as possible, with digital assistance only “as needed” per specific character designs, so most all of it is practical. As far as their appearance, the idea was to base the zombie design in some sort of believable medical reality, so that the comedy comes from the situations the characters are in as opposed to the appearance of the zombies. Trying to base their look on real medical concepts has been a challenge, especially given that the transformations all occur within one night, but in the end our starting point for each zombie was the concept of blood poisoning. Something I saw as a kid that scarred me for life was a graphic illustration of a person getting bit by a venomous snake, which showed the speed of the poison spreading out through the person’s veins as a darker color than their blood, illustrating that fast action was required to stop the spread of the venom, or the person that was bit would die. The design aesthetic with the zombies is the same: The zombie infection is spreading rapidly through the person’s body, and there’s a sense of discoloration taking place throughout their veins as they’re infected.
With that concept as our foundation, the question then was: How can we make each one of these zombie characters interesting in their own right? The description of the shopkeeper’s death is described in the script as essentially “the shopkeeper is attacked and one of his arms is chewed down to the bone.” I liked the image it implied, so I asked the director if we could literally go down to the bone on a good length of that arm. I wanted to make that one arm completely shredded, but still functional, knowing that we would require hiring an amputee or need a digital assist in order to make it happen. My idea was to mount a false arm that was “chewed to the bone” on a shoulder harness the actor would wear, so that the skeletal arm sits in front of the actor’s real arm, and then put the actor’s real arm in a green screen sleeve and have the actor puppeteer his own torn up arm from behind. Fortunately we had time to do a few designs that illustrated the concept of a puppeteered false arm and were able to show Chris something visual so that the idea made sense. I thought it would be more interesting if the torn up arm did more than just hang at his side and was more engaged. In a lot of these zombie films you might have the prosthetic make-up zombie characters and then perhaps some zombies that are more skeletal and achieved as puppets, like The Return of the Living Dead. The goal here was to marry those two worlds and then use computer graphics to enhance the effect and make it more interesting. The core idea was that these zombie attacks were more like animal attacks, with the resulting carnage being a lot more “violent” and a lot more torn apart. Being able to enhance the makeup effects digitally made it possible for the bites to be deeper and more graphic in nature, as opposed to the more superficial and “on the surface” look than an additive prosthetic makeup usually has.
DC: And we heard there is a crazy cat attack?
TG: Yes, there’s a house full of zombified cats that attack our main characters. The scene is a bit humorous from the start and harkens back to old 80’s horror films, so the idea for this particular scene was to present the animatronic cats in a style that we could have fun with. The scares are legit, but I think with that one we were able to have a bit of fun with the cat design. The cats attack [their master, played by Cloris Leachman] first, and it’s not the speediest of attacks; with all of these little mouths biting her, she ends up bloodied all over. There are some deep scratches to her hands, her face, the tip of her nose, her ears, her legs. There are some deep wounds as well based on the stories you hear about somebody dying and their cat eating them to survive…
DC: Are the zombies in different states of the disease?
TG: Yes. Based on the time frame of when they’ve been bitten or attacked, the disease is at a different level of progress in different characters. And there were story points that factored into the appearance of some of the characters as well, like the director not wanting to “tip his hand” that Patient Zero or the Stripper are already dead when you first see them. The idea with this film was to try not to do a zombie look that you’ve already seen before – to make the look of these zombies unique to this specific film. I really wanted you to be able to go through a flip book of different zombie films and be able to say, “Okay, that’s a Zombieland zombie” and “This is a Scouts zombie,” and just know what film you were looking at a photo from based just on the look of the zombie.
Besides the zombie look, we were trying to come up with a unique look for specific zombie characters as well. There were characters that had been zombified by a major attack , and we wanted to take the opportunity to maul those characters up a bit more than the rest. Some of those ideas, like the Broken Back zombie, were a bit extreme; and we also had the added challenge of trying to cast actors or performers able to do the required physical action for that character, who would also be cool with wearing contact lenses that were fogged and veined to the point where they were basically blind but still willing to run after other people.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, Left to right: Sarah Dumont plays Denise, Tye Sheridan plays Ben and Logan Miller plays Carter in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DC: Chris [Landon; director] said he actually wanted to experience that.
TG: Yeah, Chris was clear on wanting to know what it would be like to be in one of these makeups from the actor’s perspective. I think he experienced things up to the point of going through a full-blown makeup test. Having him know and experience the limitations that the actors were working with really helped in regards to how he worked with the actors on set. Once your vision is that impaired, it puts you in your own little world, and then several of the main characters had a lot of other physical challenges to work with. The actor playing the shopkeeper, John Kreng, besides his torn apart arm, also has a really torn up face and is missing one of his eyes. We masked that torn up eye socket area, with the idea being that we’d digitally deepen that socket area in post. So now we have an actor blind in one eye, and then he’s got a fogged contact lens in the other, one of his arm’s behind his back, and he’s puppeteering a fake version of that arm while he’s walking towards you and also taking a squib hit and falling backward all at the same time. It’s a lot to ask someone to do, and we’ve been very fortunate that everybody has been so cool. The guy who’s going to work tonight is our Broken Back zombie, and the challenge with this character is: How far can you push the concept of a broken spine to make it look realistic, but still have it be able to visually register on camera, but not push it so far that it appears cartoony?
DC: Is that a performance by specific zombie character, or is it an extra?
TG: This actor has actually been in some of those competitive events where you’re racing on all fours; there are apparently hand-running events where there are cash prizes and trophies and the whole deal. This guy can run after you and fall to the ground while he’s running, and you think he’s fallen and he’s going to lie there, but instead he takes off on all fours after you and is able to pick up an amazing amount of speed, and it’s the freakiest thing in the world. We talked about having him running on grass (where he’d be his fastest), but I think it’s going to come down to where he’s running around on his hands through this graveled parking lot tonight. We’re trying to do something stylized with his design so that when he’s down on the ground on all fours, we can really read the broken spine from a distance while he’s moving. So his spinal column is literally jacked out of his back through broken skin, essentially broken in two halves but connected by muscle. We’re hoping for some cool sound effects with all the bones cracking and banging against each other and making a lot of noise when this guy runs on all fours. Regardless, he comes across as really scary when he runs right at you, pretty intimidating actually.
The makeup and the lenses have been a little intimidating for some of the actors, and it’s been interesting seeing how each of them deal with the challenges. Elle Evans, the actress who plays the character of Amber the Stripper, comes from the world of modeling, where looking attractive and your best is your livelihood. Then she comes here and it’s like, “Hi, nice to meet you; we’re going to make you look all veiny and gross and we’re going to put these fogged lenses in your eyes and bump up your veins, and then we want you to go over there and pole dance. Part way into your dance your neck’s going to get torn out, and you’re going to spray at least 5 gallons of blood on a guy, and then you’re going to fight him on the ground, he’s going to take a broken bottle and jam it into your forehead, and you’re going to leak probably another 3 or 4 gallons of blood out of your forehead onto him before you fall over on your side on the floor.” Her response? “Okay, that’ll be great!” And she was great. She was very much a last-minute casting decision and we were worried that she walked into this not knowing what was involved and it would be a nightmare, and instead she’s been the most fun of all of them.
DC: You’ve got a greater sense of design freedom, knowing that the movie is definitely going to get a hard R-rating?
TG: Yeah, I did because we wanted to make it bloodier but, again, trying to be realistically bloody. I was literally thinking about how much pressure is in the body and how far is it actually going to spray and going for it. Because it’s a hard R, somebody could get cut where an artery is and spray 20 feet away — and it’s legitimate, so we’re trying to push all that kind of stuff . The reality thing has been the real trick. I have a friend who is the head of an ER [and I got some advice from him].
DC: Chris talked about not just doing generic zombies, but that each one is a character.
TG: Yeah, and we’re trying to have some fun with a lot of the zombies being specific characters but not turning them into caricatures or making them cartoony. Keeping the overall look of them specific within the same design universe has definitely been the biggest challenge, really. When you’re hiring talented artists, everybody brings their own tricks of the trade with them in regards to how they are going to do a makeup, and sometimes that means they might lean towards their favorite color choices or the materials that they prefer, but those might not be the color palette for this movie or the technique that gives the specific look we’re after on this film. One way to maintain continuity on each character (whether we had to change makeup artists on a specific character or just recreate the same character for several days in a row), and just to make sure the zombies all looked the same in general, was to actually design their makeups as tattoo transfers.
hat technique has really helped with characters like David Koechner’s Scoutmaster, too, because he’s in shorts and showing a lot of skin, and he’s on camera a lot. It’s funny… everybody seemed to end up with less clothing on than what we talked about originally. There’s the naked old man at the window, Patient Zero, Cloris Leachman, and the zombie with the broken back… they were like, “Wow, his back’s broken so let’s take his clothes off so we can see it!” The Koechner zombie goes up in flames and ends up charred. There is half burn makeup on him, but he’s a little less medically accurate in the perspective of how someone would burn; since he’s already dead, you’re getting more of a barbecued chicken look with the skin blistering up on half of his head and one side of his body. We didn’t know what to expect with David in regards to all of the makeup he would have to wear, and he’s been phenomenal. Now that he’s burnt on one side, the lens that goes into that eye is more extreme and more opaque so he’s got even less vision than usual, but the dude is so funny and so nice and he comes on set with so much energy. I feel like you could pile a ton of stuff on this guy and he would still make it work. He’s so impressive – it’s been great.
We have an animatronic deer that has been zombified that attacks Koechner and tears his throat out. It’s like, “How do you make a deer scary?” If you look at the facial anatomy of a deer and how its mouth opens and what teeth are visible, there’s not much to work with in regards to making it scary. It’s like Mr. Ed… never scary; no matter how much teeth he’s showin’, it always looks goofy. So we went with the idea that some of the deer’s teeth are broken so that we can get some sharp points on some of them and also went with the idea that the deer’s been a little beat up and bloodied by what he’s been through… anything to make it look scarier. The deer has whited-out eyes as well, but we are trying very consciously not to go down the Evil Dead deer trophy-on-the-wall route because even subconsciously getting that concept into somebody’s head, automatically there’s a “fun factor” to the deer. It’s still inherently funny regardless, but we’re trying to be creepy, and it’s got to be scary, too, because it’s an important scene. So, finding the balance for us has been interesting. I know that in the end we’ll have sound effects added, and it’ll be the editor who really pulls the scenes together, but on set it’s a bit humorous, so we’re trying to make sure we get everything on camera that he might need.
If you were here the first day we shot any of the effects stuff – it was the dead deer on the road – you’d see that there’s been a progression in the approach to the gore. The deer gets hit by a car, the kids get out of the car to check it out, and you see the entire animal laid out with its stomach split open and its intestines hanging out, and there’s some blood and liquid on the road. After dressing the blood and guts for the scene, I remember Chris and Samson saying maybe we should back it up a bit and have less blood and keep the guts more inside the body. Now that we’re a few weeks into it, the call on set is “More blood!” because they realize when they see the blood on screen that you really need more to register the horror.
You need to read the violence in the zombie attacks in general, and Marylou Lim, the costume designer, is really up for getting everyone’s wardrobe as torn up and bloody as the characters are. So often on a film like this where we will do makeup that’s really extreme, the costume design team is still very hesitant to tear the wardrobe up. But with Marylou it’s, “Yeah, let’s tear it up, let’s go for it. We need more blood!” We need to really be able to register the carnage from a distance at night, so Marylou’s attitude has been really refreshing… it really feels like we’re all part of the same team.
This film really is a team effort, from top to bottom: There’s the actor who has to wear the effects makeup and has to “sell it,” as well as another actor who needs to respond to it on camera and make it believable. It needs to be lit dramatically, and then the visual effects team might be on set as well to line things up for digital enhancement, so we all really work as a cohesive team in order to pull these effects off.
From a makeup effects perspective, altering the eyes and mouth of a character is always an effective change, and it’s an easy thing for people to register right away, as we seem to talk to people’s eyes and mouths when we communicate with them. Messing up those two areas of the face goes a long way right off the bat… then to gouge up their faces and add raised veins, discoloration, and blood and have the actor change their posture and movement makes for an effective zombie from a distance as well as up close.
Hopefully we’re bringing something new to the mix on this film, and this won’t be the same old, same old. It’s a “zombie movie” so it will exist within a specific type of reality, really… the challenge is trying to put something that’s a little fresh on the map.
PR NEWS WIRE: All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter Ages at the Hands of Makeup Effects Artist Tony Gardner
All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter Ages at the Hands of Makeup Effects Artist Tony Gardner
When Director Catherine Hardwicke was dreaming up the concept for her music video for the song "There's A Place," a very moving song from her Drew Barrymore/Toni Collette film "Miss You Already," one of the biggest challenges was how best to illustrate the passing of time and love lost.
The song was written and performed by Tyson Ritter, the front man of the band All-American Rejects, and was written specifically for the film; Tyson is in the film as a love interest of Toni Collette's character.
As Tyson would be singing the song on camera within the music video, it was decided that he would in essence represent his film persona within the video, and gradually age from his thirties into his nineties during the course of the performance. A great way to illustrate the passing of time, but how to achieve all of this within one night of guerilla style film-making?
The answer: Makeup Effects Designer Tony Gardner, whose past prosthetic makeup challenges have included turning John Travolta into a buxom housewife for the film "Hairspray,"
Gardner and his team of artists at Alterian (www.alterianinc.com)
Tony Gardner is no stranger to projects with high demands. Director Danny Boyle came to Gardner to realize sequences from the film "127 HOURS," asking Gardner to design and create the prosthetic effects pieces that would allow James Franco to cut through and sever his arm on camera and in real time, and with complete medical accuracy. He's also had his share of odd requests, from creating robotic helmets for Daft Punk, to creating movie characters with a high list of demands.
"The weirdest meeting I can recall was for "Hocus Pocus," and went essentially like this: 'Can you design a 300 year old zombie who has his mouth stitched shut with leather cord, gets his fingers sliced off on camera, and his head knocked off and reattached a couple times? And while you’re at it, we also want to run over a cat with a bus and then have it reinflate on camera. ...and please make this all “kid friendly” of course, ….this is a Disney film.'"
Gardner continues, "Of course I said yes! Challenges like those are what I find exciting, and the more 'impossible' someone says the project might be, the more I seem to be attracted to it. For this music video, four stages of progressive age makeup filmed outdoors, and all within one single evening, definitely qualified as one of those projects."
Time was definitely the major challenge, as was the complexity of the final stage of prosthetic makeup. To solve the issue of the three hour application time for the 90-year-old version of Tyson, it was decided that Tony and Hugo would start that makeup while the sun was still up, and time the completion of the makeup to sunset, so filming could start literally the moment the sun went down.
"Working in reverse order was the only way to make this work," said Gardner, "Subtracting prosthetics from Tyson to make him younger was faster than adding prosthetics to make him older. The biggest challenge was peeling of the 90-year-old neck and replacing it with the 75-year-old neck while also swapping out all of the hairpieces for what we called his 'Neil Diamond look," all within the two hour timeframe alloted."
Gardner added, "We had until 5:00am or so to get everything on camera, that's when sunrise would end our day. Thankfully we had (Producer) Jamie Holt on this to help manage our time wisely, and keep things moving at a fast pace - she was a godsend."
"The entire process was a great experience, and actually very emotional to film... something I wasn't expecting, really, and very rarely experience. The shoot was a labor of love from the entire crew, and I think that it really shows on screen. Tyson was amazing to work with, and made it look effortless to pull of everything he had to do: hours in the makeup chair, lip syncing to playback only he was wired to hear, and pulling off an emotional performance all at the same time. And Catherine was pretty brilliant in regards to how she used what little light there was and even the local residents to add richness and life to what's onscreen, and never made anyone feel rushed or stressed. The 'impossible project' really turned out to be quite the dream job."
Katy Perry Lately: Makeup Effects Magician Tony Gardner transforms Katy Perry into five of the World's Worst Party Entertainers for her latest music video
Makeup Effects Magician Tony Gardner transforms Katy Perry into five of the World's Worst Party Entertainers for her latest music video, "Birthday," with amazing results
Katy Perry Goes Undercover for her Birthday and Wreaks Havoc
n the new video for the song "Birthday," Katy Perry achieves something amazing, successfully disguising herself as five unique characters and then crashing several birthday parties and one bar mitzvah.
Playing the "World's Worst Birthday Entertainers," a list of which includes a scantily clad elderly Las Vegasstripper, a male Jewish MC, an alcoholic clown, a mouse-eating animal trainer, and an artistically challenged face-painting princess--she successfully wreaks havoc on everyone's lives, and gets away unrecognized.
Filmed over the course of three days, the video succeeds thanks to the makeup effects artistry of Tony Gardner, whose other milestones include turning John Travolta into a buxom housewife for the film "Hairspray," and unleashing an elderly Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) on the unsuspecting public for all of the "Jackass" films to date, including the Oscar-nominated "Bad Grandpa."
Gardner credits Katy Perry for the makeup's success: "Working with someone like Katy, who's as confident as she is creative, is extremely liberating," said Gardner. "Collaborating with someone so willing to lose themselves into the makeups, and have no vanity, makes it possible for me to really push the character's design and layer a lot of detail into each character's appearance. Add her fearless performances to that, and all of those characters succeed in coming to life as real people in the real world."
"It takes guts to walk out cold into the world as Goldie, a ninety year old showgirl with full body prosthetics, or as Yosef, the pudgy male MC character with chest hair and a mustache, and then perform in character in front of a room full of strangers and try to elicit a response. She makes it look easier than it is."
Gardner and his team of artists at Alterian (www.alterianinc.com) had less than two weeks to create the prosthetics required for the four makeup effects characters. "Having very little prep time seems to be the name of the game these days," says Gardner. But the challenge presented by those limitations is exactly what he finds most energizing.
And Gardner is no stranger to customers with high demands. Gardner helped Daft Punk realize their robotic selves and then bring those chromed characters to life, functional LED read-outs and all. And Director Danny Boyle came to Gardner to realize sequences from the film "127 HOURS" that involved James Franco having to sever his arm on camera in real time with complete medical accuracy.
"What others might cite as 'problems' or 'limitations,' I look at as 'challenges,'" says Gardner. "And those challenges quite often inspire you to approach things from a different and new perspective, which might lead to solutions you would have never even anticipated otherwise."
"Time was definitely our major challenge with the 'Birthday' music video characters, though, on the days filming as well as during the pre-production design and manufacturing." All in all, Katie spent over 15 hours of the video's three day shoot in the makeup chair getting in and out of the makeups, five of those being the hours required for Goldie's full body prosthetics. And a children's birthday party has its own schedule to keep, guest performer or not."
"The entire process was a great experience, and I'd love to see Goldie make a come-back some day ...or go on tour with Katy," said Gardner, adding, "she was definitely a charmer."
DICKHOUSE.TV: Tony Gardner and The Bust of Irving Zisman
In the final lap to the Oscars, in which a little ol' movie called Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
(Photo by Sean Cliver; 2014)
THE PLAIN DEALER | "Hairspray" effects man from North Olmsted transforms Travolta
North Olmsted native Tony Gardner creates John Travolta's fat suit for 'Hairspray'
STRAIGHT.COM l 127 Hours makeup and special effects artist Tony Gardner makes Alex Pettyfer Beastly
127 Hours makeup and special effects artist Tony Gardner makes Alex Pettyfer Beastly
If you were wincing during the moments when James Franco’s character Aron Ralston was cutting into his arm in 127 Hours, you have makeup and special effects artist Tony Gardner to thank—or blame.
“Everybody knows the story. Everybody knows how it ends. Everybody knows what happened,” Gardner told the Straight during a phone interview. “So the goal is to be as real as possible so that you don’t lose the audience with shoddy work and have the audience fall out of the story.”
Gardner—who also worked on Beastly, which opens in theatres on Friday (March 4)—got his first taste of the film industry by making movies around his neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio, as a child. After entering college as a theatre major, he transferred to the University of Southern California as an arts major and used the school paper to meet veteran movie makeup artist Rick Baker.
It wasn’t before long that Baker invited Gardner onto the set of one of his projects so that he could see if a career in the film industry was something he was interested in. That project happened to be Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
“I dropped out of school,” Gardner said. “For me, it was sort of that defining moment where I thought, ”˜I’m still involved in the filmmaking process but I’m making stuff, I’m building stuff, and it’s part of the creative process.’”
Gardner continued to work with Baker for four years and picked up freelance projects along the side. Early credits included Aliens, Harry and the Hendersons, Dark Angel, and Sleepwalkers. But it wasn’t just monsters that Gardner was interested in creating.
“Over time, I wrote a short film, and we were doing helmets for Daft Punk, and they really liked the concept of my film and offered to score it for free,” Gardner said. “So I ended up writing and directing a music video for them about five years ago.”
When it comes to choosing projects, Gardner has always gone with his gut. He remembers reading the script for There’s Something About Mary and laughing out loud all four times he read it.
“I tend to gravitate towards the odd stuff, but a lot of times, we’ll get a script, and I’ll just really connect to a story or be very entertained by it,” he said. “You don’t get immersed in a story that often where you relate to it, so the scripts that you do get become part of the process for the whole project. If you’re in from the beginning, you’re part of the whole team that defines what it looks like and help shape elements of the story as a result of that. For me, it’s a personal, immediate response. I’ve been really fortunate that anything people come to me with, I’ve always really liked.”
For Danny Boyle’s award-winning 127 Hours, Gardner saw it as a technical challenge, so he contacted his friend in emergency medicine, Dr. Stephen Corbett, who had previously helped him with Three Kings. “He’s the guy who’ll take pictures inside somebody’s body if I’m really curious about something and say, ”˜This is what it looks like when they’re still alive,’” Gardner said.
Gardner and his team went on to construct the notorious arm, making two copies of the interior, complete with the skeleton, muscles, tendons, nerves, and veins pumping blood, and three arm skins for Franco to cut through. Making the arm look real was the easy part; making it feel real was a whole other story.
“The materials we use can look like real stuff, but they don’t necessarily have the same density or texture,” Gardner said. “You cut into a silicone muscle that we’d make and it would cut like a block of Jell-O, and real muscle is very fibrous. So we’d have to figure out how to literally embed fibres into a silicone muscle so that when we cast them, they would cut like real muscle.”
Another challenge was fulfilling Boyle’s request to have a shot from the inside of the arm. “He [Boyle] said, ”˜I’d love to be able to get inside his [Franco’s] arm just for a flash, just for an instance, so you can feel the pain.’ So we started researching optically clear electrical silicone at $100 a pound to try and do what the director wanted to see,” Gardner said. He notes that these shots could have more easily been achieved by using computer graphics, but that his approach has always been to do things practically.
In Beastly, he wanted to design something for Alex Pettyfer’s character Kyle that would make the movie stand out from other werewolf-centred projects out there. He started out by going to the other extreme—asking Pettyfer to go bald—and then developing an intricate swirling pattern of silver and black that looked like it was tattooed onto Pettyfer’s face and body. From there, he added stud piercings, scars, and open cuts lodged with tiny flecks of mirrors.
“The challenge was that on one hand, the character had to be monstrous and frightening, and on the other hand, you wanted people to be sympathetic and empathetic,” Gardner said.
“All of the designs really grew from one rose-bush tattoo,” he continued, referring to the ominous rose bush tattooed on Pettyfer’s forearm to constantly remind his character about time. “That sort of defined what we were going to do on his body. We wanted to do things growing and swirling and wrapping around things, and looking a little more organic. The piercings actually came from that theme. There was a conscious style that came out of having a lot of time to do research and development.”
Beastly is a modern take on the story of Beauty and the Beast and also stars Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Neil Patrick Harris. While it was important for Gardner to get a full grasp of Rolsten’s book for 127 Hours, he chose not rely on the book for Beastly. “I try not to read the book because I know I’m going to skew towards the book description or something. I’ll read it and I’ll literally just see it in my head,” he said. “A lot of times I just try to read things with an open mind but I’m very visual so I’ll literally see the things played out.”
Instead, Gardner prefers playing around with original ideas in Photoshop and collaborating with others on the project, even turning to his biggest critics, his two daughters, for honest feedback. “My older daughter Brianna helped balance what was ugly and what was sympathetic. It’s good to have an outside opinion that’s brutally honest because you’re their dad and they could care less,” he said. “One person isn’t going to think of everything.”
When he overheard that audience members watching 127 Hours were fainting in theatres, Gardner immediately wondered if he had gone too far. He felt responsible for creating something that looked very realistic, but then he realized that this responsibility was shared with Franco and Boyle. “James is the one presenting it as real, and we see it through his eyes and investing in him,” he said. “I’m just giving him the stuff to mess with, and Danny’s presenting it. So it always comes down to this collaborative process, whether it’s the designing of it, or filming of it, or what you experience on screen.”
Gardner’s next projects include 30 Minutes or Less with the Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg; The Motel Life starring Dakota Fanning, Emile Hirsch, and Stephen Dorff; and Jack and Jill with Adam Sandler. Whether he’s making gory open wounds feel lifelike from both sides of a camera lens, designing fantasy-driven costumes, or making someone in a fat suit actually look fat, Gardner wants audiences to believe and sees his role as someone who helps maintain the integrity of the story being told.
“When you have to go right out there and make something 100-percent believable, like 127 Hours, and you have everyone saying if the arm doesn’t work, the whole movie doesn’t work, you’re stomach’s churning, and sadly, that’s what excites me,” he said. “It’s that challenge to try and do something that will make people believe. When someone says something isn’t possible, I’m the first one in line for a project like that.”
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