Jul
05-14-2004, 12:14 AM
does contain small spoilers for the next movie...
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Star Wars wouldn't be the Star Wars without its various species and unusual creatures that dominate the screen. No one understands the importance of latex masks, fake appendages and creepy eyes than Episode III Creature Shop Creative Supervisor, Dave Elsey.
"We create anything that's not human -- all of the aliens basically," Elsey explains. "This includes anything that has any appendages, horns, contact lenses, teeth, and eyes -- right up to full suits and animatronics."
When an actor who must undergo prosthetic makeup first arrives on the Episode III set, he or she will meet Elsey and his team and then prepare the daunting undertaking of being cloned -- that is, having a duplicate made of their faces.
"Usually our initial dealing with the actor is when they arrive and meet us for the first time, we shake hands, and then we get them to strip down and wrap them in plastic and put bald caps on their heads," Elsey explains. "Then we take what is called a 'life cast,' which is a plaster cast of their heads. Actually, it's quite a good ice breaker, because the first thing we do is dump a load of gunge on their head and we use a material called alginate, which is used for dental casts. We basically mix up a bucket of that and we completely cover their heads in that material, then we back that up with plaster bandages and open it up and we make plaster casts. These casts have to be very, very detailed for what we're doing -- literally every skin pore has to be in the right place."
These casts serve as stand-ins for the real faces during the time-consuming sculpting phase. The artists in the Creature Shop build their material atop the casts, so that when their masks are finalized, they will fit perfectly to an actor's features. When the pieces of prosthetic makeup are ready to go on the actor, he or she will often sit in the makeup chair for hours as Elsey's team carefully place each piece in its exact place.
"It's good for the actor, because he gets to sit there and watch the whole thing develop from the makeup chair, right from scratch, because he has no idea really what's going to happen up until that point." In one unusual instance, Elsey and his team were asked to create an exact duplicate of Ewan McGregor as Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, which was later nicknamed Foamy-Wan Kenobi.
"When the scripts arrived it seemed that Hayden Christensen was going to be carrying around Ewan for days on the shoot, and we didn't want Hayden to put his back out straight away as soon as he started production. So we made a lightweight version that looks exactly like Ewan. It's going to be a very interesting collector's piece by the end of the movie," Elsey chuckles.
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Star Wars wouldn't be the Star Wars without its various species and unusual creatures that dominate the screen. No one understands the importance of latex masks, fake appendages and creepy eyes than Episode III Creature Shop Creative Supervisor, Dave Elsey.
"We create anything that's not human -- all of the aliens basically," Elsey explains. "This includes anything that has any appendages, horns, contact lenses, teeth, and eyes -- right up to full suits and animatronics."
When an actor who must undergo prosthetic makeup first arrives on the Episode III set, he or she will meet Elsey and his team and then prepare the daunting undertaking of being cloned -- that is, having a duplicate made of their faces.
"Usually our initial dealing with the actor is when they arrive and meet us for the first time, we shake hands, and then we get them to strip down and wrap them in plastic and put bald caps on their heads," Elsey explains. "Then we take what is called a 'life cast,' which is a plaster cast of their heads. Actually, it's quite a good ice breaker, because the first thing we do is dump a load of gunge on their head and we use a material called alginate, which is used for dental casts. We basically mix up a bucket of that and we completely cover their heads in that material, then we back that up with plaster bandages and open it up and we make plaster casts. These casts have to be very, very detailed for what we're doing -- literally every skin pore has to be in the right place."
These casts serve as stand-ins for the real faces during the time-consuming sculpting phase. The artists in the Creature Shop build their material atop the casts, so that when their masks are finalized, they will fit perfectly to an actor's features. When the pieces of prosthetic makeup are ready to go on the actor, he or she will often sit in the makeup chair for hours as Elsey's team carefully place each piece in its exact place.
"It's good for the actor, because he gets to sit there and watch the whole thing develop from the makeup chair, right from scratch, because he has no idea really what's going to happen up until that point." In one unusual instance, Elsey and his team were asked to create an exact duplicate of Ewan McGregor as Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, which was later nicknamed Foamy-Wan Kenobi.
"When the scripts arrived it seemed that Hayden Christensen was going to be carrying around Ewan for days on the shoot, and we didn't want Hayden to put his back out straight away as soon as he started production. So we made a lightweight version that looks exactly like Ewan. It's going to be a very interesting collector's piece by the end of the movie," Elsey chuckles.