Back in September, Latinoreview and a few other journalists were invited to check out some behind the scenes creature effects from the legendary makeup and creature and character prosthetics company, KNB EFX Group.
Formed in 1988 by Howard Berger, (alongside Gregory Nicotero) KNB has worked on over 600 feature film projects. Here's more about Howard and KNB:
In the past 20 years Howard and his company have worked with almost every director in Hollywood and on some of the most distinguished films made ranging from Oscar winner DANCES WITH WOLVES, CASINO with Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL films, Sam Raimi’s ARMY OF DARKNESS, Robert Rodriguez’s SIN CITY and most recently finished filming the latest NARNIA installment, PRINCE CASPIAN, due out in theaters May 16, 2008. KNB is currently gearing up for the 3rd film, VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER to be filmed the fall of 2008.
Howard’s greatest challenge came in the adaptation of CS Lewis’s classic novel, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Howard lead his team of over 120 artists at KNB in LA and 42 artists on location in New Zealand in creating all the inhabitants of Narnia for director Andrew Adamson. An adventure that would take a year of all their lives to breath life into.
For the excellence and highest caliber of work, Howard won the British Academy Award, a BAFTA, for Best Makeup and his first Academy Award for the film, making this the greatest of dreams to come true.
We tour a tour of the facilities and got to see all of the creature effects used in Prince Caspian. After the tour, we had a chance to talk to Howard about Prince Caspian, CGI and its effect on the industry and other projects. Howard is actually pretty candid about how dumb the industry can be at times.
I've included some pictures in this article but I'll post up a full picture tour in a few days so you can see all of the cool stuff we saw during our visit. Until then, check out the interview!
Berger: What was your favorite part of the tour?
The mechanical part.
Berger: Yeah, and you know what, out of this whole industry that's a dying art. It's sad. It's a shame. I'll tell you what, a lot of it has to do with SAG because when we operate puppets we're SAG puppeteers and we're having to fight more and more because there's really a resistance to residuals and so forth. It's getting less and less so that's actually a department in makeup FX that's starting to weed out. No one makes big monsters anymore. Stan Winston passing, that's the end of giant monsters. There will never ever be big monsters again because he really fought for it. Like, 'Jurassic Park', they could've done that without the giant monsters, but he fought for that.
That's the biggest thing you're losing in this industry?
Berger: Right now, yeah, puppets and mechanical creatures. I'm even afraid that some of the next films coming up where we would've done mechanical heads will now just be static heads that they'll digitally augment. It's just discouraging.
Some filmmakers want to fight for that though, right?
Berger: Well, it's a combination of a lot of different things. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who put together budgets who don't do it properly and don't have the knowledge to do it. So on paper it might make sense, but practically, the reality of it doesn't make sense. It'll actually end up costing quadruple. We just finished a movie that was like that where they really limited the preproduction time and didn't think things that out. Now the film is done and it's cut together and they're going to have to go in and CGI the hell out of it and probably, I'm going to say, spend $10 or $20 million fixing the movie. It could've all been circumvented in the preproduction period, a long preproduction. It needed to have like a six month preproduction to really figure out this world that the movie takes place in.
Is that because of the strike, do you think?
Berger: Stupidity. Literally, I'm sure that they came up with a budget and said, 'It'll be cheaper if we cut down the prep.' But it's not cheaper because then you're shooting, fumbling through the movie and you're prepping at three times the cost because you're at quadruple time because you're shooting and prepping after you're done shooting. You have a whole other crew working and you've had to setup a facility to do that in. You've had no time to think and so you've finished prepping it and it shoots tomorrow and if people don't like there's no room to move. They go, 'Well, we'll just have to fix that in post.' It's a terrible, terrible way to do it. It's barely filmmaking. I haven't figured out the word for it yet. I'm thinking about it.
Do you lose a lot of battles with producers over things that need to happen on a film?
Berger: No, rarely. I'd say this last film that we did, yeah. The first half of the movie was a tremendous amount of arguing and battling about what we felt was right and what they felt was right. It was coming from producers that had never ever done any sort of genre film and compared it to everything that was wrong. 'It should be more like this and more like that.' It was like, 'Ah, it shouldn't be anything like that.' It was very difficult. For the first half of the film I followed their lead and when I took a look and saw how horrible everything was I stopped listening and I just did whatever I wanted to and I think it turned out much better.
The look was terrible or horrible to work on?
Berger: I just thought the concepts were poor. I didn't like the look. I didn't like what we produced. It didn't work on any level at all. Then once I stopped listening, Greg and I stopped listening and just prepped the way that we thought we should I was much happier with it. To tell you the truth, the stuff that we shot for the first half of the film is all getting digitally replaced.
So what's been the toughest feature to make, the biggest challenge?
Berger: You know what, everything is a challenge and it all has to do with time and money.
What about the most complex?
Berger: I would say that the most complex, well, for the first movie, believe it or not, Mr. Tumnus was extremely complex. Even though it seems simple it's not because there was a real specific look that took us a long time to find. First it was difficult to find the right actor, but that makeup went through a lot of variations. Ear sizes, nose sizes, hair color. He was originally all chestnut and then he went to all blonde which just looked better. There's a lot of blond in his hair. It was huge makeup to do. It took three of us three and a half hours every single day to do. I think that minotaurs were a big task. That took months and months and months to build just because of all the hair work and the mechanics. So everything was tough, and especially for the first 'Narnia' we inherited all of WETA's conceptual design which is mostly geared for a lot of CGI stuff. So we had to go back and revisit that during preproduction time that we didn't accommodate for.
What was the preproduction time?
Berger: We had six months which is very quick. The first three months of that was all redesigning. We were building at the same time. We planned on stepping into it with the finished designs, with approved designs, but they weren't by any means. We just had to do some things to make it work in the practical world which is tough.
How close do you guys try to stay to the books?
Berger: Extremely close because Andrew [Adamson] is very faithful. Once again with Mr. Tumnus there are illustrations that are in the original C.S. Lewis book and WETA did a bunch of concept stuff, but really our point of reference was talking to Andrew. He talked a lot about when he was a kid, when he was a child and read the books and how he visualized things. That's really where I took the cue for Tumnus. I designed it with that in mind, thinking that I wanted to come as close as I could to Andrew's memory of Mr. Tumnus when he was a child. That's a big thing, a really big thing. What was great on the 'Narnia' films was basically Andrew. That's also a nice pleasure, where you don't have to sit there and talk about this, that and the other thing with a bank full of producers and people that think, 'Shouldn't it be more like this? Can we just shorten the ear one millimeter?' It's like, 'Kill me, please.'
Was it easier going into this as a sequel?
Berger: It was easier, but it was harder too because we had to really up the ante. It had to be better. It had to more inventive. It had to be more creative. It had to be easier to contend with on set. That was a big thing too, really visualizing things so that things lasted longer, were far more durable knowing that our locations were tougher than on the first film. We knew were going to be up against some bad weather from time to time and ended up having a lot of bad weather. I just made sure that everything worked better and was built to last.
What was your favorite invention during this evolution?
Berger: What was my favorite invention? I'll tell you what, it wasn't so much what was onscreen. It was what was behind screen. We ended up building these great carts to store all the heads. We had these head carts. They were these big covered carts that were on these giant wheels. We'd wheel them on the set and they could house like a dozen heads. So we were able to have really great storage and so when the storms hit which was like every ten minutes everything was sealed up and nothing would happen. The heads were safe and sound and they traveled safely. Before we just really didn't think about that. We ended up holding a lot of heads and it was such a huge pain. So what I felt worked really well was our on set execution. That had improved tenfold. We really thought about what would make our lives easier especially in the terrain that we were shooting in. That was really difficult. That was a big thing technologically.
You're doing some preproduction for the third film. Andrew isn't directing that one, right?
Berger: He's not. It's Michael Apted and so it's a little different. This movie will be a different animal. It's a different director, different writers, different visual FX, but we're there which is nice.
What are some behind the scenes and featurettes that you did?
Berger: I haven't seen the DVD yet, but whenever I saw a camera I would certainly play to it.
Which you've been doing for twenty years.
Berger: Oh, God, yeah. 'Hey, guys. Welcome to "Evil Dead II".' We shot a lot of stuff in the shop, a tremendous amount of things. I know there's a Night Raid sequence that I did some stuff for, talking about how we did that and what was going on during that arduous sequence. I think there's some step by step stuff of us applying Trumpkin and Nikabrik. I'm not sure. We shot a bunch of time lapse of those applications, but I'm not sure if that's going to end up on the DVD. I haven't seen anything yet so I'm not really sure.
What's it like working with Blue-Ray and high definition? I've heard that it's changed a lot for makeup.
Berger: It has. It's tough. Different things. Blood has changed, believe it or not. We've had to change the color of blood. It looks like paint now. It's almost like the color of the leaves on this table. It's like a [?] red, like the old 3M blood from like 'Dawn of the Dead'. I love that stuff, by the way. But it's weird and we've started to adjust. This year we did a couple of hi-def films, a couple of three-d movies. They were hi-def/three-d movies and that's definitely a different thing, a different task.
Has the industry become better at working with you guys and CGI at the same time?
Berger: Yeah.
I'm sure there was a time there when you were getting nervous.
Berger: Absolutely. After 'Jurassic Park' we were getting nervous. Everyone was, but we had three options. We could either fight it which a lot of guys did and lost. 'Anything they can do we can do –' which is not possible of course. The other thing was to quit which we didn't do. The last thing, which is what we did, was to just flow with it and try to reinvent ourselves and diversify and try to work our way into being a tool. 'We're a tool. You're a tool. We can work together.' I think that the 'Narnia' films are a good example of that. I think the stuff that we did for 'Sin City' was a good example. We did those movies around the same time relatively.
Are you working more now with CGI departments to cover things?
Berger: Well, I think that we work with the CGI department to coordinate. What I really despise is when makeup artists go, 'Well, they can just do this CGI.' It's like, 'No, no, no. That's not what we want. That's not how it works.' We do it practical and if we think there's an aspect that the director wants that we can't do because of physics and gravity then we can't. Like, 'I want to see blood shooting out like this.' It's like, 'Come on. We are on earth and it goes up and down. That's pretty much it.' But there are those directors out there like Quentin Tarantino who won't give in to CGI, won't give in to digital filmmaking ever. He'll be the last guy holding reels of film. He just calls it science fiction. He's like, 'That's science fiction. It's never going to happen.' But luckily we have people like Andrew Adamson and there are people like Jon Favreau who though they have strong CGI in their films they still want everything on set and that's super cool.
The best digital artists are the ones using it for magic.
Berger: Yes, magic. That's exactly what it is. I think that when CGI first came about and there were those directors, I called it the lazy director tool – I was on films with directors who were like, 'We'll just do it CGI, shoot plates so we can go home.' I'm like, 'Worthless scum.'
Has there been anything better than 'The Thing'?
Berger: As far as creature stuff goes probably not. I still watch that movie and wonder how he did stuff. It's pretty amazing.
The remake of that…
Berger: I refuse to even acknowledge that.
What do you guys do for Halloween?
Berger: Well, we all have kids and as they get older they're more interested in dressing up in something scary. So this will actually be the first Halloween where my kids are really going to go for it. My fourteen year old is very tall and he's going as Sweeny Todd which I think is kind of cool and we're going to joust him in blood. I just ordered online and got the replica of the blade. I was like, 'That's smoking cool, man.' So he's all set. I'm going to make a wig and all of that stuff. Then my little son who's twelve is going as The Joker. So I'm going to make up appliances and talk to John Caglione Jr. who did the makeup. He's going to look cool. My daughter is sixteen years old and she's annoyed with it already because in August I'm like, 'So what are we doing for Halloween, guys?' 'Dad.' 'What? It's right around the corner. What are you going to go as?' So we've already been out and got everyone's costumes except hers. She's like, 'I'll think about it in October.' 'Well, by that time it's going to be too late and you won't be able to go and will have to go as a pretty princess again, okay?'
What's your favorite Halloween costume?
Berger: Mine, personally? Wow, that's a hard one. When I was thirteen I went as the Phantom of Paradise and that was cool except I made the mask. It only had one eye and so I had problems with my equilibrium and I fell down a lot that year. One year I went as Chewbacca. In '77 I went as Chewbacca and I got doused by these kids in a car that had filled a fire extinguisher with beer. They were like, 'Hey, kid, where's Mason Park?' I said, 'Oh, it's over there –' and then they sprayed me. So I was sad then because my Chewbacca costume was ruined. What else? I went as a gorilla. I have a really cool gorilla suit and so I did that. I think that the last time I dressed up I went as Darth Vader. I have a full Darth Vader costume. That was tough too because there was a lot of hyperventilating walking through the neighborhood in a Darth Vader helmet.
What advice do you have for people who want to get in this industry?
Berger: It's tough. I get a lot of emails now with Facebook, like everyday. I get millions of emails, like, 'How do I get into this? I'm a big fan.' But it's hard.
What do they have to do?
Berger: Well, that's not what it's about. I mean, the thing is that I always tell the truth. This is a very difficult industry to get into now because it's closing up. There are fewer shops, fewer jobs. There are still a lot of people out there that do it. I don't discourage anyone from doing it, like, 'You should go into something else.' No, if you want to do it you should do it. I don't really recommend the schools. There's really only one school and it's in Canada that I like. It's the Vancouver Film School. They have a great, great makeup department and training ground, but the best thing is the Dick Smith Makeup course which is a correspondence course. You just go online to dicksmith.com or whatever and it's a fantastic course. We've all taken it. I mean, even as professionals we paid for it and got it because it's a wealth of information. But it's a matter of obviously being artistic and loving movies, loving monsters and being enthusiastic and really, really wanting to do it. I get discouraged because I meet a lot of people that are like, 'Well, you know, I think that I want to get into this?' I'm like, 'Really? Well, do you know how to do any of it, but it just kind of looks fun.' It's like, 'Wrong, wrong, wrong.' You need to go, 'I love monsters. I have to make them or I'm going to go crazy.' That's when I'm like, 'Okay, you're the right guy for the job.'
Is the fantasy genre like 'Narnia' the most fun to work on?
Berger: Yeah, for me it is. Greg and I have different film types that we like to work on. He loves doing all the horror stuff. I used to love doing the horror stuff, but I just don't feel that they're making horror movies that are very good anymore. I'm not really hip on all the torture stuff and blood and guts. I'm really tired of blood and guts stuff. I get exhausted with it. I don't like to be covered in blood. I hate the feel of the sticky blood on your arms and all over you. I prefer the fantasy stuff. I want to make movies that my kids can see.
Are you working on any other fantasy stuff?
Berger: So far no. I mean, Robert Rodriguez from time to time uses us. We did all the 'Spy Kids' movies and stuff like that which is kind of fantasy. No, the 'Narnia' thing is kind of it. We do such a huge variety of films. We do horror. We do fantasy stuff. We do sci-fi now.
But 'Narnia' is your biggest project?
Berger: It is, yeah. 'Narnia' is the biggest project that we've got.
Did you come back for 'Night of the Dead' at all?
Berger: No. I was on the first 'Narnia'. I was in New Zealand and Greg was in Toronto because he's got the tie to George Romero and he loves zombies. Like if we could do a zombie in every single movie he'd be very, very happy. But me, I'm like, 'I don't know.' I watched 'Shawn of the Dead' last night on the plane home and to me that's my favorite zombie movie. Call me crazy. I love that movie. I could watch that movie over and over again. It always works for me. I said to Greg, 'If we ever do another zombie film the zombies should be just like the "Shawn of the Dead" zombies.' I think those are great zombies. They're simplistic and I like the fact that they're fresh. They always do rotted stuff and I think that if they're so rotted they shouldn't really be walking around. That to me is a really fantastic and perfect zombie movie.
What about 'Evil Dead Baby'?
Berger: 'Reanimator Baby'? It's funny how that stuff starts.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray December 2nd, 2008.
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