He called me an FX artist. - by Tocky
Tocky on 5/5/2018 at 02:56
That's how they do it. That's how they hook you. That's how they get you to work hard after an already ten or eleven hour day at your day job on props.
I just learned of this damn cable show last Sunday and this Sunday I have to make a guy up as a werewolf. It's the off season. Not a bottle of latex or wolf wig to be found in May. Oh sure if you expedite some Ebay shit you will get it in time and I have but it's crap. Nothing like the pictures. Ripoff bastards and no way to fix it with your own touches.
But it's something I've always wanted to do. A horror show. I'm even in it as a psychiatrist. I happen to have a lab coat. I happen to have a lot of stuff. I happen to have a woman's head with a bloody spine sticking out for the scene where he rips her head off. I have a coffin for the hearse scene.
My daughter is doing the zombies. She is good at it. She is the one who got me into this mess. We do the makeup for the Tupelo zombie run every year and she can do a bloody skin tear like Romero wishes he could. I can too. My doc zombie is damn good. Bloody teeth through surgical mask I swear is near as good as any Walking dead stuff. But I've never done a werewolf. And the time crunch. Jesus.
Okay so black women have these wig stores and that's good. I can pick up some stuff there. Have you ever thought of how you would build a werewolf from scratch? Well think about it. No Halloween stores open. Just the usual crap. My latex is hard in the bottle. So I look at the old Universal stuff. Have you any idea how they did that shit? Me either. So I build a brow and extruded occipital structure out of silicone only how do you mold silicone when it sticks to everything? Seran wrap. That's how I figure. Squirt out the structure on a piece of lexan with protective coating you can peal off and cause the wrinkles by pulling the wrap till the correct wrinkles show. Manipulate the Seran wrap by puling at opposite ends until the correct wrinkles appear. Wait to dry. Always waiting. Jesus.
What is the plot? What do you need for when? Who the fuck knows? Not the director. How does the change appear? I have five hours start to finish with scenes in between. Nuts. I want so much to show time lapse. That would take at least two full days. I don't have it. I have an hour for the makeup. Scenes before and after with me in some of them. A standing on sit and spin with turning scene knees down out of frame as he looks at moon. A revolution with cuts from tripod so it's like the old Wonder Woman spin change. Do I have to think of everything?
So I come up with teeth I made out of fake nails fixed on comedy teeth glued with hot glue that look good. I have a cap that was my wife's winter cap with fur and ears and all that looks good once I safety pin points to make a brow and color the pink interior at the edges lest they show. Too Ewok. Yes but evil Ewok. Looks good to me. Fuck fuck fuck. Do they know how hard this is? Nope.
Okay. Cut up a mask someone donates. Not near as good as evil Ewok. Hair too sparse. Fuck them. Evil Ewok is damn cool. Okay still doing the other as a foil. I like evil Ewok. You can take off the hair in between shoots which is good since fur is so hot. You have to figure that in. But they want some shit built on a mold of a face over six months time in two days now. Okay. I'm doing it. No mold. could make one with the old broken bone cast roll stuff but no guy to even sit for that. I have no access to this guy so I have to use my own face. We will see. I swear I like evil Ewok. The guys face is so Teddy bear to start with there is no way I would pick him for this shit. But he is a cop and the directors buddy. Christ almighty he has such a high forehead and receding hair. Abnormal high. Nobody would pick this guy to be a werewolf. Jesus fucking Christ. We will see.
Is this how the professionals do it? I want this to succeed so bad. I want input as to what shows they do. Oh to bring back the horror hosted shows of old. Sivad give me strength.
Tocky on 5/5/2018 at 03:15
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/A8hWL3K.jpgThis is evil Ewok werewolf but throw together without extra hair in cheek hollows and correct skin tone and makeup slashes. I did this just to show them. Is it so bad? I was just experimenting with the make up stuff. I can do better for the actual shoot. I have these eyebrows that follow a skull ridge that look cool and shit and fuck what do they want for rush job stuff anyway. Damn it! Fuck me what can I do on nothing budget with so little time? Oh fuck oh fuck.
Trance on 5/5/2018 at 04:25
Gonna need the What, When and Where details of this show. My interest is currently piqued.
Tocky on 5/5/2018 at 05:24
I don't know what. It's a show like Elvira on rinky dink New Albany cable. I came to the casting call just to see what was going on and he had me take a short shot holding a black one eyed rooster along with a lot of other folks who also did not know what was going on. I checked out his story board and couldn't make heads or tail of it. I'm just hoping somebody knows what's going on. He keeps asking impossible things as if he doesn't know what the hell he is doing. And worst of all he needs it done soon. I have to experiment to even know how to do a lot of this shit and I'm starting to feel as if I know more about what's going on than he does and I don't know shit.
But I want to do what he is doing. I want a horror show like the old days. I've dreamed of hosting one. I know just what I would do and how I would do it which is more than I can say for him. Sunday is when. Six and we meet at the old defunct Pontotoc drive in. My daughter and I do makeup. We have until ten to shoot a few vignettes to go in between the first showing of a horror. I don't have the details. All I have is hope he knows more than he seems to. If I can force him to do things which will help I will. I don't know this cat. I know his brother who works as editor and owner of a local rag called Oxford Town but that's it. Crazy shit. Nobody does this sort of stuff off the cuff in a week but what the hell. It will be interesting.
I wish it would succeed even on a small local level. I want "The Blood on Satans Claw" and "Dark Water" (the 80's Italian one) and the original "Wicker Man" and stuff nobody gets to see to be shown. I'll forgo pay for that. But this guy is hiring me just because folks have liked my zombie stuff I do for the zombie run in Tupelo so I have serious doubts. I'm sure it will be cheesy but hell, most of the old stuff was to some extent. Still love it.
I've read the script and I could do better. I've suggested some quips even. I hope he takes me up on them. Likely nothing will come of this and it will break my heart. I want a horror show of old like the WREG Fantastic Features so bad. Svenghoulie is pathetic. Elvira was cool. This could be as good if he will do it right. If he will listen to me. But he wouldn't do the green screen to let me stage the stop motion change like I want at a more stretched out time frame so who knows? I hope his actors have style. They have the boobs but it takes more.
I'm sure I'll be disappointed. But what if I'm not? I have to try.
Tocky on 5/5/2018 at 23:10
Okay he still wants time lapse inside the hearse for the werewolf change. I can't seem to talk him out of it. Won't do the spin change. So wolf guy is going to have to lay back on seat. Can't glue hair layer after layer so it has to be gravity holding it in place.
Built shoulder piece complete with bloody neck. Cream colored tape over blood drips till head is ripped off pulling out spine to show them. Damn Hawaiian Punch juicy red is too translucent though. Have to be some ketchup mixed in or all ketchup. Found a triple pumper water gun to spray with though. I don't know. Got a lone pumper too and that coming from the neck as hands reach to feel for missing head would look cool. I wonder how many takes we will have.
Tocky on 9/5/2018 at 03:20
This was a freaking amazing experience. Mike knew more than I figured and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I got there late. I was on my way and realized I hadn't shaved and turned around. Not bad late and at least I wasn't bleeding from the quick shave. I threw on a lab coat and tie and I was going to be professor Liloman from High Anxiety but he wanted Rodney Dangerfield. Christ, I can hardly be myself on camera. While they set up the lights I took pics. I was to be documentarian also. So we went through our scenes and I felt we were both hamming it up but he wanted bigger and more and really put yourself into it this time. Now one from this angle. Now a closeup. Now say it this way. Somehow we got it in twenty minutes and stayed on schedule.
Nobody has to tell me I was the worst actor there. I felt like I was talking too loud and words I would never say. It felt awkward. But I enjoyed the hell out of Shenans all in performance. He was great. I lost my pace marveling at his face as he said his lines. We made fast friends. I guess you kind of have to when one of you has black makeup on his finger shoving it up your nose. I tried to be gentle. If you want to be a werewolf you have to darken a few buggers.
Then it was on to the outside where I did my daughters back in shades of green and yellow and purple. I'm rather proud of my decaying spine colors and the bruising. But Samantha showed out. The girls she did were off the wall. Got some good pics of that. Always take pics of my beautiful daughter more than anything else but dang that hanging flesh was awesome. We gathered for some group photos of cast and crew and I'll post a pic or two at some point if anyone is interested. Amanda looks like she has her hand on my crotch in one of them. Great. I hope my wife doesn't notice. She did not have her hand there. She was real friendly though.
It's hard to describe the chaotic energy that makes you get things done in a hurry. I told him an hour for Hairy Larry but got thirty minutes and did it. He kept giving you impossible stuff and somehow you did it. It was that way with everyone. I also found I had to change heads last minute. Mary was no longer reddish brown like her facebook photo. Run to truck, yank another by the hair, hammer off the plastic bottom, hack up with razor blade, and make spine fit into styrofoam neck interior. Can't paint. No time. Zombie blood tubes to the rescue. That stuff comes in real handy so I keep a lot of it in my tackle box that will never hold a fishing lure. Looked better than the first. Slippery though. That would figure in later.
Can't shoot the car scene without at least a black felt blanket covering the side window and Mike forgot the blue filter anyway. Damn I had a black felt one back at the house. Load coffin and Mike (the director) takes off in it with Larry and wicked witch Amanda Kill to the drive in. Then a kid comes up missing and everyone left there is looking for him. After about 15 minutes he is found asleep on an upstairs bed and we burn rubber.
At the drive in we get the waiver of responsibility signed by everyone and they go to setting up lights. I just take shots of whatever looks cool and near everything does. The concession/projection house isn't long for the world with holes in the roof and walls you cannot lean against. I nearly pushed one over thinking I could lean on it and take some pics. It worked really cool for this purpose though. Perfect in fact. No wonder the liability waiver though.
Filming starts. I'm outside trying to cool Shenan by waving a block of styrofoam but Christ it's Mississippi and hot. We just skipped spring this year and I'm feeling guilty as hell for putting him in all that fur. We skipped the change scene entirely so that was good but he is sweating buckets. The spirit gum is holding for now but no way it will for long. I asked Mike if I could take off the head piece but he said no. The whole reason I chose it is because it is easy to take on and off but he won't hear it. I think he was mad I didn't go with the Universal look but that was freaking latex and hair and your skin can't breath. Later I talked with him about it and shit he just wanted the makeup as I had done the face. I didn't think that was cool enough looks wise and now Shenan was suffering. I felt bad about that. It won't happen next time. I'm just going to widows peak and eyebrow and makeup. That little goatee I thought was so neat wouldn't stick enough on his beard stubble and it kept leaning out. Live and learn. I might use gold streaks of eye shadow with a paint brush.
Anyway, the story board started to make sense. It wasn't linear and there were many different takes in different ways and angles and most wouldn't even be used. My daughter had done her zombies like a champ and they all played their parts like a champ. I was in and out doing whatever I could. More blood here, this needs to glisten, clear nail polish on the werewolf nails and blood on the palm for the close up of his hand stealthy slipping in the door and gliding along the wall. In all that rushing in and out I knocked my Nikon off my makeup case and set it somewhere else never knowing I had knocked the SD card loose. I didn't know it would do that. Damn rubber port covers on the Nikon where it didn't matter but hard ones with slack where it actually counted. So many wonderful pics it was showing me that didn't transfer to the memory. It makes me heart sick. I even got Amanda swatting Mike's rear with the large reel of film. Only I didn't and I wouldn't find out till the following morning.
That night though was a blast. Mike promised a shoot till ten but we were there till two in the morn. Great stuff shot and I was so full of adrenaline it took me an hour to go to sleep and then I got right back up at four to relive it through my pics and discovered I only had 58 shots. Oh god. Mike was consoling and said at least those were good but I was just sick. Still am.
My favorite scene though was the head pulling off scene as Hairy Larry burst in the door and struggled with Mary. It was also the most difficult. I had Mary in a white shirt tied at the waist the way they did in the early eighties when the movie place closed. I had already made up my fake neck and shoulders and clothed it that way. Mike wouldn't have it. He wanted her in a dress as the other girls were and I couldn't argue. She looked good in one. So I had to reset my rig and clothe it in her dress for that scene only she didn't have any pants so she had to stand behind a wall while she gave me the dress. It was a small dress. It was a complicated double layered dress and had barely enough room for my contraption much less me.
See, the way I built it was neck and shoulders that sat on my head via wire hanger wrangled with stretchy pony tail thing to give room to take it on and off but it was not comfortable. I hadn't time for that. I made it in three hours out of PVC pipe, pool noodle, newspaper, wire hanger, cardboard back and tape. I had to kneel on that spongy moldy dirt and push the dress up so I could see. In one hand was the dress edge and squirt gun full of blood mixture and in the other was the bloody neck I had to hold by the spine. It was slippery and limber and hard to hold. I dropped it three times. But we pulled it off. Literally for wolf dude. He pulled it out and tossed it aside then struggled with Mary only it was my daughters arms because Mary couldn't come out in her panties. Didn't matter from that angle it looked like the arms were connected to my fake torso.
Then we went on to the throwing the head on the floor scene. I was tossing it light because it was a close up but Mike wanted to do it so he did one. Camera dude told him let me do it as his was way off mark. We got lot's of shots landing different ways. Mary (back in her dress now) came in for the crawling on the floor feeling for her head and finding it part. We didn't film the putting the head back on the dummy part and just went with her adjusting her real head now with blood line. She was damned good at improvisation. Everyone was damned good. I was fucking amazed at how good. Every damn body there rose to the occasion and I was proud to be a part of it. It may come off a little kitschy but that too is horror.
I'm also proud to be a part of bringing back the horror shows of old. I grew up on Sivad and reveled in Elvira. There was a line in it where Amanda has been attacked by the zombies and the Mary zombie speaks about how she thinks they are from MTV and that was what killed the drive in and Amanda laughs and says how MTV doesn't even play music anymore. I don't know what killed the drive in but I do know I miss it and all the horror shows and hosts of old. I was honored to be a part of trying to make it come back no matter if it fails or succeeds. I wonder what he has planned for the next episode and I hope he will include me. I will work like hell again and gladly. I love this shit.
So does anybody want to see pics or am I talking to dead air?
Renzatic on 9/5/2018 at 03:40
Quote Posted by Tocky
So does anybody want to see pics or am I talking to dead air?
Pics!
Tocky on 9/5/2018 at 03:46
Pics or it didn't happen!
[IMG]
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/SdHriix.jpg[/IMG]
The cast and crew.
That is my daughter bottom center, director to my right holding blonde head, Mary to my left in shirt I wanted, further to her left is Shenan (Hairy Larry), Amanda to my right with her hand where it shouldn't be and I can't recall the other two off the top of my head. We are missing the camera man. Oh, I'm dead center in the "Take the Cookies" T for those who don't know me.