For the actors, getting scanned was just the beginning of an arduous process that involved, on average, about four hours of torturous makeup preparation per mutant family member each and every day. Even after their extensive facial makeup was applied, the actors had to be spray painted with an array of decrepit colors to make their every inch of flesh look even closer to death and deterioration.
It wasn’t easy, yet the actors developed a profound respect for the special effects makeup workers who helped to bring their nearly unimaginable characters to life. Says Robert Joy, who plays Lizard: “Every day, these amazing artists took more than three hours to transform me into something that could only be found in a nightmare. Their work was so real, it gives you a deeper glimpse into the mutants’ lives. You realize that it’s not only their bodies that are so deformed, it’s their souls, too.”
Alexandre Aja has nothing but praise for the K.N.B. makeup department. “Greg Nicotero, Kevin Wasner and Scott Patton did an amazing job and worked really hard to make our vision of the characters come alive. With this film, I think we have helped to push K.N.B to take their special makeup effects to the next level and have gotten some very unsettlingly gory results,” he says.Meanwhile, innovative visual effects supervisor Jamison Goei, (HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER, HANSEL AND GRETEL, HALLOWEEN: Resurrection) and his team of high-tech artists were feverishly crafting over 130 visual effects shots for the film – effects so remarkably subtle that they never compromise the raw realism of the film.One of Goei’s most monumental challenges was recreating the atomic test village . . . inside a computer. “The idea was that the audience would be wondering ‘where is this town?’ because it looks so real when in fact we only constructed one street and filled the rest in with computers,” he notes.
Goei’s work also involved warping actor’s faces into mutant shapes. “For example with Ruby we took her facial scan and warped her eyes, then expanded the bridge of her nose and her forehead to give it a kind of subtle mutant freakiness. Parts of her face look correct but something’s just a little off so that it feels very real -- which of course, is what makes it so scary,” he says.
Comments Alexandre Aja: “I think people are going to be really impressed with what we’ve done with facial manipulation and other effects that have never been seen before in this way. We wanted to create integrated visual effects so seamless that the audience might not notice them yet they add to the overall experience. I think we’ve done that very well with HILLS.”
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