What do The Cat in the Hat, The Ring and the new Planet of the Apes have in common? The answer is the work of Jamie Kelman, makeup and makeup special effects artist. With Halloween just around the corner, recess' Lexi Richards chatted with Kelman about costume tips, his experiences in the movie business and his latest project, Rest Stop, which is available on DVD Oct. 17.
recess: What project are you most proud of? And what would you consider your greatest accomplishment as a makeup artist?
Jamie Kelman: Right now I'm really proud of this monster movie called Headspace. I did that one very much myself, building the creature from the ground up-from design to the full creature suit with remote contol puppeted movements and puppet heads. It was a bunch of people I knew from film school and this was their big try to make a real movie and they succeeded. That one I'm really proud of because it was the movie that came from nothing except an idea and the desire to make it.
r: What has been your most challenging project?
JK: Headspace was the most challenging because there was very little money to build a full creature, and I had to build two creature suits and do all the effects. I had one assistant in a lab and then a couple other people on the set, but I did 80 percent of it all by myself. I'd come into the lab and there'd be all these creature parts everywhere. I knew that if I didn't do all the work it wouldn't get done. And it was over a year and a half from beginning to end of that project for me. It was just this epic labor of love. I got that monster movie out of my system by doing it myself. In the future I will want plenty of help.
r: So then, typically how many people are on a makeup special effects team?
JK: It varies from show to show. On The Grinch there were 80 makeup and hair stylists. We did the whole town of the Whos, Whoville, and that required 50 makeup people and 30 hair people. Planet of The Apes was also that scale. Something like The Ring movies where you're mainly just doing the dead girl who comes out of the well, that was just three make-up application people. On Rest Stop, also a challenge, I was the one ond only person doing all the beauty and make-up effects-building any gags that needed to happen, people getting killed or fingers getting bitten off or tongues getting cut off. [I] also [did] all the makeup on the leading lady.
r: Any tricks of the trade you can give away?
JK: Corn Syrup is always a great base for blood. Add red food coloring and just a tiny drop of green so it doesn't look so fake, it will look more dark and visceral. And add just a little bit of liquid soap so it will flow well, unless you are going to put it in your mouth. Then skip the soap.
r: Any other Halloween costume tips or makeup tips?
JK: Gelatin makes a great material that you can mix up and apply as it's cooling-don't put it on your face while it's too hot. But if you wanted to be all gruesome and gory, you could apply gelatin to your face and keep on working it with a popsicle stick or something. It'll get really lumpy and nasty. Then you can take some of the fake blood, put it all over-and it will wash off at the end of the night in the shower.
r: I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about your Teratoria project on your website.
JK: Teratoria is a place for people with reckless imaginations to escape to. And I think the future of entertainment is interactive entertainment. People are going to be looking more to the Internet. This is to me just a world that you can just go further and further into and have interactions with weird creatures and monsters when reality is just a little too boring or you just want to escape from the world around you.
r: Do you have any plans to make it into a movie at some point in the future?
JK: Yeah, definitely. I'm kind of working more on books right now. Because it is animated, [making it into a movie] is kind of a given because once the story is all told, I can just put it end-to-end instead of it being interactive and then its easy to and just put right on a DVD. By the time its finished, who knows what medium we'll be using? It'll probably just be on your iPod.
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