Movies
TV: KNB Specialist Greg Nicotero on ‘The Walking Dead’ Effects Work
More goodies over at AMC as they’ve posted an interview with KNB special effects make-up designer Greg Nicotero on the now filming The Walking Dead, AMC’s live-action adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic series that follows a group of zombie apocalypse survivors looking for a new/safe place to live. Frank Darabont is currently filming the pilot episode airing this October.
From AMC’s Blog:
“Q: You’ve been creating zombies for George Romero for years. What made you want to tackle The Walking Dead?
A: I’ve been best friends with Frank Darabont since before he directed The Shawshank Redemption, and we share a similar interest and nostalgic devotion to George Romero and Night of the Living Dead. We started talking about this project probably three or four years ago, when Frank was talking about wanting to do something different with zombies, and what we could do to make these guys look fresh and original. And from then on, it’s just been like, Hey man! We get to create zombies!
Q: How do these zombies differ from the ones you created for Romero?
A: We used the graphic novel certainly as inspiration. We’ve always tried to push the envelope, and because I’ve done so many other projects it’s always one of those things where you finish a movie and go, “Oh man next time I know how we can make it better. And after that I know how we can make it even better than that.” We’ve taken everything that we’ve learned on all these other projects, and applied them in terms of using new materials and new techniques – even something as simple as a zombie getting shot in the head: We really sat down and worked through the best way to make that look realistic and practical.
Q: What was your solution?
A: Well in the ’70s they just put squibs on extras’ heads and detonated them. Then you got to the point where if you had to use explosive squibs it could only be on a stunt person. But for The Walking Dead, we’re going for a very specific physical type: Every zombie that we see is really tall and really thin and really gaunt looking. One of the story points is that these characters have been dead for so long that they’re starving, and will eat virtually anything. They’ll eat a horse, they’ll eat a rat. So we built this self-contained head-hit rig that runs off compressed air. You fill a tube with blood, and then you use a foot pump to get a really great blood spray. You can clip it on to anybody that you want, and then all of a sudden you have instantaneous head wound.
Q: One of the more infamous scenes in the comic is when the zombies do in fact eat a horse. What was that like to shoot?
A: It’s almost like a Piranha attack – it really was like a feeding frenzy. We had thirty extras leaning over this prosthetic horse that we created, and they started ripping its insides and its entrails out and going crazy. They were sticking their heads in it and their hands in it. I kind of whipped them into a little bit of a frenzy before we shot, and it was funny because at one point I walked over to Frank and I’m like, “Dude, these guys are so amped up you better shoot this quick before they tear the horse apart!”
Q: What did you do to get them so pumped?
A: They saw me loading the horse. We made all these silicone guts and entrails and organs. So I came over with this big giant box of entrails and a big giant bucket of blood and I started soaking everything and stuffing all of it inside the abdomen of the horse. And literally, the more stuff I put in there, the more excited they were to reach in and start pulling it out. So by the time they had seen everything loaded and the stomach was all filled and there was blood on it, it was like “Ready. 3, 2, 1. Go!” Instantaneous gore.
Q: Frank described how hot it’s been in Atlanta. How does that affect your make-up?
A: The make-ups that we’re doing are relatively bulletproof. But when people start sweating or rubbing their necks, you do have to go in and touch people up. It’s tricky. I can’t remember when I’ve worked under these circumstances, especially shooting in the daytime. Most zombie shows like this, they’re shot at night. So to have a zombie TV series in broad daylight, running down Peachtree Avenue in downtown Atlanta, it’s challenging. Everything has to stand up to pretty tough scrutiny.
Q: We featured a gallery of concept sketches showing a zombie decompose. Will the zombies go through that change as the series progresses?
A: One conversation that Frank and I had at the beginning of our prep was, How far do I take them… We want to be able to show the degradation of these zombies over time. So some zombie make-ups are a little more fresh-looking, some are a little more decomposed looking. This is the first time we’ve ever actually gone through and hand-picked the actual zombies that will be featured. It’s one thing to glue prosthetics on somebody’s face, but if you have somebody who’s got a lot of character and they just have a really great structure to their face, it’s great. We’ll go to dinner and a waitress will go by, and we’re like, “Man, she’d be a great zombie.“
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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