Editorials
The Last Minute Digital Effect Added in Post-Production of ‘The Boy’ That Improved the Ending
Sitting down with director William Brent Bell and producer Gary Lucchesi on set of Brahms: The Boy II revealed a lot of key details about what’s in store for the sequel. One thing we didn’t expect to uncover, though, was a key change that occurred during post-production that completely altered the look of Brahms in the final act of The Boy. The adult Brahms, that is. It turns out that major twist, which revealed that a very adult Brahms was living in the walls of the Heelshire mansion, would’ve looked very different had it not been for one major digital effect that, up until this point, has gone unnoticed.
In talking about the collaborative process working on these films has been, Lucchesi mused, “There is something about the process of making movies. You have a screenplay; you do all of this preparation but then there are certain things that occur during the making of the movie. I wish in hindsight, now we fixed it, but in hindsight, I’d wished we’d had a conversation in the first Boy about putting the mask on his face.”
Wait. What?
It turns out that when The Boy was filmed, the sudden appearance of the adult Brahms was shot without a mask. Bell shares, “I’ll tell you about the mask because I’ve always been surprised that that never came out. You guys know Javier Botet, right? That’s who I wanted to play Brahms in the walls. That just didn’t fly.” That Bell initially conceived of Brahms with Botet in mind, an actor known for his unique, slender frame and creating nightmarish characters in The Conjuring 2, [Rec], and more gives insight as to why Brahms didn’t have a mask initially.
When Botet wasn’t available, Bell elaborates, “Then we got a guy, who was great. To me, he was kind of like a more conservative Javier. Not quite as wild and weird and tall and crazy. But he was cool. But we shot the movie, and he had no mask on. He was just a guy with a beard and he looked crazy coming out of the walls. We tested the movie and the movie tested really well; everybody liked the movie. We were asking questions about the third act, when the twist happens, ‘Were you scared by the guy coming out of the walls?’ ‘Mm, yeah, you know, but not that scared.’ Huh. And Roy Lee, who’s one of the producers on the movie, asked, ‘Did you ever think about putting a mask on him?’” Lucchesi adds, “He had worked on a movie about 10 years ago where he had done that; he’d put a mask on somebody in post-production.”
“Yeah, The Strangers. Well, they’d put a mask in post on somebody. So, we thought, wow, that’s a great idea! We were so focused on creating the doll that we’d never thought about that. If you watch the movie, the mask was never on him. We never planned that,” Bell says before expanding that it took a lot of different designs before they settled on the final version that made it into the film. “We did tests of him coming out of the walls in totally different masks. It was just like, ‘Try another one. Try another one.’ Because you just click a button and another one is on him. It was so incredible, what they did. And had we had a real mask it never would’ve looked as cool. It wouldn’t have stayed on. And what we had to do with this movie, to some degree, is if we want to see that mask well then, we have to create it, right?”
Visual Effects Supervisor James McQuaide has a much funnier take on the situation while also hinting at just how complicated this effect really was, “It was a good looking guy; she’s running away from a good looking guy. It wasn’t very scary. We went through a couple of months of trying to come up with the right design. Something a little bit rougher around the edges, more sort of homespun. We came back to the idea that of course, it looks like a large version of the Brahms doll. I think it made it much more scary, that face, than a barista at Starbucks, which is kinda what he looked like.”
“The design was the trickier part just because there’s so many cooks in the kitchen with an opinion about what it should look like. We had some really cool designs, but trying to come up with something that was organic to the movie was the place we ultimately went. But the execution was a little bit difficult because it wasn’t planned, so there’s no tracking marker. There’s nothing to really work off of. It was like 350 shots; it was a significant part of the movie. Probably 1 in 8 shots, something crazy like that, is CG mask.” McQuaide says the digital effect didn’t just stop at the mask, “And the burn at the end, you know when the mask breaks off, that’s all CG too. In the original version he was just, again, there was no damage from the fire. We had this idea that the house burned down and he carries the scars from it, as a CG element, to sort of make the movie maybe a little more substantial. So even that is CG.”
Bell still marvels at what they pulled off with this late game addition to The Boy, “Yeah, it made it so much weirder. Trying to kiss the mask, and it made his eyes more interesting. We did so much interesting development work on that, though. The mask was smaller, the mask was bigger, then darker, the mask was made out of paper mâché. To me, doing a movie like that where there was no planning, no tracking marks, and no plan to put a mask on and it was done a thousand percent perfectly, made me realize that anything is possible in making a movie if you need to change something.”
What would the paper mâché mask have looked like on Brahms? This clip shows the unused design in action:
It’s mind-blowing to think of how drastically different the final act of The Boy might’ve been without the addition of that creepy mask. As for the sequel, Brahms: The Boy II, a physical mask was created, but you’ll have to wait until the film’s release on February 21, 2020 to see it.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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