This past summer -- Friday, June 13th to be specific -- SuicideGirls hopped a plane down to Austin, Texas to visit the set of Friday the 13th, the remake of the 1980 slasher classic that introduced the world to drowned-boy-turned-unkillable- ghoul Jason Voorhees. You can read about our night on the set right HERE, but the interviews conducted during that trip have been under studio-mandated lock and key -- until now. Here is the fourth in our series of five interviews with those responsible for bringing horror back to Friday the 13th and giving Jason Voorhees a new lease of life.
Scott Stoddard is part of the make-up and special effects team that updated Jason Voorhees classic bad-boy looks and put the gore into the new Friday the 13th. Working with the film's writers, producers and director, he made sure that each of Voorhees gruesome kills went off spectacularly yet believably -- and without a hitch. SuicideGirls chatted with Stoddard, to find out, among other things, what make-up and head attire Camp Crystal Lake's favorite slasher will be sporting in the upcoming Friday the 13th killing season.
Question: How long did it take your team to figure out exactly what Jason's look was going to be?
Scott Stoddard: I spent probably a month before I even started filming just thinking about his look, underneath the mask. Then we started dealing with the mask and the hood that he wears, stuff like that. Altogether it was about three months from beginning to end. I would come up with ideas and designs and then start doing two-dimensional stuff. Once things were agreed upon with what the look was, then I would hire on a crew of people.
Q: How much would you say was taken from the earlier films?
SS: I would say easily fifty percent to seventy-five percent, taken from all the different makeups and fusing them all together, putting in things I want to see.
Q: How much license did you have to play around with the look?
SS: They said, "You're a fan of it, do what you think is gonna be right, what you would wanna see and what you think the fans are gonna want to see." You can't please all the fans, you can't please everyone, but I just looked at it as a fan myself and said, "This is what I would really want to see." I took elements from each of the different films and we melded them all together and made our own Frankenstein monster.
Q: Can you talk about some of the specific kills you've worked on?
SS: We kind of looked back at what was done and enhanced things a bit. It's a little more creative and a little more excessive than what was seen before. We've enhanced quite a bit of the stuff. I hate to spoil it for people who want to see it and be surprised by it. There is some makeup stuff we've done in the film that, I've done a bit of it before, but I've never been able to go as far as we have with this. There is some CGI element to it. Some of the kills are practical and some are enhanced by CGI, but I don't think we've done any kills that are all CG.
Q: Can you talk about inspirations from past films?
SS: The makeup that was done in Part 2 that Warrington Gillette was wearing, the Carl Buechler makeup that's a little more mountain mannish, there were some elements of that I liked. Also, there were parts of Part 4 and a little bit of him as a child, but not as bald -- more as a young kid that still has hair. There's a deformity, but more in the human realm, having one side more accessible than the other. That's kind of where I pulled from. We went though medical books and looked at different types of diseases and human abnormalities, scoliosis of the spine. He's got a hump up on his back, he's a little more thin and barrel-chested -- I drew from all of that stuff, instead of just big, solid, lumbering Frankenstein.
Q: How much exposure does the facial makeup actually get in this film? Just a flash? He's in the bag or mask for ninety-nine percent, right?
SS: It might be a little more than one percent, we shot a couple of different things. We'll see what ends up in it, what they wanna see. What they've seen, they really like, so we'll see what works best for the film. From the whole time of doing the designs of it, I knew that they didn't want to show him that much, his face, they wanted to keep it real covered. But in my own right, I said that if we do show it, I want to be prepared for it and I want to make something really special and cool and pay homage to the films. Once I did that, and we started seeing it on the days, it was like, "Maybe we can do a little here, maybe we can do a little there." Once it comes to editing, they'll determine what is appropriate.
Q: Is determining the kills a group process? Do the writers come to you with ideas? Do you meet with them? Is there a process of compromise?
SS: There's always a compromise. What's great is that the writers did come to the plate with a script and we read it, and then it's my job to figure it out, like, how are we gonna shoot this? But nothing was really set in stone. Once we started sitting down with the producers and the director, we started having meetings and it was like, "What do you think of this? Do you think it should be more like this? What is your input?" So nothing was set in stone.
We kept shuffling ideas around, and it was good, it was a whole collaborative effort. It was what we've seen before in the past films, what is gonna be new and different and interesting and play off of the character, to have kind of a reason behind certain things. It was nice; there was a nice open playing field. In the end, it's the producers and the directors as far as what they want to see, but everyone got a chance to voice what they thought. This is a group of people who grew up watching these films, they're fans and we all got to get involved in it, which was good.
Q: Can you talk about something that was taken off the drawing board for maybe being too difficult or outlandish?
SS: There were a couple of things that were too outlandish; it was shock on top of shock and it took away from the initial impact of it. So we said, "Let's slice it down and make it a little more, not simplistic, but make the impact in one area and not drag it out where it's obsessively obscene." That wouldn't work for the film. There were a few things.
Q: Some slasher films use a lot of blood and some obscure it with angles and rely on the impact -- which way is it for this film?
SS: It's a bit of both. We'll shoot stuff where there's less blood and it's more of the impact of what's going on, and the actors definitely bring it. I sometimes feel that there's a lot better reaction to what you don't see. Instead of seeing the visceral, you see the emotion of somebody going through something. They're shooting stuff like that, but we also have stuff to choose from as well that's a little more excessive and a little more grotesque. In the final editing we'll figure out what works best for each scene.
Q: So no geysers of blood like in Freddy vs. Jason?
SS: We haven't done too many geysers. With it being a collaborative thing, they'll come to me and go, "What would really happen if..." And so you stretch it a little, but a fountain? No. There's only so much blood in the human body. Organs are not spring-loaded. They don't shoot against a wall.
Q: You wanted to maintain the realism of it?
SS: Yes. From my standpoint that's where I wanted to keep it. There's a lot of stuff in the older films that you saw that was, like real. It didn't have to be more is better. You gotta do it just right. That's the reality of it.
Q: What can you tell us about Pamela Voorees's head?
SS: It's in the movie and it's about a twenty year span from when it was taken.
Q: So it's just a skull?
SS: Sort of. Could be. [laughs] The good things you don't want to let out!
Q: Do you see a major difference between how the effects were approached in the 80s and what you're doing now?
SS: There are definitely materials and stuff now that we use that's way more advanced than what they had to deal with back in the 70s and 80s and even the beginning of the 90s. We have better technology to make things more user-friendly for actors, and they look nicer as well. Also, when you're getting into an area of being sort of dirty and grimy and gross, it's all sort of the same techniques to get to that point, but we just have better materials now. I'm a fan of the sleight of hand tricks that you do for certain kills, things like that. If they're shot right and coordinated correctly they work really well. It's all about a magic trick, like what Savini used to do. That's fun.
Q: Do you feel CGI can undermine what you're trying to do, if they're like, "Let's just go ahead and shoot it and pretend there's a blade there."
SS: Sometimes you hear that, and people tend to want to rely on things like that, but we've been able to get away with a lot without having to rely on things like that. Relying wholly on one effect tends to not work. The greatest for me is when you do it practically and then they think, "That was a really nice CG shot." I remember when people heard CG and were like, "What's that mean?" And now it's like overloaded, like watching a big videogame. If it's a videogame, I don't want to see it.
Q: Can you talk about creating the mask?
SS: I got a copy of a mask from Part 3 and I utilized it and looked at it. There were some things I wanted to change and make a bit different. I wanted to keep it within the realm of where it needed to be. I did a few sculpts and then I tried to make it a bit more user-friendly for Derek, who is gonna be wearing this thing. Once I got the shape right, I molded it, made a two-part mold from it and instead of doing a fiberglass or vacuform -- I'd heard that ones in the past were made like that, they were just fiberglass -- I knew that Derek was gonna be doing a lot of physical stuff in this film so I made a core for it and basically made it out of a really high-strength resin that was more like a heavy, dense plastic. It can take a hit. It can be pounded into. Derek has been smashed in the face, he's been kicked in the face a bunch of times. He's a stuntman as well, so he's like, "Yeah, go ahead and hit me, I got a hockey mask on." In the hockey world, old hockey masks were made out of whale bone, they would carve whale bone into the shape of a face mask. So I thought it would be cool if I could get something that's not as strong as bone but can take a hit and be light enough -- then it can be a stuntmask as well.
Q: What can you tell us about the sack?
SS: It's kind of a meld between Part 2, which was like a pillow-case tied around his neck. Instead of using a rope and tying it around his neck, this one is kind of like a wrap, in a way, a very thin cheesecloth, very stained and dirty, one eyehole cut out for his good eye to see though, kind of an homage to The Elephant Man. It's very stained and dirty. You know that there's a mouth under there, over to one side, kind of fluxing. When he breathes through his nose, you can see it kind of going in and out, it gives a little more emotion to it. It conforms to the shape of his head a bit, it's not just a square thing, you know something's going on under there. We didn't want to go Mummy on it, so there's a fine line.
Q: This Jason is running around a lot more than previous Jasons -- did that require a change in approach at all?
SS: Not really, because Derek moves really well. Wardrobe might have had to do some adjustments, but for what we had to do, he's basically got a bodysuit on the top which is a sculpture of his chest and his back. He gets into that and then we have a head cowl piece and his shoulders that go down, to give shape, but it's pretty flexible, he can move around pretty nicely and do what he needs to do inside of it. It's vented in the right places for movement, the shoulders and arms and torso. He's got scoliosis and a sort of scapular hump. He can accentuate it -- he's actually standing straight when you see him moving around, that's just the shape of his body, that's how twisted up the spine is and he can accentuate it even more and just kind of be off-kilter a bit.
Friday the 13th opens in theaters nationwide on February 13, 2009. Check out the official site HERE.
Scott Stoddard is part of the make-up and special effects team that updated Jason Voorhees classic bad-boy looks and put the gore into the new Friday the 13th. Working with the film's writers, producers and director, he made sure that each of Voorhees gruesome kills went off spectacularly yet believably -- and without a hitch. SuicideGirls chatted with Stoddard, to find out, among other things, what make-up and head attire Camp Crystal Lake's favorite slasher will be sporting in the upcoming Friday the 13th killing season.
Question: How long did it take your team to figure out exactly what Jason's look was going to be?
Scott Stoddard: I spent probably a month before I even started filming just thinking about his look, underneath the mask. Then we started dealing with the mask and the hood that he wears, stuff like that. Altogether it was about three months from beginning to end. I would come up with ideas and designs and then start doing two-dimensional stuff. Once things were agreed upon with what the look was, then I would hire on a crew of people.
Q: How much would you say was taken from the earlier films?
SS: I would say easily fifty percent to seventy-five percent, taken from all the different makeups and fusing them all together, putting in things I want to see.
Q: How much license did you have to play around with the look?
SS: They said, "You're a fan of it, do what you think is gonna be right, what you would wanna see and what you think the fans are gonna want to see." You can't please all the fans, you can't please everyone, but I just looked at it as a fan myself and said, "This is what I would really want to see." I took elements from each of the different films and we melded them all together and made our own Frankenstein monster.
Q: Can you talk about some of the specific kills you've worked on?
SS: We kind of looked back at what was done and enhanced things a bit. It's a little more creative and a little more excessive than what was seen before. We've enhanced quite a bit of the stuff. I hate to spoil it for people who want to see it and be surprised by it. There is some makeup stuff we've done in the film that, I've done a bit of it before, but I've never been able to go as far as we have with this. There is some CGI element to it. Some of the kills are practical and some are enhanced by CGI, but I don't think we've done any kills that are all CG.
Q: Can you talk about inspirations from past films?
SS: The makeup that was done in Part 2 that Warrington Gillette was wearing, the Carl Buechler makeup that's a little more mountain mannish, there were some elements of that I liked. Also, there were parts of Part 4 and a little bit of him as a child, but not as bald -- more as a young kid that still has hair. There's a deformity, but more in the human realm, having one side more accessible than the other. That's kind of where I pulled from. We went though medical books and looked at different types of diseases and human abnormalities, scoliosis of the spine. He's got a hump up on his back, he's a little more thin and barrel-chested -- I drew from all of that stuff, instead of just big, solid, lumbering Frankenstein.
Q: How much exposure does the facial makeup actually get in this film? Just a flash? He's in the bag or mask for ninety-nine percent, right?
SS: It might be a little more than one percent, we shot a couple of different things. We'll see what ends up in it, what they wanna see. What they've seen, they really like, so we'll see what works best for the film. From the whole time of doing the designs of it, I knew that they didn't want to show him that much, his face, they wanted to keep it real covered. But in my own right, I said that if we do show it, I want to be prepared for it and I want to make something really special and cool and pay homage to the films. Once I did that, and we started seeing it on the days, it was like, "Maybe we can do a little here, maybe we can do a little there." Once it comes to editing, they'll determine what is appropriate.
Q: Is determining the kills a group process? Do the writers come to you with ideas? Do you meet with them? Is there a process of compromise?
SS: There's always a compromise. What's great is that the writers did come to the plate with a script and we read it, and then it's my job to figure it out, like, how are we gonna shoot this? But nothing was really set in stone. Once we started sitting down with the producers and the director, we started having meetings and it was like, "What do you think of this? Do you think it should be more like this? What is your input?" So nothing was set in stone.
We kept shuffling ideas around, and it was good, it was a whole collaborative effort. It was what we've seen before in the past films, what is gonna be new and different and interesting and play off of the character, to have kind of a reason behind certain things. It was nice; there was a nice open playing field. In the end, it's the producers and the directors as far as what they want to see, but everyone got a chance to voice what they thought. This is a group of people who grew up watching these films, they're fans and we all got to get involved in it, which was good.
Q: Can you talk about something that was taken off the drawing board for maybe being too difficult or outlandish?
SS: There were a couple of things that were too outlandish; it was shock on top of shock and it took away from the initial impact of it. So we said, "Let's slice it down and make it a little more, not simplistic, but make the impact in one area and not drag it out where it's obsessively obscene." That wouldn't work for the film. There were a few things.
Q: Some slasher films use a lot of blood and some obscure it with angles and rely on the impact -- which way is it for this film?
SS: It's a bit of both. We'll shoot stuff where there's less blood and it's more of the impact of what's going on, and the actors definitely bring it. I sometimes feel that there's a lot better reaction to what you don't see. Instead of seeing the visceral, you see the emotion of somebody going through something. They're shooting stuff like that, but we also have stuff to choose from as well that's a little more excessive and a little more grotesque. In the final editing we'll figure out what works best for each scene.
Q: So no geysers of blood like in Freddy vs. Jason?
SS: We haven't done too many geysers. With it being a collaborative thing, they'll come to me and go, "What would really happen if..." And so you stretch it a little, but a fountain? No. There's only so much blood in the human body. Organs are not spring-loaded. They don't shoot against a wall.
Q: You wanted to maintain the realism of it?
SS: Yes. From my standpoint that's where I wanted to keep it. There's a lot of stuff in the older films that you saw that was, like real. It didn't have to be more is better. You gotta do it just right. That's the reality of it.
Q: What can you tell us about Pamela Voorees's head?
SS: It's in the movie and it's about a twenty year span from when it was taken.
Q: So it's just a skull?
SS: Sort of. Could be. [laughs] The good things you don't want to let out!
Q: Do you see a major difference between how the effects were approached in the 80s and what you're doing now?
SS: There are definitely materials and stuff now that we use that's way more advanced than what they had to deal with back in the 70s and 80s and even the beginning of the 90s. We have better technology to make things more user-friendly for actors, and they look nicer as well. Also, when you're getting into an area of being sort of dirty and grimy and gross, it's all sort of the same techniques to get to that point, but we just have better materials now. I'm a fan of the sleight of hand tricks that you do for certain kills, things like that. If they're shot right and coordinated correctly they work really well. It's all about a magic trick, like what Savini used to do. That's fun.
Q: Do you feel CGI can undermine what you're trying to do, if they're like, "Let's just go ahead and shoot it and pretend there's a blade there."
SS: Sometimes you hear that, and people tend to want to rely on things like that, but we've been able to get away with a lot without having to rely on things like that. Relying wholly on one effect tends to not work. The greatest for me is when you do it practically and then they think, "That was a really nice CG shot." I remember when people heard CG and were like, "What's that mean?" And now it's like overloaded, like watching a big videogame. If it's a videogame, I don't want to see it.
Q: Can you talk about creating the mask?
SS: I got a copy of a mask from Part 3 and I utilized it and looked at it. There were some things I wanted to change and make a bit different. I wanted to keep it within the realm of where it needed to be. I did a few sculpts and then I tried to make it a bit more user-friendly for Derek, who is gonna be wearing this thing. Once I got the shape right, I molded it, made a two-part mold from it and instead of doing a fiberglass or vacuform -- I'd heard that ones in the past were made like that, they were just fiberglass -- I knew that Derek was gonna be doing a lot of physical stuff in this film so I made a core for it and basically made it out of a really high-strength resin that was more like a heavy, dense plastic. It can take a hit. It can be pounded into. Derek has been smashed in the face, he's been kicked in the face a bunch of times. He's a stuntman as well, so he's like, "Yeah, go ahead and hit me, I got a hockey mask on." In the hockey world, old hockey masks were made out of whale bone, they would carve whale bone into the shape of a face mask. So I thought it would be cool if I could get something that's not as strong as bone but can take a hit and be light enough -- then it can be a stuntmask as well.
Q: What can you tell us about the sack?
SS: It's kind of a meld between Part 2, which was like a pillow-case tied around his neck. Instead of using a rope and tying it around his neck, this one is kind of like a wrap, in a way, a very thin cheesecloth, very stained and dirty, one eyehole cut out for his good eye to see though, kind of an homage to The Elephant Man. It's very stained and dirty. You know that there's a mouth under there, over to one side, kind of fluxing. When he breathes through his nose, you can see it kind of going in and out, it gives a little more emotion to it. It conforms to the shape of his head a bit, it's not just a square thing, you know something's going on under there. We didn't want to go Mummy on it, so there's a fine line.
Q: This Jason is running around a lot more than previous Jasons -- did that require a change in approach at all?
SS: Not really, because Derek moves really well. Wardrobe might have had to do some adjustments, but for what we had to do, he's basically got a bodysuit on the top which is a sculpture of his chest and his back. He gets into that and then we have a head cowl piece and his shoulders that go down, to give shape, but it's pretty flexible, he can move around pretty nicely and do what he needs to do inside of it. It's vented in the right places for movement, the shoulders and arms and torso. He's got scoliosis and a sort of scapular hump. He can accentuate it -- he's actually standing straight when you see him moving around, that's just the shape of his body, that's how twisted up the spine is and he can accentuate it even more and just kind of be off-kilter a bit.
Friday the 13th opens in theaters nationwide on February 13, 2009. Check out the official site HERE.
nicole_powers:
This past summer -- Friday, June 13th to be specific -- SuicideGirls hopped a plane down to Austin, Texas to visit the set of Friday the 13th, the remake of the 1980 slasher classic that introduced the world to drowned-boy-turned-unkillable- ghoul Jason Voorhees....