The Wasp Woman

Recently, I did some filming at Bronson Cave, and it brought back a lot of memories. Bronson Cave is a man made tunnel under the Hollywood sign, at the west end of Griffith Park. It was dug out in the 60’s to be the entrance for the Batcave in the infamous Adam West version of BATMAN

I hadn’t shot there for a while, but early in my FX career, when I did a lot of lower budget horror movies, I frequented the place. I probably did about 30 films at that location. Most of them blend together, tons of gore effects and bullet wounds, but the first memory that comes to mind every time I step foot in that cave is Roger Corman’s WASP WOMAN

Photo 1: Obviously, not the classic original! I definitely wasn't doing effects in 1959. I didn’t even exist when Roger came up with the idea of selling a horror movie by superimposing a woman’s head onto the body of a giant wasp as a marketing campaign.

Photo 2: For some strange reason, what's on the poster is not even what the creature looks like in the movie! It’s quite the opposite, a woman’s body with the head of an…well, a…I’m not sure what that is exactly! I guess it’s supposed to be an insect. What ever it is, it sure scared people at the drive-ins 50 years ago!

Photo 3, 3a: In 1995, Roger decided to remake Wasp Woman for his Showtime series, Roger Corman Presents. But this time, he wanted to make the creature much more convincing. I got the call to re-envision the title character. The main question was, should it be the body of a woman with the head of an insect, or the head of a woman on the body of an insect? Which image from the original was the most haunting? The answer I got was, “Doesn’t matter, as long as it has cleavage!”

Photo 4: So I went with a full on giant wasp, with a D cup. Only in Hollywood can such things be possible. In the end, Roger stated that my Wasp Woman was his favorite creature from his extensive movie catalogue. He said he just wished the movie were better!

Photo 5: The movie starred Jennifer Rubin (The Crush) as an aging super model/ cosmetic company owner who has just been replaced by a younger model. Daniel J. Travanti (Hill Street Blues) is in the role of the scientist who formulates an experimental de-aging serum made from bee pollen. Jennifer takes the serum against the doctor’s wishes and, well, turns into a revenge seeking, murderous wasp! Hey, I didn’t say it was Shakespeare!

Photo 6: Scream Queen Maria Ford played Caitlin, the younger model, and naturally, one of the wasp’s earliest victims. Ironically, I used Maria’s body cast from a previous project we had done together as the study for the Wasp Woman sculpture.

Photo 7: In order for the Wasp Woman creature to be low budget friendly, it needed to be a suit rather than a make-up. That way, it could slip over an actor quickly, instead of being applied like prosthetics for hours. But the wasp needed to have a very shapely hourglass figure, so the actor wearing it needed to be rail thin so the curves could be sculpted on without making the whole body too bulky.

Ultimately, the heady, body, and multiple leg rig would be considerably heavy, so a professional suit performer was necessary. The production talked to multiple people, but somehow the decision was made that I should be the one in the suit! It sounded like fun at first, but I had no idea what I was in for…

Photo 8: It’s often difficult to tell if a creature sculpture is “attractive” enough. As I was finishing this WED clay sculpt, this winged insect wouldn’t leave it alone! I took that as a good sign...

Photo 9: The leg rig was the most complicated part of the Wasp Woman suit. I wanted to have full mobility, but never really have my legs shown. I designed this welded steel rig to support me while I pretzeled my legs behind me, to be hidden in the abdomen. So, not only was I freakishly skinny, I apparently was much more flexible 15 years ago…

Photo 10: The welded frame was wrapped in sheet foam, which was then covered in a latex skin. The abdomen was constructed out of L200 foam, so it would be light and hollow. That, too, was covered in textured latex. This process was faster and cheaper than sculpting, molding, and casting pieces as large as this was.

Photo 11: The next step was painting everything. I used an old make-up trick to speed things up. I based everything out using an adhesive called Kryton, thinned with a chemical called Solvent 111. Kryton was actually invented during WWII as a rubberized de-icer for airplane wings. Somewhere along the way, it was adopted for wig adhesive, and then it’s use as a paint was discovered. It’s pretty hard to get a hold of these days, but for large areas like this wasp suit, it is pretty useful. The advantage is that you can apply the base, which I tinted yellow for this purpose, then airbrush layers of straight acrylic over it. This makes painting super fast and clean. Then a clear coat of the Kryton goes over the top, locking in the acrylic and making it just as flexible as rubber cement paint, or PAX.

Photo 12: Here’s the head. I went for a very wasp-like look. The mandibles and antenna are animatronic, with the servos housed at the back, behind my head. The eyes are made from a front and back vac-u-form piece housing a cluster of ¾ inch clear spheres. The front vac-u-form is sprayed with a translucent amber acrylic, and the back plate is lined with aluminum foil to help reflect the light. The end result was very cool, but the dozens of solid marbles added about 10 pounds to the head. After an 18-hour day of shooting, I was scrambling for the Tylenol!

Photo 13: And there she, uh, I, am in all my glory!

Photo 14: It was a weird experience walking around with breasts. Yes, I know, I actually just said that. Honestly, when we were done filming, I swore I would never let anyone know that it was me in that costume! I even demanded that I go uncredited in the film. But, years later, looking at these ridiculous pictures, I figured I just had to share…

Photo 15: But sometimes the sharing was just too much! Seriously! The staring and the gawking!!! Even when I didn’t have the head on, guys were goggling. Dude, I’m a dude! Eyes up here. Please.

Photo 16: If you spend any time on a film set, you will know that there is a lot of sitting and waiting. I made a point to remember that the NEXT time I designed a creature suit. This is not a comfortable position to sit in while waiting for lighting changes and camera reloads.

Photo 17: And here we are up at Bronson Cave. It was a hot summer’s day. That’s producer Marta Mobley running to the left. She and I went on to work together many times. My favorite story about this film, and this location, involves her. But she would kill me if I blogged about it. I’ll have to tell you next time I see you in person…

Photo 18: In the cave and on the rig. You can tell by my expression that I have been on the rig way too long!

Photo 19: For the “over the shoulder” shots, which usually involved attacking the victim, I was rig free so I could run and jump. The exciting part of this for me was that I got to sit down on a chair like a normal person!

My on-set support team included Kenn Scott, an avid suit performer himself, most famously known for his portrayal of Raphael in Jim Henson’s Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. To the right is Tom Skelington, who started work at the Barnyard with this production. His 8-year stint started when he wandered into Bronson Cave to see what was being filmed. I happened to be the person he asked first, sans costume, and when I told him it was a remake of the Corman classic, he jumped for joy. Oddly, the original Wasp Woman was his favorite film, and the one that inspired him to get into FX. I asked him if he wanted to work on the new version. He started that day!

Photo 20: Outside the cave, a second unit picked up some shots of the “cat wasp.” In the film, the doctor first tests the serum’s safety level by injecting his pet cat. Shockingly, it turns into a hybrid cat/wasp and starts to kill people!

Photo 21: The cat/wasp puppet had motorized wings and a radio controlled head. The hero close-up puppet had the same marble eyes as the suit. The version in this photo hangs in my bathroom, and every once in a while a new visitor will scream when they go in there.

Photo 22: The puppet legs were cast over armature wire so I could bend them in different poses, and the wings were clear plastic vac-u-formed over textured plaster.

Photo 23: There were very few cat like qualities in the final puppet, but even still, it did not get along with my English Bull Terrier, Action!

Photo 24: What would a B-movie be without more scream queens! Here I am posing with Melissa “Rocky” Brasselle and Antonia Dorian. I had my wasp head on for a magazine shoot, but in this photo I think we were comparing cleavage!

Photo 25: Rocky and I became great friends during the shoot.

Photo 26: And then I had to kill her! Just kidding, it was totally fake. Except for the part were she punched my wasp head in the face, which then in turn crunched my real face.

Photo 27: But later, she apologized and gave me a hug.

Photo 28: And apparently, even she was fascinated by my new, uh, assets.

Photo 29: It’s funny how people have no reservations about poking at you when you are wearing a costume. But don’t even think about doing the same to them…

Photo 30: Or you will end up getting punched in the face again!

Happy New Year! The Guild Hall

It’s almost frightening that I remember writing my “2 blogs a month” resolution in the blog I posted last New Year’s eve as if it were just a few weeks ago! This year went by so fast! Maybe the Earth is rotating faster? Or, maybe it’s just been an incredibly busy year. I think the latter theory is the easier answer, and doesn’t require elaborate scientific testing to prove!

I almost honored my resolution fully, but there have been a few months where things got so crazy I couldn’t check my email, let alone blog! My apologizes for the inconsistent postings, but the bright side is that all of the busyness means so much more to blog about!

Since these are the last few hours to post in 2010, I will tell you about my favorite project this year: The Guild Hall!

I’m sure I need not tell you that this project was for Felicia Day’s THE GUILD. I’m also sure that you have already seen season 4 of the show. If not, you are missing out! Definitely check it out. No, really. Go now. I’ll wait. We have till midnight…

The Guild is a show about a group of gamers. We follow them in their daily lives, and see how the game affects their social interactions. Or, lack there of. But, for the first three seasons, we never got to see what this game was that so influenced their lives. The music video “Do You Want to Date My Avatar?” gave us a peek at what Codex and friends looked like as their avatars, but it still didn’t reveal the world the game was played in. So it was very exciting for me to be able to create the first realized view of the Guild’s “in-game” universe.

Felicia had a general sense of what she wanted for the Guild Hall, mostly centering around Vork’s need for a very practical, minimal aesthetic. She described it in the script as cold and pointy, like you would hurt yourself just leaning against the wall. One of the character’s line of dialog was, “It looks like a prison in here!” So that’s where I started in the concept process.

The bigger question was how to execute the hall. We knew we were going to shoot the actors on a green screen and composite them in. But into what? A CG model? A series of matte paintings? There are many ways you can go about the effect, but I personally favor using miniatures.

My fear with pure CG was that, with our limited budget and time, we might not be able to control how convincing the effect would be. I felt that with a physical model, we could see what we were filming in real time, and make adjustments in camera to get it the way we wanted.

Sean Becker, the Guild director, and Chris Darnell, Guild director of photography, were completely on board with the idea. The thought of having an old school model suddenly made the Guild feel more like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings!

Photo #1: But planning was everything in order to fuse the real actors into the small scale miniature, so I began with a crude “white model” so that everyone could understand the space and how to move the actors around in it. On the green screen day, there was no environment to speak of, so it was really important that we kept all the heights and distances of the imaginary Guild Hall in mind, so everything lined up with the miniature Guild Hall later. This foam core and paper towel tube version of the model was used to do that, and the little plastic soldiers helped us keep track of where the actors were during the many shots filmed.

Photo #2: Once everyone was happy with the size and scale of the white model, I bumped it up to a more suitable scale for filming. Movie miniatures are usually not small! Actually, up until ILM did Star Wars, they were often huge. This is so there is no lack of detail when the film is projected 20 feet high. The bigger the model, the more real it will look. I chose to make the Guild Hall 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 feet tall. Way smaller than it would be in real life, but compact enough that it would fit in my truck if we needed to take it off lot for filming! The final scale actually ended up being ¾ inch equals 1 foot.

Kirsten and Nick built the shell from 1x3 and ½ inch ply. All the walls are “wild”, meaning that they can be removed one at a time so the camera can film from all sides. We put all the walls together, and Nick climbed inside to build the columns. This way, we knew everything would line up after we took it back apart.

Photo #3: In order to achieve the “pointy” look Felicia called out in the script, I decided to cover the walls in a series of spiky pyramids. I started by sculpting a single pyramid, made a mold, cast 15 more, glued them together as a plate, molded that, then Nick and Bryan spent the next week casting hundreds of those!

Photo #4: The center columns were made of PVC pipe and blocks of wood attached to the ends. These were covered in the pyramid plates, and the corners were filled with Bondo. A light coating of Bondo was stippled over the entire column to give it a rough stone quality.

Photo #5: Back in the box! Just happy to not be casting more pyramid plates, Nick and Bryan spent hours gluing all of the plates around the two-tiered lower wall. They needed to line up perfectly, because remember, what might seem like a ¼ inch difference to the naked eye will look like 3 inches on camera! (203)

Photo #6: Once all the plates were in, we taped off the outline of the walls, removed the walls, then used Bondo to create the cobblestone floor. Nick mixed batches of the Bondo, which sets in about a minute, Bryan would spread it in roughly one-foot square areas on the wooden base, and I would use a popsicle stick to carve in the individual stones. Right before the Bondo fully cured, I would brush it down with acetone to remove the sharp edges and give it a more organic look.

Photo #7: The next major element was the giant Vork statue. This was never mentioned in the script, but Felicia and I agreed that it goes without saying, if Vork built his own Guild Hall, it would have an enormous statue in his likeness!

Originally, I had secretly hoped to be able to use the Vork Unbreakable Bank I made last Christmas for the head, but the scale was way to large. In the end, it worked out for the better since I decided to sculpt him in more of a harsh imperial style.

I started, as always, with a wire armature.

Photo #8: Then I roughed him out in roma plastilina.

Photo #9: I did, however, use the Vork Unbreakable Bank as a reference! Dimensional reference always helps move things along faster than 2D reference, and I find that it helps even more when you created that reference in the first place! It’s like a sense memory thing, I guess.

Photo #10: Here’s the Vork sculpture complete. I carved in some chips and cracks to make it look like weathered stone. But the statue is still missing the sword he is resting his hands on. I decided to do that as a separate element.

Photo #11: I took some measurements for the sword, then started the molding process on the statue. I used a silicone matrix mold with a fiberglass jacket, which you can read about in another Guild post I did last January, GUILD XMAS BLOG 2: CLARA MOMMY AND ME COOKIE JAR.

This is during the prep for the back half of the mold. Now is a good time for jokes about Vork having a stick up his…

Photo #12: The silicone can take up to 24 hours to cure, so I used the time to make other elements of the hall, including the miniature version of Vork’s sword. I made it the exact same way I did the full sized sword, only, well, miniature!

Photo #13: When the Vork mold was done, I cast up a copy out of 1630 urethane backed with expanding rigid polyfoam. After he was cleaned up, I placed him in the hall and we primed the whole thing.

Photo #14: The primer dried pretty fast, and painting began. I used the gray primer as the base color, and did a series of acrylic washes to model up the walls. I let the acrylic pool inside the deep textures, and kept colors darker in the shadows. We wiped the washes off with rags, using more pressure on the forward surfaces so there was less wash up front. This created a very gradated coloring, and made the faux stone look ancient.

I also did an overall wash of Payne’s gray on the floor, then went in with browns and grays to accent individual stones.

Photo #15: The Vork statue also got a Payne’s gray wash, but I added a few other layers of color to help separate him from the background. I also painted in some drips and runs, and gave a final light gray dry brush to pop the highlights.

Photo #16: And in case you are wondering, this statue is indeed Vork approved!

Photo #17: As the gang did final touches to painting the miniature, I went back to the desk to do some miniature paintings!

Even though this is Vork’s vision of the ideal Guild Hall, director Sean Becker wanted to make sure the rest of the guild was represented, too. So we decided to hang large tapestries of them on the walls between columns.

I though it would be funny to do the paintings in a darker style, showing more imposing versions of the Guild, like the oil paintings of 16^th century monarchs. I did them in acrylic on canvas, so there would be a lot of texture. Technically, brush strokes and canvas weave wouldn’t read at this scale, but sometimes you have to push reality aside to sell an idea when it flashes by in a few frames!

Photo #18: Every column in the hall has a sconce, and the intention from the beginning was to have fire in them. As a general rule, the two things you should avoid the most in miniature photography are fire and water. You just can’t change their scale, so it’s hard to get them to look like they fit in a scaled down environment. We decided early on that Mazin would add the sconce fire digitally, but we still needed practical interactive light to help marry the CG fire into the physical model.

So Maz took apart a half dozen superbright LED flashlights and rewired them so every sconce projected a pool of cool light on each column.

Photo #19: And then filming began! Chris Darnell set up lights to simulate sun coming through the windows, raking across the hall is stark beams. We used a fogger to create a little atmosphere and diffuse the light.

Ultimately, we decided it would be easiest to shoot at the BarnYard. We left the model outside so we had more room, and it was easier to control the fog. But we shot at night so that the only light we had to deal with was what Chris provided.

Photo #20: When watching a film, you often forget how wonderful movie magic can be. This is the miniature of the Guild Hall from outside the camera. A wooden box and a few lights…

Photo #21: But this is the Guild Hall from the camera’s point of view! I love my job J

Photo #22: We started shooting from the front of the hall for 3 reasons. One, it was already set up that way from when we were building it. Two, majority of the shots were in that direction. And, most importantly, three, I wasn’t finished with the front wall yet!

Photo #23: Chris set up a mini motion control rig to get the dolly shots for the end of episode 11 and the beginning of episode 12. The rig was necessary because the shots needed to be perfectly smooth in order for us to be able to track and composite the actors in later. Doing it by hand, even with dolly track, would make it to uneven and create flutter in the composite.

Photo #24: After the big tracking shots, we removed the left wall and moved in for coverage around the base of Vork’s statue.

Even though it seems like we have a bunch of fancy equipment (we borrowed it!), we are still a very small production. With a very small crew. Bryan, Nick, Maz, and myself kept building, dressing, and arranging the set as Sean, Chris, and Kim handled the production.

Here, Sean operates the fog machine as Chris lines up a shot.

Photo #25: So we are on the second wall, and it’s about 1am. Kim got us some 7-11 coffees, and we took a quick break. And what better thing to do on break than get some love from the French bulldog Art!

Photo #26: Kim couldn't play with Art for long, there was so much to do! But he wasn’t giving up that easily! He found her computer bag and made himself at home on it, sleeping there for the rest of the night as we worked away!

Photo #27: Print managed to find a warm spot, too. Warm, yes, but safe? He’s a rebel, living on the edge.

Photo #28: After the break, I was finally finished with the front wall! The delay was caused by my compulsive need to actually put Vork’s self-indulgent gargoyles in the model. I thought Jeff’s delivery of that line was hilarious in the show, and I wanted to add that element into the model, but I ran out of time. Until I realized that if we shot that wall last, I could squeeze them in during filming. So, there I am squeezing in through the front door to finish them!

Photo #29: In the words of Kim Evey, “Creepy!” Yes, but funny, too! And of course, the Knights of Good royal crest above the door.

Photo #30: In order to make sure that the green screen elements matched up with our new model plates, Mazin did a quick 3D model of the Guild Hall and composited the actors into it for every shot. Essentially, this was our “pre-viz”, like live action storyboards. This helped Sean and Chris decide where the camera needed to be in order to match our real set with the virtual set we mapped out on the green screen day.

Photo #31: Another helpful device was the use of a perfectly scaled figure to help line up the shots. Especially with close-ups on actors, we always wanted to make sure that the backgrounds behind them were at the right height and the figure help to find the exact camera position.

Turns out the figure that worked best was one I did of Playboy model Alley Baggett for our Image comic “Alley Cat”. Luckily, I have a few of those around! Want one?

Photo #32: A solid 12 hours of shooting and the Guild Hall was wrapped!

Photo #33: And not a moment too soon! The sun was rising as we cut on the last shot.

Photo #34: There was a bunch of compositing and after effects to do still, but that’s another blog for sure!

The Guild Hall model is still around, so hopefully you will see it again soon!

That you for all the support you have shown my blog this past year! I can’t promise that I will post more often or regularly in 2011, but I can promise for sure that there will be many more exciting projects to share with you. The year hasn’t even started and I’m booked solid till next winter!

And if you feel like you need more BarnYard FX right now, check out my Guild Season 4 bonus feature, "Painting Team Cawkes!" It's a free download exclusively on itunes! Oh, and don't forget to pick up The Guild Season 4 on dvd!

Hope everyone has a fun, safe night, and an exciting new year!

Your friend,

Greg