A look less ordinary
DQ takes a closer look at the VFX, makeup and prosthetics work that is key to creating the world and characters of Netflix series Wednesday, and discovers the secrets behind black tears, a head in a jar and a zombie called Slurp.
From placing Christopher Lloyd’s head in a jar and depicting the many stages of a zombie transformation, to characters crying black tears and scenes involving a walking, gesturing hand, the second season of Netflix series Wednesday threw up some notable challenges for the show’s VFX, makeup and prosthetics teams.
Blending the world of the Addams Family with the idiosyncratic style of director Tim Burton, the series centres on Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega), who enrols at the outcast-filled boarding school Nevermore Academy. There, she begins to deal with her emerging psychic abilities, a murderous monster on the loose and a mystery that engulfed her parents – Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) – at Nevermore 25 years earlier.
Now in S2, Wednesday is reunited with eternally sunny roommate Enid (Emma Myers) as she contends with another supernatural mystery, while her brother Pugsley arrives at Nevermore and Morticia and Gomez become increasingly frequent visitors.
The ensemble cast aren’t the only ones to have returned to Wednesday for S2, however, with many of the crew also reprising their roles. Among the returning creatives are Burton, creators and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, production designer Mark Scruton, costume designers Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland, VFX supervisor Tom Turnbull, prosthetics designer Tristan Versluis and makeup artist Nirvana Jalalvand.
Turnbull had previously worked with Gough and Millar, so he says knew what he was getting into on Wednesday. The “deal clincher” for him was the chance to work with Burton, with whom Versluis had previously partnered as a prosthetics technician on Burton’s movie Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
“When I heard about the Addams Family, Wednesday and Tim’s involvement as well, it was a no-brainer, really,” Versluis says. “This world is populated by so many interesting characters. Then there’s Nevermore and meeting the Faceless and werewolves. It was just like, ‘Wow. This project has loads of cool characters. I’m definitely in.’”
Versluis and Turnbull’s first task was to understand the balance on the show between VFX and prosthetics to help bring those characters to the screen, especially with Thing, Wednesday’s handy, ever-present companion played by Victor Dorobantu. But taking Burton’s lead, practical options would always be considered first.
“Unlike most directors, he’s quite willing to accept and embrace a level of unreal to certain things,” Turnbull says. “We wouldn’t try to make a creature completely real. We would always make it a little bit ‘Burton-esque’ – he hates that word, but it’s kind of what it is – so if we come up with a result that that has a handmade feeling, that’s fine with Tim. He loves that. If we needed to do something that’s impossible to do practically, then let’s go down the CG road, and there’d be no real confusion over that either.”
One example is the numerous crows featured in the series, which could have been created solely by computer imagery. Instead, real, trained crows were also brought in to capture an array of crow action shots. “We had one crow in particular there, Alan, who was a bit of a superstar,” Turnbull says, “and he could do pretty much whatever we needed him to do. It’s not always the cheapest choice, but it’s the one that feeds into the look of the show.”
The numerous VFX tasks for Turnbull on S2 included creating Back to the Future star Lloyd’s character Professor Orloff, who takes the form of a head in a jar. To do so, he went down a “very technologically intense” route that saw the actor’s performance scanned at 60 frames per second, which meant it could then be recreated to an incredibly high level of detail.
“The performance we see of Orloff in the jar is Christopher Lloyd doing that,” Turnbull says. “So that aspect of it is incredibly practical, but at the same time, it’s all supported by a whole lot of complicated CG.”
Versluis’s workload on S2 included the return of the Faceless – characters with no features on their faces – as well as the numerous patients of the Willow Hill psychiatric hospital and a former student at Nevermore who is resurrected by Pugsley and nicknamed Slurp (Owen Painter). As the season progresses, Slurp slowly regenerates from his suitably corpse-like state to a more human appearance, requiring Versluis to create several different looks.
“That was a continual process throughout the show as we were shooting, discovering that character and constantly sculpting it, doing makeup tests and getting feedback and adjusting colour,” he says. “That was a big anchor to my department. We were busy.”
Up to 25 people could be a part of Versluis’s team at any time, depending on the shooting schedule and workflow, from mould makers and hair punchers to painters, sculptors and 3D artists. A second, smaller, team would also be in the studio making smaller prosthetics like bee stings, and also managing and supervising the on-set applications.
Unsurprisingly, the first stage of Slurp’s makeup was the most complex, with Painter spending up to five hours in the makeup chair for each application, leaving him only able to look out of one eye and with a jaw piece that restricted his mouth. The time needed then reduced as production progressed.
“Owen was particularly fantastic in this show. He was a trooper,” Versluis says. “He really engaged in the prosthetics and the process. He knew it was a big part of his character, and he was always quite intrigued as to where it was leading. Then he would feed his thoughts into that so we could incorporate that a little bit.”
Turnbull’s experience working with Dorobantu to bring Thing to life in S1 certainly made that aspect of S2 easier, as he admits “nobody really knew how to do it” at the start.
“By the time we get to season two, Victor is much more comfortable with what he’s doing. He understands what to get out of it and what the results are, so it definitely gets easier. But that doesn’t make it without its challenges,” he says. “In S1, Thing dominated my life. S2, I was able to let it go a little more and just let the process work.”
Where Thing goes, Wednesday is almost always nearby – and where Ortega goes, so too does Jalalvand. She worked as a makeup artist on S1 to help create a new gothic version of a 21st century Addams Family and then stepped up as the actor’s personal artist for S2.
“Jenna is incredibly easy-going and makes my life wonderful,” she says. “I met her on S1 and I’ve been working on a number of projects with her since then. So at the moment, I follow her around on different projects, Wednesday being one of them.”
Ortega would spent about an hour in hair and makeup before shooting to get the Wednesday look, with Jalalvand on hand throughout the day for numerous touchups.
“Any moment her hair’s out of place, her lipstick’s rubbed off, or I need to adjust [her makeup] to the lighting, I go in, do my touches, step out and then obsessively, compulsively take loads of photos and observe them,” she explains. “Sometimes we’ll have a hair and makeup change during the day and we’ll switch to a different look if needed, as quickly as we can. Then at the end of the day, we take all the [hair] extensions out, take all the makeup off and then I’ll stay back and wash the extensions and get everything ready for the following day.”
Wednesday’s makeup in S2 also includes the black tears that run down her face, signifying her struggles with her psychic powers. Jalalvand tested a number of different products to find the right one, eventually settling on a custom solution by SFX artist David Stoneman. She would then apply it to the corner of Ortega’s eyes with a pipette, and the camera would capture it rolling down her face.
“It had a silicon texture to it, so it rolled off the skin pretty well,” she adds. “If Jenna wiped it, it wiped off pretty easily. Luckily, I don’t put too much beauty makeup on Jenna’s face, so we could quite quickly reset it. That was a bit of a challenge but it worked.”
Joining the Wednesday makeup team for S2, Lynn Johnston found her own challenges in ensuring continuity in skin tones, joking that filming on location in Ireland “went through a few seasons.” She adds: “When there are a few units running and you’re shooting out of sequence, you’re just trying to maintain consistency.”
The artist had fun trying to create a “jam” for a neck wound Enid suffers in S2, when Wednesday finds her friend lying on the floor, believing she is dead. “That was lots of trial and error with cherries, strawberries and other fruits. Individually, I loved Stassa the manicurist [played by Neri Zaccardelli] and that whole little scene with Thing [in episode three]. Helen Bailey did Stassa’s makeup. There are all these tiny little vignettes, but there’s a lot of fun and a lot of humour in them, and I love that they support all the main characters.”
An end-of-season gala also injected some energy into the shoot, with pastel drawings and old paintings from the 1700s inspiring some of the looks on show among the crowds, blended with some contemporary fashion references. “It was a nice contrast,” Johnston says. “The costumes were fab for that. It was just completely different from everything else that was going on.”
Both Jalalvand and Johnston praise the “supportive” creative environment on set, describing it as a good place to explore. “It’s going to be a hard one to let go of when we eventually stop it, because it has been such a great environment to be creative with, from a makeup point of view,” Jalalvand says. “It’s the perfect blend of beauty makeup and gory special effects makeup, and that’s my favourite.”
“The big thing was teamwork,” adds Johnston. “A lot of the girls on the makeup team were used to doing TV stuff like Penny Dreadful and Into the Badlands. They just worked really well together, backing each other up and working as a team. Normally I wouldn’t have such a big team, whereas this felt absolutely huge, and I’ve really enjoyed it. It was a really nice vibe.”
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tagged in: Alfred Gough, Colleen Atwood, Mark Sutherland, Miles Millar, Netflix, Nirvana Jalalvand, Tom Turnbull, Tristan Versluis, Wednesday