Everyone I’ve spoken with, from the special effects teams down to the writers, all seem to have a common link of how they got involved in their careers which has ultimately led to the incredible world of Joss Whedon and the Universes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel’. Which is, basically, that they grew up watching ‘Fright Night’ and making Super 8 movies in their back yards with their friends dreaming of one day being the next Speilberg or Alfred Hitchcock and John Vulich is no exception! (laughter) "That’s pretty much... yeah," he replies. "Yeah, that’s exactly how!" (more laughter)
" . . . they were
skinned beings
in Hell that had
pieces of skin
sewed back
onto them."
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John heads ‘Optic Nerve Studios’ where all the Visual Make-up Effects are created. They’ve been responsible for such major film work as "Being John Malcovich", "Batman Returns" and the remake of "Night of the Living Dead". This past season he worked exclusively on ‘Buffy’ and contributed to the first season of ‘Angel’. I asked what inspired him as a child to spark his imagination and classic horror and science fiction came to mind. "I liked ‘Lost in Space’, ‘The Night Stalker’. We work on Buffy and X-Files, both of which are kind of a direct lineage of ‘The Night Stalker’ so I feel fortunate in that regard." Others he mentions where, "‘Twilight Zone’, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Thriller’, shows like that. And motion picture wise, I think what was a bigger influence were the ‘Planet of the Apes’ films. I think they were just very vivid characters and I was very intrigued by the idea of being a part of creating a character that had those sensibilities."
The Scourge, an army of Demons from "Hero"
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Helping to bring those sensibilities to the fledgling Angel series was a challenge as well as John tells us what part he played this season. "Well, Dave Miller (David Miller Studios in Los Angeles) was initially hired to do the special make-up effects (for Angel) and we were brought in on several episodes where there was just an amount of work that he was incapable of handling, because he’s a smaller operation than we are. We maybe had some elements that already existed that they knew of, that they wanted to reincorporate into the show. So we really didn’t work on it full time. I know there was one particular episode where they had a whole army of demons and we had had these guys we did on Buffy last season or the season before. It was kind of a leather face type thing where they were skinned beings in Hell that had piecesof skin sewed back onto them. That for some reason or other seemed to really go over pretty well. We weren’t really too happy with them only because there wasn’t a lot of articulation in them. From a design element they were interesting but from a performance element they weren’t necessarily the most dynamic characters. They were just meant to be background masks and I think they got used a little bit more up front then we had anticipated. (laughter)" He continues about their use on Angel in the episode ‘Hero’ as the ‘Scourge’, "So they decided to bring those back as this army of Nazi demons which I though actually worked out pretty good. We found some new ways to do it and we modified a couple of them intentionally to make the mouth more movable so they could be feature characters and stuff. So that was just something where they wanted 18 demons in a week and I think Dave just wasn’t like that capable of doing it. It was actually a pretty good episode, I kind of liked that one."
" ‘these
look like guys
with shaved
eyebrows,’
That’s pretty
much what
you got."
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Kind of liking your own work tends to give yourself and the viewers a critical eye when you’re used to seeing something a particular when and suddenly it changes. Although change can be good, in the case of the vampire prosthetics at the beginning of the season of Angel, the fans were the first to comment. John explains, "Well, (laughter) some people have a different sense of esthetics and we strive for a certain sense of subtlety and a certain sense of anonymity in our work. Oddly enough it’s interesting because when we were first doing the vampires for Buffy they’d done a presentation that another company and then for one reason or another they brought us in instead. We started doing our own version of the designs that we were submitting for approval early on from what direction we thought the vampire should go in. At that point I wanted something really subtle and I was headed more in the direction of almost like a Marilyn Manson type look. Just shaved eyebrows and whatever, just more of an emaciated look. It’s funny, we sent them in, these designs, and they’re like, ‘these look like guys with shaved eyebrows,’ (laughter) That’s pretty much what you got." John explains what Joss was rather looking for, " They
A first attempt at Angel's new vampire prosthetics lack that Optic Nerve subtlety.
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wanted something scarier, more of the forehead and it kept getting heavier and heavier which goes somewhat counter to what I would say is our default mode of operation. We normally go into it real subtle, very natural, because in my mind what is scary is what’s believable. So we started taking that approach and going into the Buffy designs that way and it became really apparent very early on that that was just not Joss’ vision. Although I have a certain style that I gravitate towards initially, each project has it’s own tone. We started to become more involved with the show and I started to see how it came together. And the show really does this wonderful balancing act between tongue & cheek and scary. I think that is something Joss is very masterful at and it became more apparent that the designs needed to be just a slight bit more outlandish than what we’re used to doing. But at the same time we still try to put the sense of natural anatomy into it the best that we could. So I’d like to think that’s what shows through in our designs and I don’t know that anyone else really approaches it that way so that may be why you’re seeing a difference between that."
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