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But the tone is what is essential to any part of a good series and once that tone is set, like a good machine, you don’t want to fix what’s already working. Part of understanding what works is how the creator himself, Joss, works. "We use a lot of silicone and a lot of more modern materials then they would have used maybe 20 years ago and it really leads itself to the realism of it. Again it’s apples and oranges, each show has a different eutectic and a different tone, like ‘X-files’ everything has to be very subtle in that show and very forensically real for obvious reasons because that’s the tone and the nature of the show. It’s a very serious show where as Buffy, like I said, it really definitely switches between tongue & cheek and horror interchangeably so the designs I think have to reflect the tone of the show." John gives us a bit of insight inside Joss’ brain as genius tend to think alike, "so once I settled into it I kind of understood what Joss was into and it didn’t take us too long, maybe two or three e
"... everybody
else in the room
is like, ‘huh?’
‘What?’...
Joss would know
any reference
that I would
throw at him."
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pisodes before we starting submitting designs that got approved very quickly. Joss is fun to work with from my stand point and that he is, I know it’s going to sound ironic but he’s one of the guys in this business that is actually a fan of the kind of stuff that he does. (laughter) I mean I can say like, ‘he should become like the monster Peter Blankus but maybe green,’ and he would understand what I’m saying, everybody else in the room is like, ‘huh?’ (laughter) ‘What? What’d they just say, monster what?’ Joss would know any reference that I would throw at him. ‘It should be like the scarab thing in Kronus that looked bigger.’ ‘Okay cool, I know.’ And just from being a fan he’s seen more of the stuff than I have and I thought I was like totally ‘squided out’ as we refer to it. But he’s very much into it so that’s always kind of fun because there’s definitely some common ground communication wise and a lot of short hand that develops because of that. Definitely when we’re having meeting, a lot of times, everyone else that’s around us, because they’re the people that aren’t necessarily horror fans they’re just for one reason or another ended up on the show. Probably because they were the best of the best but they may not necessarily be horror/science fiction fans.
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Adam the Tri-Borg, Human-Demon-Machine on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
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Being the best of the best tends to offer a helping hand whenever possible in the shows creation and evolution. Thus when a writer submits a script, they have a pretty good idea where a vampire or a demon is going to be involved so they outline the conceptual ideas of what the demon is going to look like or sometimes leave it up to the visual experts. "It varies. As I’m sure you know there’s a staff of writers and there’s a whole kind of voodoo engineering process that script writing goes through. Where some writers' stuff goes through and gets rewritten in varying degrees and some stays pretty much intact and each writer has a different sense of ability to visualize. And so I think that if they have a good idea they’ll indicate in the script. There’s ‘a scab covered demon, or a demon with dreadlocks’ or there might be something in the script that we can play off of." And yet there’s always the abundantly clear note that just says, ‘demon here’. "Sometimes that happens," he offers, "If it’s incidental or if it’s major, it also varies too. Often times the writers will put in ‘some kind of multi-horned demon’ or just a very vague reference and we’ll work from that. Sometimes the subject matter in itself, like in ‘Gingerbread’ we made a decision to do something a little bit more like ‘Grimm's Fairy Tales’ type character just because we thought that suited the story. Sometimes I’ll get notes verbally from Joss saying, ‘I think this demon should be like this’, there’s really not a set pattern. I think that’s one of the thing after doing three or four years is we’re always trying to figure out, ‘okay now what can we do that we haven’t done already?’ (laughter) Because you always want to keep some fresh eye candy. I mean that’s certainly one of the elements of the show that’s entertaining to watch or the characters like this and I think you always want to see something new and exciting.
When a new series starts you want to start with fresh ideas as well and along with the writers contributing a big factor of imagination, those creating the physical demons as well cultivate those ideas. "The main artist that works for me, I would imagine you kind of refer to him as an Art Director in my company is John Wheaton. He’s just really an imaginative artist. I think we have a standard approach when we read something, ifsomehow the design element can lend to create some kind of sub-text in the story, like the ‘Gingerbread’ one is an example. If there isn’t a description already for the character and we just say there’s some kind of feel that’s insinuated in there, we might try to kind of either play with that or play against it sometimes for effect. It’s part of the story telling process that should just somehow enhance or reflect that. I don’t think it’s ever like ‘wow, this would be a cool design.’ It has to be a cool design that fits in the context and then when all else fails we just go buy some comic books and steal. (laughter). Like one of my favorite things is crocodiles and to the point where it’s almost a joke at the shop. If you look at a lot of the demons you’ll see these crocodile patterned scales on top of the head all the time. It’s just something I think is an interesting texture."
"... and then when
all else fails we
just go buy some
comic books and
steal."
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From start to finish John takes us through the typical process of how a prosthetic piece of make-up is created. "Okay, first thing . . . we get the script in and sometimes we’ll just get a beat sheet, which is like a short one or two line description of the scene without any dialogue, and the producers at this point are pretty well aware of what our requirements are time wise and they’re pretty conscious about that. So, we generate breakdowns of each creature or effect in each scene that it’s in how many times it plays. We have little charts that we make up of all that and if the design is fairly well described we’ll generate at that point three to four designs to take to a meeting. At that point we’ll go to a meeting that will include the physical effects person, the optical effects people that do all the digital work, the art director, the director, AD, all the kind of usual suspects, that contribute to all these elements because in most cases we’ll tend to overlap in one or two points so it’s always good from a communications stand point for us to all to be in the room at the same time. So we’ll have the meeting and then we’ll spend an hour, hour and a half brainstorming, throwing ideas out, going through the script line by line figuring out how we’re going to accomplish some of these effects. But one of the things that’s really difficult in the film industry is getting people to make decisions. (laughter) It’s just for one reason or another it’s always a difficult thing and one of the kind of good things about TV is that it’s done in such a fast pace that people generally tend to make decisions quickly and move on. That’s one of the things I like about TV as opposed to motion pictures. Where sometimes the finalization process will really drag on in motion pictures and I find that to be less of a problem with television." He explains what the benefits of this really means "Which is good because it offsets the tremendous amount of stress in trying to do a months worth of work in 4 days (laughter) so it’s kind of like a double edge sword."
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