제이미 캠벨 바우어 기묘한이야기 '바크나' Jamie Campbell Bower Stranger Things 'Vecna'

 

 

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https://www.fangoria.com/original/part-one-stranger-things-makeup-artist-barrie-gower/

Part One: STRANGER THINGS Makeup Artist Barrie Gower On Working With Horror Legend Robert Englund, And How FANGORIA Kick-Started

https://www.fangoria.com/original/part-two-stranger-things-viral-vecna-from-concept-art-to-nightmarish-reality-in-the-prosthetic-flesh/

Part Two STRANGER THINGS Viral Vecna: From Concept Art To Nightmarish Reality In The (Prosthetic) Flesh

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[Interview] “Stranger Things” Special Makeup Effects Designer Barrie Gower on Bringing Villain Vecna to Life 

Published 2 weeks ago on May 31, 2022

* Spoiler Warning : This article contains spoilers for “Stranger Things” Season 4’s villain.

The Duffer Brothers sought to create their own Freddy Krueger for season four of “Stranger Things.” Enter Vecna, the most sophisticated and dangerous foe from the Upside Down yet. The humanoid latches onto teens harboring repressed trauma and pain, feeding on it and then murdering them to create new gates between Hawkins and the Upside Down.

The end of “Stranger Things 4: Volume I” reveals that Vecna is humanoid because he was once human.

Eleven (Millie Bobbie Brown) realizes through her unblocked memories that orderly Peter Ballard (Jamie Campbell Bower) is One, the very first gifted child that Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) tried to control. Peter came into Brenner’s care as a child after murdering his entire family, save for dad Victor Creel (played by Robert Englund in the present). A supernatural battle between Eleven and One opened a rift and sent One careening into the Upside Down, where he began his transformation into the powerful Vecna.

The Duffer Brothers wanted brand new “Stranger Things” big bad Vecna to be almost entirely practical from the outset. They turned to the Emmy award winner behind Game of Thrones’ Night King, special makeup effects artist Barrie Gower.

In a chat with Bloody Disgusting, Gower explained how he got involved with the series. “My wife, Sarah, and I run our company, BGFX, which has been going since about 2010. We’ve been really lucky to be part of many big franchises, but our ten-year-old daughter Lottie is a massive Stranger Things fan. Then to get the call from the Duffers, just regarding season four. I think they were fans of our work on Chernobyl, with all the radiation burns, but they were huge fans of our work on Game of Thrones, the Night King.

“I think going into season four; they were looking to create a villain, an iconic villain, which I think they were like, ‘Well, we kind of want our own Night King.’ So I think they were saying, ‘Well, who better to contact but the guys who created the Night King?’ When we got the call, we were overwhelmed. I think our daughter Lottie was more excited than us, to be honest, but we were over the moon to get the call actually to come and join the Stranger Things family.”

 

On Vecna’s design…

Production on season four was underway when Gower came on board. That meant Vecna’s design was also already in place. Gower states, “Well, it was interesting because all the scripts were written, and a lot of production design had already been done on the show. When they approached us, they already had concept art done by Mike Maher, who was also the VFX producer on the show. He did this incredible concept work for Vecna. We had a few slightly different iterations of it, but we knew he was going to be humanoid in form. Initially, the idea from the get-go, from the Duffers and Mike, was saying, ‘We want this character to be practical, pretty much practical.’ He would have an on-set presence every day, and he would be able to interact with the cast. They also made it clear that we would be working very closely with the VFX department.

“There would be a little bit of VFX augmentation in post, but it’d be things we couldn’t necessarily achieve practically, like giving a subtle movement to Vecna’s vines on his body. They would be removing the nose of the actor and his pupils as well, even though he wore contact lenses. We knew there would be quite a nice collaboration with VFX, but it was interesting to join the show, and they already had this blueprint of how they wanted Vecna to look.” 

While Gower and his team created Vecna from Maher’s design, they also looked to nature to enhance his look and ground it more in reality. “Obviously, we had the original concept art, but we always use sources of real reference from the real world. We used a lot of photos of sea life, all kinds of different kinds of fish, lots, lots of things to do with trauma reference, like bruising to the skin, anemic skin tones, and looking at vines and all kinds of things. Just literally, the texture and the quality of the surfaces, his skin was very pitted and very smooth in areas. We used all kinds of references from the real world, as well as fantasy. But I think what aided us from the get-go was the initial concept art by Michael Maher.”

On Vecna’s makeup application…

 

Not only is this season’s villain almost completely practical, but it’s actor Jamie Campbell Bower beneath the extensive Vecna prosthetics throughout “Stranger Things 4.”

Gower details the painstaking process of bringing Vecna to life: “We life cast Jamie. We started modeling him in modeling clay back in London at our studio. There were a few little nuances and compromises we had to make here and there to make sure it fits over the human form correctly. But on the whole, it stayed pretty true to those original pieces of concept art by Michael.

When asked if there were stages for Vecna considering his transition from human to monster, Gower answered, “There is a transition. Yeah. There is a transition in between. At the end of the first volume, you’ll see a transition from Jamie turning into his Vecna form. Then the transition obviously will go further. From a different stages point of view, I mean, from the build point of view, it was a huge build for us because it was a full-body prosthetic makeup.

“We decided not to go down the route of having a guy in a monster suit, a guy in a rubber suit because we knew there would be an awful lot of interaction with him and the cast, a lot of dialogue, quite a lot of strenuous work. He did all of his stunt work, his own stunt work. There was not a stunt Vecna on Stranger Things. When you do a character like this, you would usually have a stunt guy of a similar frame who would also be put in the makeup. Jamie did all his own stunts for this show.“

That detail is important in highlighting Bower’s stunt work as Vecna and hinting that Vecna will take a more active role in his bid for control in “Stranger Things 4: Volume II.”

Gower breaks down the lengthy makeup process, “We went from the sculpture over his lifecast. We had to separate the sculpture up into many parts, making molds. Then we just injected a couple of different materials into the molds. His makeup consists of silicone appliances and foam latex appliances. The foam latex pieces are the larger, heavier pieces on the body, which foam is naturally a lighter material; it was about 24 to 25 prosthetic appliances in total of his makeup. We could only use them once. At the end of each day, we would remove the makeup, and they would be trashed because we’d be using mineral oil to remove the appliances, and they would destroy all the edges.

“We’d have duplicate appliances for every single shoot day, and we shot for maybe 20 days with Jamie in total, including two makeup tests. We made something like about 25 sets of appliances for him, but we made those all back at our studio in the UK. They are painted to the nth degree because it’s full-body coverage and all these pieces overlap. They’re glued with a medical adhesive directly onto his skin. You need all the artwork done as near as dammit to get the application time down. That still didn’t change. The first time we glued him into the makeup was about eight and a half hours for the test.“

 

“It used to be like a marathon, and it was like this well-orchestrated pattern of four of us in the team. It’d be myself, Duncan Jarman, Mike Mekash, Eric Garcia, and then Nix Herrera joined us towards the end of the shoot. But we’d have this very orchestrated sort of dance we’d do around Jamie. He would start sitting down, and we’d stand him up. Then we’d lie him down on his front, on a massage table, flip him over onto his back, stick his front pieces on, stand him up, put his legs on, put his right arm on, and put his left arm on. The quickest that we got the application time down to six hours, 21 minutes. We would spend the best part of five hours just purely gluing the appliances onto his skin. Then we’d have an hour and a half of airbrushing and joining all the dots together with the paintwork and airbrushing veins and blending everything.

“Once he was finished in his makeup, we’d take him down to set. He had a tent just adjacent to the set. The four of us would use, essentially, a lube to cover his entire body, to give him this glossy, shiny finish. Then he would then step onto the set and play for the rest of the day. The derig at the end of the day would take about an hour and 30 minutes to get him out of makeup. You have to bear in mind that we had an incredibly patient actor who was the fifth member of our team basically, and everybody got on incredibly well. We were super lucky to work with Jamie Campbell Bower. He had the patience of a saint, and he had an incredible sense of humor. We just got on so well, and it just became like a well-oiled machine in the end.”

출처 : https://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3717038/vecna-stranger-things-special-makeup-effects-designer-interview/

“Stranger Things” Special Makeup Effects Designer Barrie Gower on Bringing Villain Vecna to Life [Interview]

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Stranger Things Behind the Scenes: Prosthetic

JUN 01, 2022 

Season 4 Villain
Season four of Stranger Things saw its scariest villain yet: Vecna.

Creating Vecna
Played by Jamie Campbell Bower, each prosthetic was glued to his skin with medical adhesive by prosthetics designer Barrie Gower and his team.

Final Touches
For the finishing touch, Vecna was covered in "glossy slime to make him really, really glossy and wet looking," according to Gower.

A Closer Look
With 2425 appliances in total, Vecna is ready to head to the Upside Down!

 

출처  : https://www.eonline.com/photos/34554/stranger-things-behind-the-scenes-prosthetics

Photos from Stranger Things Behind the Scenes: Prosthetics - E! Online

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How Stranger Things Used Practical Effects To Transform (Spoiler) Into Vecna For Season 4

 

Vecna delivered new kinds of horrors on Stranger Things, and the prosthetics artist explained how practical effects pulled it off.

* Warning : MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for Vol. 1 of Stranger Things Season 4.

Stranger Things fans had to wait nearly three full years for Season 4, and the show rewarded viewers by delivering a new villain who makes the Demogorgon from Season 1 almost pale in comparison. Vecna forms psychic connections with victims in Hawkins without leaving the Upside Down, and punches a new gate with each person he kills. The final episode of Vol. 1 revealed that his identity before he was banished to the Upside Down was One, played by Jamie Campbell Bower. One and Vecna could hardly look more different, so prosthetics makeup artist Barrie Gower broke down how the team transformed Bower’s One into Vecna. 

Vecna was actually the third iteration of this one character, as the end of the last episode of Vol. 1 – fittingly titled “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab” - revealed that his origin story went back to the 1950s as Henry Creel, but it was after his killing spree as One that Eleven sent him to the Upside Down, and ultimately turned him into the monstrous villain in the Stranger Things present. Unlike the physical form of the Mind Flayer that was the product of some incredible special effects in Season 3, Vecna is the actor in some remarkable prosthetics, and Barrie Gower broke down why the show went for a practical villain in the record-breaking Season 4: 

The Duffers were very keen in Season 4 to have a very grounded and practical character. He's humanoid in his form. They were very keen to have somebody who had a very practical and on-set presence that could interact with the cast every day, rather than a character which is visual effects, somebody in a green screen suit. So we were super excited to be part of the creation of Vecna. We're really excited, having now seen episodes, that what you see on the screen is pretty much 90% - 95% our work. He is a practical character.

Matt and Ross Duffer evidently were determined that the villain of Season 4 would be more “grounded” and “practical,” which certainly explains why this season delivered the first Upside Down menace who actually uses language and deliberately torments victims from within their own minds. The Vecna who fans saw in action in the first volume wasn’t fully computer-generated or 100% the product of visual effects, but his look was largely created by the practical prosthetics. That meant a lot of time for the prosthetics makeup team and Jamie Campbell Bower, as Barrie Gower continued to explain:

 

Jamie is in a 24- or 25-piece prosthetic makeup that's all glued to his skin every day, and we had new appliances for every single shoot day. So in total, we had something like about 26 - 27 sets of appliances we had to make for Vecna. It was a bit of a marathon of makeup application every day, which we started off with the test makeup in November of 2020. I think it started off at about an eight and a half hour process with a team of four of us gluing him into this makeup. Then we managed to chisel it down to about six hours and twenty minutes in the end. So that was our fastest record, but it was like an orchestrated dance that we had to do with Jamie every day.

It’s safe to say that Jamie Cambell Bower's time in the makeup chair to play One for Eleven’s flashbacks was a lot shorter than his transformation into Vecna, but Vecna is sure to go down as one of the most unforgettable parts of the fourth season. He delivers different kinds of scares than the Demogorgon of Season 1 and the incarnations of the Mind Flayer in Seasons 2 and 3, with an almost Freddy Krueger-esque set of powers. (Barrie Gower also opened up about the experience of working with Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund for Stranger Things.)

So, what started the prosthetics process of transforming Jamie Campbell Bower into Vecna? Barrie Gower explained how it all began and the long process of perfecting the look of the new villain:

 

We started off with a full-body life cast. We had to sculpt the whole makeup in a modeling clay. Then we had to separate that up into many different parts, make molds, and then inject the molds with a couple of different products, a silicone material and a foam latex material depending on where it was in the body. And then it was just like big patchwork quilt pieces, which was all pre-artworked in London, to like the nth degree. So when we turned up on the makeup day every morning, everything was pre-artworked. We would glue everything together on the actor's skin, and then join all the dots together with airbrushes and inks and make it all seamless. So it's a huge undertaking and a really long process from start to finish.

There’s a reason why creating the look in the makeup chair each day took between six and nine hours, and Barrie Gower came into the Netflix hit with an impressive list of hit shows to his name as a prosthetics artist, including Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, and The Witcher. Viewers who have already finished Vol. 1 and are anxiously awaiting Vol. 2 can surely appreciate how much work went into the finished product of the villain. After all, few could have guessed that the actor playing One was also the person behind Vecna when first introduced! Gower continued, sharing why they had an advantage with creating the villain for Stranger Things Season 4: 

 

We were really lucky because going from show to show, different franchises, sometimes we join at the very get-go and we're able to design the character from the ground up, do a lot of concept art, be part of the design process. Something like Stranger Things is obviously a well-oiled machine, a very established franchise. When we got the call to come and join them, they had the scripts written, they had the whole story written. But they also had a very clear vision of how they wanted Vecna to look. So we were presented with some concept art and blueprints from Michael Mayer, who was the concept artist but also the VFX supervisor as well. He worked very closely with the Duffers and they were very clear on how this character was going to look.

The long hiatus between Season 3 and Season 4 actually resulted in the Duffer brothers having the time to write the entire season before beginning to shoot, which executive producer Shawn Levy revealed was a first in the history of the show. The plans for Vecna were in place for a long time, which helped in the design, as Barrie Gower said:

 

We were given concept art initially so we knew exactly where we were going to take this character, which is rare. It's rare to join a production and people are very clear from the get-go. 'This is how we want the character to look.' You can sometimes spend weeks or months coming up with designs and trying to get things approved and trying to get things cleared and actually find out exactly what it is in the minds of the showrunners.

Vecna’s story isn’t over yet, as Vol. 1 ended with him seemingly more powerful than ever. He has Nancy in his clutches, and Dustin’s theory about him as the Mind Flayer’s “five-star general” creating gates to help the plan to take over the world from the Upside Down puts the promise from the trailer that “war” is coming in a whole new light. The heroes really may need to start reducing that distance between them if they want a shot at saving Hawkins!

 

출처 : https://www.cinemablend.com/interviews/how-stranger-things-used-practical-effects-to-transform-spoiler-into-vecna-for-season-4

How Stranger Things Used Practical Effects To Transform (Spoiler) Into Vecna For Season 4

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‘Stranger Things’: Prosthetic Designer Shares Images of Vecna’s Practical Effects Makeup

Get up close and personal with the series’ new sinister five star general.

PUBLISHED JUN 03, 2022

* Editor's note : The following contains major spoilers for Stranger Things Season 4.

It’s hard to believe that the long-awaited fourth season of Stranger Things has been out for a week now, and fans of the popular Netflix series cannot stop talking about Volume 1. In typical Stranger Things fashion, the series is breaking records and giving new life to classic songs. A major part of this season’s success so far is the franchise's new big bad: Vecna. This Freddy Kruger-inspired nightmare has such a cool design, and now that the season is out, we're getting some behind-the-scenes looks at how Stranger Things brought Vecna to life with practical effects makeup.

 

The series’ makeup artist Barrie Gower took to his Instagram to give fans three different looks at the villain. The first image Gower shared was of the makeup test for Vecna where he confirmed that is indeed actor Jamie Campbell Bower under that scary face. In this particular post, he called Bower, “an incredible actor whose great humour and stamina made this makeup possible.” Of course, anyone who has watched Volume 1 knows of the jaw-dropping multi-layered twist that not only saw Bower’s “friendly orderly” turn out to be Vecna, but also Victor Creel's (Robert Englund) son and One — the first gifted child experimented on at Hawkins Lab. If that wasn’t enough, we also learn that Eleven is the reason why this fleshy monstrosity looks the way he does. This makeup test shows how much detail is involved in this villain's spectacularly creepy design. In an industry that arguably over relies on CGI, it’s just nice to see this throwback horror show fully embrace its 80s roots.

 

Gower also shared a short clip of Bower in full makeup testing out moving his mouth and speaking in full costume. The video is cool because it starts off under one of Vecna’s exposed fleshy veins before zooming out. The latest images the prosthetics makeup designer shared of Vecna are of the villain’s first sculpture that Gower presented to The Duffer Brothers in pre-production. The heavy shadows in these images really showcase the villain’s menacing presence along with just how detailed the character’s charred skin is. This is such a memorable design that now has a permanent residence in every horror fan’s head.

Season 4 Volume 1 masterfully set up Vecna as the best villain that Stranger Things has seen to date. The emotional cliffhanger fully revealing his relationship with Eleven has significantly raised the stakes for the final two episodes of the season. Whether it has been the brilliant makeup work or just Bower’s eerie performance as One, Vecna has propelled this series to new horrifyingly fun heights. Depending on how this season ends, we may be considering Vecna as this generation's Freddy Kruger —that’s how good he has been thus far.

 

While we wait for Vecna’s reign over Hawkins and his revenge on Eleven to continue, you can view the test makeup shot from Gower's Instagram down below. You can also binge Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1 on Netflix before Volume 2 finishes off the penultimate season on July 1.

 

출처 : https://collider.com/stranger-things-vecna-practical-effects-prosthetics-images/

‘Stranger Things’: Prosthetic Designer Shares Images of Vecna’s Practical Effects Makeup

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From the Night King to Vecna, Meet the Artist Behind Your Favorite Monsters (EXCLUSIVE)

JUN. 13 2022

 

Season 4 of Stranger Things introduced fans to its scariest villain to date: Vecna. The monster, who lives in the Upside Down, has been killing high school teenagers by preying on their past trauma and guilt. Unlike previous seasons of the Netflix show, this Season 4 monster was not created using CGI. Instead, prosthetics were applied to actor Jamie Campbell Bower in a lengthy process.

 

Stranger Things revisits '80s cultural phenomena like the Satanic Panic, so it's no surprise that Season 4 paid homage to iconic movie monsters Freddy Krueger and Pinhead.

The Emmy-winning prosthetic artist behind Vecna, Barrie Gower, spoke exclusively with Distractify about why the Duffer Brothers were eager to create an on-screen monster that viewers will never forget.

Meet Barrie Gower, the man behind the Vecna's look in 'Stranger Things.'
An eminent prosthetic artist with decades of experience under his belt, Barrie was approached by the Duffer Brothers partly because of his success on Game of Thrones.

"I think it was because of our work doing characters like the Night King for Game of Thrones," Barrie explained, telling us that the show creators wanted to make their own "iconic character."

"I think Matt and Ross were quite keen to get their own Night King," he said.

To bring the unmistakable antagonist to life, Barrie and his team at BGFX received a blueprint of Vecna's character in advance.

"The show is based in the '80s and it draws a lot of references a lot of homages to '80s science fiction, movies from the time. I think, with the effects, the [Duffer Brothers] were quite keen to do something practical as well and not necessarily rely on CGI and effects with this character," Barrie told us.

 

He added, "Even though they’ve had a lot of fantasy characters and monsters and creatures in previous seasons, they were all very much digital, so I think this was their first opportunity to do something which was quite raw in the flesh."

But Season 4 of Stranger Things only marks the latest in Barrie's series of high-profile projects. A three-time Emmy winner, Barrie has worked with A-listers like Meryl Streep and Ralph Ineson.

His facial prosthetics have also appeared in the Academy Award-winning The Iron Lady and Oliver Hirschbiegel's romance drama, Diana.

 

Barrie is the mastermind behind the Night King in 'Game of Thrones.'
Barrie joined Game of Thrones as the prosthetics supervisor ahead of Season 4. As Barrie told Distractify, he was a part of the design process from the get-go, exercising a great deal of creative liberty when it came to designing epic characters like the Night King.

 

"We sometimes work on shows where concept art hasn’t necessarily been generated, but it would come from the art department rather than ourselves, but we’d collaborate with them. But Game of Thrones is very much — all the creature design, all the prosthetics design — came from ourselves," Barrie said.

But each project comes with its unique set of requirements. As Barrie explained, they are told crucial details about the character they are responsible for bringing to life — but the amount of information they receive varies from project to project.

 

"We've worked on Marvel shows, and you get select scenes and it’s like a need-to-know basis and people are very protective of their IP. It’s quite understandable," he said.

He continued, "We worked on the last Bond movie [No Time to Die] two or three years ago. The script for that was very much a kind of, it was a very organic writing process. It does differ from project to project on how keen they are and how much they trust us."

 

출처 : https://www.distractify.com/p/stranger-things-vecna-prosthetic-artist

From the Night King to Vecna, Meet the Artist Behind Your Favorite Monsters (EXCLUSIVE)