- My door won't be open completely, but these people
kind of wander in.
You know I'll be workin'
somebody will tap me on the back
and be like, wow I've never seen a place like this.
And like, yeah, there aren't too many places
like this left, Practical Special Effects.
(chuckling) My name's Quin Davis,
I'm a Practical Special Effects Artist.
Right now we are in my shop.
This is where I fabricate and create any prosthetics,
creature suits, various things for film projects.
Independent films, big-budget films.
And the first project that I ever did was a drawing
of a buffalo soldier.
My dad, you know, is a big fan.
He was pretty impressed, he was like uh, this isn't,
you know, this doesn't suck this is alright you know.
I didn't start sculpting until I was about 10
and then it was a Bob Marley bust.
So it was a natural transition, I really didn't
put too much thought into it.
I don't know why, but ET freaked me out
when I was growing up.
It wasn't supposed to exist, you know,
it wasn't natural there was something wrong with it.
I started paying attention to more horror films
and the art of Practical Special Effects.
Maybe it was like a coping mechanism, I don't know.
And then it turned into a full-blown fixation.
To understand how to do Practical Special Effects
around that age of going into 14 and 15,
I would read.
One of the things I do predominantly,
and a lot of Practical Effects Artists do, is blood.
I'm sure that every Practical Special Effects Artist
that truly loves the craft has their own blood mixture.
I took my recipe from Dick Smith in Taxi Driver,
you know, that was the best blood I've ever seen.
He was really the, uncle, of Practical Special Effects
and like Lon Chaney is the, you know, the godfather.
The industry was built on practical effects.
Without practical effects there is no movie business.
(scary intense music)
(squeaking)
Kind of do an inquisitive look there.
Should I eat this person, aaahhh.
When I go out or interview for a job,
or get a job just hired from, you know,
my work, my website, more times than not
they're surprised that I'm black.
I've worked on films, in chronological order
it would be, Kingdom, Hancock, Battleship, Middle Men.
Growing up even with horror films and films in general,
you know, I never entirely got to see myself,
you know, represented in the majority of these films.
Extremely under represented in the industry,
especially content, but Cru as well,
even if the main characters are black.
My experience on Hancock was great.
That was probably the most diverse set
that I got to work on.
My initial assignment was Will Smith
so every time he was on set I would have to go
to his trailer and then basically bird-dog him
throughout the day while he was there.
If I were in, you know, like a hot spot
like California, Hawaii, Louisiana, something like that,
then you can do really well for yourself.
Here it's an uphill battle for sure.
You know you gotta figure out where you can apply this stuff
and who has an appreciation for it.
When people wander into the studio their first question
usually is probably, don't you have nightmares, you know,
aren't you troubled by this stuff?
I don't really have nightmares.
I have great dreams, you know,
it's like butterscotch and ponies.
I'm not, I'm not kidding.
Billie Holiday was always playing in my parent's house
and one of the songs that always gave me nightmares
was, Strange Fruit.
♪ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root ♪
So those are the only things that would actually plague me,
it's always in there, it's in my brain stem,
you know, these stories that are actually terrifying to me.
Horror movies I love, but certain aspects
of the American experience, let's say,
are actually terrifying.