Narrator: This animatronic head for 2022's "Prey"
packed in 27 tiny motors,
which, coupled with CGI,
helped create the most lifelike and terrifying Predator yet.
It's tiny details like this
that bring horror-movie nightmares to life.
From building 13-pound creature heads like this one
to sculpting paper-thin prosthetics,
here's what eight scary movies
looked like behind the scenes.
Director: Action.
Narrator: In "Hellraiser," Pinhead's eerie final look
involved a facepiece,
a headpiece that covered the skull cap,
and a zip-up silicone neck
that was like a choker collar,
transitioning onto the body.
To make her and the rest of the Cenobites
appear as naked bodies with pins poking
and pulling their flesh in disturbing ways,
special effects makeup head Josh Russell
made all the costumes and makeups out of silicone,
rather than the traditional foam latex.
It created the illusion of translucency,
like you'd see in actual flesh.
Pinhead wore a two-piece undersuit
that resembled muscle tissue,
moving independently from the top skin,
complete with glued-on hand appliances
and a flesh suit slipped over it all to complete the look.
Mia Goth plays both villain and hero in "X,"
with one character decades older than the other.
Director Ti West wanted to push the character design
of Pearl and her husband, Howard, into monster territory,
hinting at their sinister nature.
That task fell on Weta Workshop in New Zealand,
where prosthetics designer Jason Docherty
was tasked with aging up both Mia Goth and Stephen Ure.
His team brought out little nuances
like skin discoloration and contact-lens coloring
to emphasize Pearl and Howard's decrepitude,
as seen through the younger characters' eyes.
And to make sure Mia Goth's performance could come through,
the team had to make some prostheses so precise
they were tissue-thin and practically see-through.
For some scenes, Mia required some 30 individual prostheses,
painstakingly applied by makeup designer
Sarah Rubano and her team.
"Nope" introduces us to a murderous
extraterrestrial monster. And yet, the scene
that many described as the film's scariest
was centered on a chimp --
one performed in motion capture by Terry Notary,
the man behind animals in movies like
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Call of the Wild."
Even though the VFX team would swap out Terry in post,
they put him in full costume so he could get into character,
complete with a birthday hat, sweater,
and a face smeared in fake blood.
To mimic a chimp's perspective, the crew built
the "Gordy's Home" set 30% larger than normal,
helping Terry give as natural a performance as possible
so the final scene would feel more lifelike.
Turning Terry into a chimp was still a challenge.
That translation is never straightforward.
After all, a human's face behaves
very differently than a chimp's.
Apes have heavier brows that move less, for one,
and the muzzle on a chimp is more dexterous,
with lips that have a greater range of motion.
The animators had to integrate these facial differences
while preserving the core of Terry's performance,
especially in the terrifying climax of the sequence
when Gordy gets super close to the camera.
Because audiences would see him so close up,
blown up on an Imax screen, the face had to be
extremely detailed and photorealistic.
The VFX team then simulated all the cloth, fur, and blood,
which helped ground the violence
and further sell the horror.
To show the horrifying aftermath of the attack,
prosthetics artist Vincent Van Dyke
designed this makeup for the character of Mary Jo,
Jupe's costar on "Gordy's Home."
The star of the makeup is a set
of out-of-the-mouth dentures,
created from a dental cast of actress Sophia Coto.
These kinds of dentures lock into the actor's actual teeth
while rolling over the outside of their lips,
compressing the soft tissue there
and giving the illusion
that there are no lips left after the attack.
Vincent sculpted the rest of the makeup around the dentures,
designing the prosthetic skin to blend seamlessly
onto the acrylic gums.
"Halloween Ends" turned out to be
one of the most violent installments
of the slasher franchise.
To make sure all this bloodshed only looked violent,
the film required heavy stunt coordination and planning.
For the scene where Michael's killing protégé
jumps off a radio tower, stunt coordinators
Cory DeMeyers and Kevin Scott split it up into two parts.
First, they put actor Rohan Campbell on a line
and dropped him onto the awning.
Then Cory stepped in as a stunt performer
to finish the second part without wires or pads.
Director: Action.
Narrator: Cory also doubled as the new killer
in this scene where he kills his mom,
a gory sequence that didn't make the final cut of the movie.
The scene involved a masked Cory
stabbing through a pillow stuffed with feathers,
a blood bag in the middle, and a piece of plywood
in the back to provide an additional layer of safety.
The team scored the pillows, making it easier
for the dulled-metal prop knife to break through
and puncture the blood bag.
The result was as intense as intended:
bloody feathers everywhere.
Other grisly scenes involved wire gags,
like when Michael kills Nurse Deb,
leaving her hanging on the wall.
The team hung superthin steel cable,
known as magician's wire, to two eye bolts in the wall
hidden behind the painting.
The wire went through two tiny holes in the painting
and hooked up to a C-harness that the actress
was wearing under her wardrobe.
Using such a small wire in that dimly lit room
made it relatively easy for VFX
to clean up the shot in post.
The final fights required weeks of rehearsal
and previsualization.
And with the amount of fake blood
needed to sell the scenes, the team often needed
to get everything right within the first few takes
to minimize resetting time.
Crew: So, it should be blood pumping from tubes.
Crew: Copy, blood pumping.
Narrator: Ultimately, Jamie Lee Curtis' stunt double
only did two shots in this final sequence,
with Jamie herself handling 98% of her own stunts.
It was her idea for Michael to smash Laurie's head
through this prop glass cabinet,
made out of breakable balsa wood and candied glass.
Director: Three, two, one, go!
Narrator: For "Prey," a prequel set
300 years before the "Predator" movies,
the iconic Predator had to look more like
a horror character, with a less human face.
This version of the creature, dubbed the Feral Predator,
got a new suit and two fearsome hero heads,
all created by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.,
the duo behind the creature effects for the previous movies.
The 27 tiny servos in the animatronic underskull
could be operated via radio control
by three to four off-screen puppeteers.
All these motors gave the creature more movement
in its mandibles than audiences had seen
in previous Predators and went a long way
toward creating the bestial look the team was going for.
Once treated with slime and water spray,
the hero head weighed about 13 pounds,
while the rubber suit weighed about 60
after adding the wet elements.
Since the 6-foot-8-inch-tall Dane weighed 240 pounds,
that meant he was moving over 300 pounds around on set.
This might help his character look
massively imposing on-screen,
but it made his job that much more physically demanding.
The VFX house MPC then tied everything together,
creating the CG version of the Predator
based off the practical suit and head.
Finishing touches included the metallic scars,
fluorescent-green blood tracking,
and cloaking and power-glitching effects.
These enhancements were designed to uphold
the practical feel of the classic suit
while breathing further life into the Predator.
This meant adding subsurface light scattering to the mouth,
articulating the facial musculature,
and sometimes subtractive effects
like removing the seams of the suit
and making the predator's hand
appear leaner and more muscled.
The extraterrestrial wasn't the only
terrifying hunter in the film.
MPC's artists created a small zoo
of hair-raising wildlife species,
all predators in their own right.
Their work included a grizzly-bear-attack scene,
filmed with a guy in a bear suit
to provide interaction on set.
They also created a CG mountain lion,
while the wolf scene intercut between
an actual canine performer and a CG animal.
Other wildlife came to practically,
like this animatronic snake.
Madison: But I saw her die.
[screams]
Narrator: Director James Wan wanted to film "Malignant"
with a creepy roving camera
that would follow the protagonist's movements
from the ceiling, crossing over from room to room.
He accomplished this with the Spidercam.
Wan compared this to a "sky camera"
that "can just fly everywhere."
Suspended on a cable system, the Spidercam can move
both vertically and horizontally.
That makes it perfect for filming sporting events,
and this torturous sequence from "Malignant,"
where we track Madison from room to room
and up the stairs as she grows increasingly panicked.
Wan's team also designed the set
to resemble a dollhouse without ceilings.
That way, the camera and the viewer could stalk Madison
in an extended overhead tracking shot,
which reflects her building sense of paranoia.
There's nobody there. There's nobody there.
He looks up, and ...
Narrator: "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"
used complex animatronics to recreate
the iconic terror dog from the original movie.
Whereas full-CGI creatures often appear weightless,
this practical approach made the terror dog
look more substantial and imposing on-screen.
Building this massive animatronic was a long,
complex process, and it all began with this maquette.
The model helped capture the dog's design
and provide a reference for the VFX team
for sequences where it would have to be CGI.
From there, the team used a mock head to test
how the dogs' colors would look in different lighting;
conducted a movement test with a mini 2D printout
hooked up to cables, tubing, and a popsicle stick;
sculpted the dog true to size out of 600 pounds of clay;
and cast that mold in foam latex
to create the actual animatronic.
All in all, with its complex mechanics, fiberglass shell,
acrylic teeth, and resin horns and nails,
the terror dog weighed in at a whopping 450 pounds.
To make sure the puppet was manageable on set,
the team never created its back half,
leaving CGI to fill in the rest for full-body shots.
Instead, they attached its top half to a weighted cart,
allowing crew members to move the heavy dog around,
including placing it on the hood of a car
and using CG for the rest.
A dog this intimidating had to have a big chomper.
That's partly why its face alone contained
21 servo motors, capable of displacing a lot of skin
whenever the dog moved its mouth.
A single mouth movement could take a team
of three puppeteers performing it via radio control.
Placement of the jaw's pivot point
was also crucial to get right, so the dog could snarl
and roar in a way that looked believable.
[roaring]
A puppeteer used a separate terror-dog leg for this shot,
where the creature stomps on Paul Rudd's car.
He moved the leg by grabbing onto a metal armature inside,
but his arm couldn't reach the actual foot.
So the team incorporated a series of cables
to create lifelike ankle and toe movements,
showing the foot flexing and adjusting
as the dog's weight comes down on the car.
How do you turn a tropical destination
into a nightmarescape?
By building an oppressive rock wall
to cut the characters off from the outside world.
To make the wide-open coast in "Old"
start to feel like a prison, M. Night Shyamalan
turned to production designer Naaman Marshall.
Naaman took measurements and photographs
of the filming site at Playa El Valle,
using an existing rock wall as their starting point.
He then built an expanded rock-wall model
and blended it into the natural structure
using scaffolding, foam, plaster, paint, and sand.
At one point, a hurricane washed away
a 150-foot section of the set,
tearing cables away from the support scaffolding.
But the crew managed to complete
the 32-foot-tall, 900-foot-wide barrier
in time for filming.
Digital effects expanded the wall even more dramatically
in post, using photographs of the natural rock
to replicate its surface textures.
This attention to detail is what made
the steep, weighty wall so realistic,
making an otherwise idyllic setting
feel confined and sinister.
As Naaman put it, the beach "becomes the villain."