Narrator: Recognize this hairline?
It belongs to Eleven on "Stranger Things."
Her signature buzz cut returned
for the show's fourth season.
Millie Bobby Brown couldn't shave her head
this time around, so it was all up to the hair department.
TV and movie wigs like these call for an especially high
standard of detail, one that keeps rising
with the advent of HD and 4K cameras.
And at Wigmaker, Rob Pickens' studio,
it's a long road to creating
a hyper-realistic wig like Eeven's.
One that starts here.
Wig makers can't just measure different
parts of the actor's head for size.
They need to record the nuances of shape,
and even the template of the hairline.
That means a hyper-customized fitting.
- [Rob] The initial fitting with the actor
is our time to capture as much information as possible.
- [Narrator] First, they mold the precise shape
of the actor's head with a head wrap,
using cellophane and a lot of tape.
Then, they get even more granular,
tracing the intricate growth patterns at the hairline.
- [Rob] All of the marking are our roadmap
for the entire process.
Everything from where the actor's hairline ends
to maybe we mark they have quite a slope
at their neckline below the occipital.
- [Narrator] The head wrap goes onto a canvas block,
which they shape to match the actor's head
using a mix of cork and stuffing.
- [Rob] This process is called padding the block.
So, think of it like padding a pillow.
- [Narrator] This step is laborious,
but once it's done, a production shooting
anywhere in the world can call
in to have a wig made for an actor,
even if the actor can't make it to a fitting.
- [Rob] We're paying attention to the direction
of the lace, how it's fitting the block.
This is where we start to dart
and shape it to fit the actor's head.
- [Narrator] Just as the hairlines must be traced
to the finest detail, the lace that forms the foundation
of production wigs has to be a very fine denier.
- [Rob] They used cotton lace in the early days,
and it didn't show up because you were working with film.
Film is much more forgiving than digital HD.
So, that's the thing, just as the cameras change,
the hairlines have gotten finer, the lace has gotten finer.
- [Narrator] The same goes for the silk base
that's sometimes used to simulate skin under a wig.
- [Rob] It used to be a much heavier silk fabric.
- [Narrator] On Eleven's wig, Rob sewed pieces
of a super-light, semi-opaque silk
to make it look like her scalp was visible through the buzz.
Sometimes silk isn't enough to complete the illusion,
so the hair team will add a prosthetic piece
under the wig's foundation.
That was the case on "Blonde," where three prosthetic pieces
concealed Ana de Armas' darker hairline,
and on "Pam and Tommy," where a forehead prosthesis
under Lily James' wig replicated Pam Anderson's
naturally higher hairline.
The same considerations apply to the next step,
the ventilating process, where they stitch
in each hair one by one.
- [Rob] We use a variety of knotting techniques,
one of which is called point knotting,
which involves a particular way of tying the hair
so that the cuticle allows the hair to push
down as close to the scalp as possible.
- [Narrator] This technique allows short-haired wigs
like Eleven's to be virtually undetectable.
It's also useful for the back and sideburns of men's wigs.
It's all about matching the idiosyncratic
natural patterns of the actor's head.
- [Rob] So for example, temples either go back or down.
This particular actor grew down,
so the hair was knotted that direction.
We actually tie in crown swirls, growth patterns.
We've built it and knotted it naturally
so that you can part the hair anywhere on top of the head,
just as you would your own head of hair.
- [Narrator] As for the hair itself--
- [Rob] Hairdressers use synthetic wigs from wig shops
all the time to use for background characters.
- [Narrator] But it won't measure up for hero wigs,
which require real human hair.
- [Rob] Synthetic hair has more of a sheen
to it than natural human hair,
which is kind of something we're always trying to fight.
- [Narrator] Sometimes Rob even adds mohair to hairlines
to mimic the soft baby strands that naturally grow there.
Like for Olivia Wilde's wig in "Don't Worry Darling,"
and Ana de Armas' in "Blonde."
The hair they choose also helps tell the story.
When making hair pieces for a film or TV character,
Rob might have to convey something a wig would normally
try to disguise, like aging or ill health.
That was the case for Tom Hardy's wigs in "Capone,"
which showed the aging mobster at a time
when he was living with syphilis.
- [Rob] The hair texture speaks to that in the specific
situation of "Capone" and the origin of the hair
was actually a bit sickly before we texturized it.
- [Narrator] Capone's hair was also thinning at that age,
so Rob thinned out the density of the hair at the crown
and temples, and gave him a more wiry texture
in some areas, with a softer texture in others.
Then comes the coloring process,
which requires a close understanding of a scene's lighting,
and how that might interact with the wig.
- [Rob] Reds can be quite the nightmare sometimes.
If we create a red wig and they put a blue filter
over the entire thing, it could look brown.
A lot of our job is alchemy, and color theory,
and figuring out how that's going to play
in the final product.
For example, for "Mank," we knew the entire project
was going to be shot in black and white.
So, when I was doing Amanda Seyfried's wig,
in choosing the blonde hair, we ran a number
of samples and actually put them on camera
against similar backgrounds they would be using
before we ever put a hair in the foundation
of the wig to make sure that the blonde
wasn't going to look gray,
it wasn't going to look too white,
it had enough dimension at the root
to look like it was grounded in her head.
- [Narrator] There were similar considerations
on "Stranger Things."
Because of the way the show was filmed,
everything showed up darker on screen, even Eddie's wig.
- [Rob] His wig was actually like a level seven/eight
ash brown, but it was more of a green ash.
So, when we do more of a green ash
and then they put a darker filter on it,
it appears a much darker brown.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, some period pieces
call for very era-specific hair colors
that we may not see around very much anymore.
- [Rob] There's a very specific apricot-blonde
that you notice in older women, because it was the way
the oxidative dye was showing up on the gray hair.
- [Narrator] When the actor's playing a real person,
it's even more crucial to nail every detail
of the wig's design from texture to color.
For the wigs in "Blonde," Rob and hair department head,
Jaime Leigh McIntosh sourced hair with Marilyn's exact
natural density and tightness of curl, even though
it'd later get styled into her signature pin curls.
And to achieve Pam's almost reflective shade of platinum
in "Pam and Tommy," the show's hair designer, Barry Lee Moe,
combined four different shades of blonde on Rob's wigs.
Those four shades created little bursts of light and shadow,
preventing the high-level blonde
from looking flat on camera.
- [Rob] We can use as many colors as we would like,
upwards of five or six, depending on what
we're creating, but at least three.
So, here we're just painting on a root shadow
to add a little bit of depth at the base of the wig.
- [Narrator] For "The First Lady," the team used
the same technique on the six wigs Rob made
for Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford.
- [Rob] Each of those wigs has anywhere
from five to six colors to carry through the color
of the previous wig into the next era of Betty,
so that way, you're not jarred,
her going from a dark brown wig to a lighter blonde.
Making sure those were rooted in the same
color palette was really important.
To look like it was a natural progression
of the same human being over their lifetime.
- [Narrator] Sometimes wigmakers have to make
multiple versions of the exact same wig.
- [Rob] These are a variety of stunt wigs
we've created for photo doubles, stunt performers.
They're cutting from a shot of the actor close up
in the custom wig to the stunt performer shot from the side.
The hair better look exactly the same
as it did in the shot before.
- [Narrator] But creating identical wigs
is notoriously difficult.
- [Rob] We do that through a variety of dipping processes
using oxidative dyes, non-oxidative dyes, silk colors,
and different texturizing processes to make sure
that we get the wig right down to the root
to look exactly like the custom wig we've created.
- [Narrator] It can get especially tricky matching stunt
wigs to hero wigs with totally different hair types.
Hero wigs usually get natural hair, and stunt wigs
get synthetic hair for durability.
- [Rob] They need to hold up for take after take of rolling
down the stairs, jumping off the building, et cetera.
- [Narrator] Synthetic hair also dries more quickly
between takes, and stunt wigs need to be faster
in general, with minimal application
processes for comfort and safety.
- [Rob] You want to use a limited number of pins
in case something goes awry with the stunt.
That wig needs to be removed quickly.
- [Narrator] Wigmakers might also have to make
multiple hero wigs, like Eleven's on "Stranger Things,"
which the team had to spend an hour and a half
resetting and remolding after each wear.
To allow for this, the team alternated between three or four
different matching wigs throughout filming.
When applying the wig, the show's hair department head,
Sarah Hindsgaul, had to make it sit naturally
on top of Millie's armpit-length hair,
which was all bundled up at the crown of her head.
She didn't go with the traditional braiding method.
That would've added bulk, risking a cocoon head effect.
- [Rob] It's a variation off of an old school wrap
called a fracture wrap, that using gauze and pins
to really create tension and lay the hair
as flat as possible on the head.
- [Narrator] Even a look as simple as Eleven's
required duplicate wigs, ingenious application,
and painstaking work at the foundation and hairline
to pull it off convincingly on screen.
The stakes are just that high with film and TV wigs.
They can either take us out of the story
or keep us immersed in it.