Narrator: One of the most famous costumes in cinema
is this plain white tank top
worn by Bruce Willis in "Die Hard."
But a lot of the damage you see on it
didn't just happen naturally.
It was deliberately faked
by the film's costume designer, Marilyn Vance.
John: Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.
Narrator: Today, there's a job specifically for
aging and destroying costumes as described in the plot.
Breakdown artists like Sarah Blostein
need an intimate understanding of the scene
and countless creative ways to recreate
all the damage a costume endures.
When done right, they might just create
an iconic piece of cinema history
that ends up in the Smithsonian.
A lot of what we do, the breakdown is from use.
Narrator: Every piece of clothing on a movie set
requires some sort of manipulation.
Even a simple white shirt gets bathed in dyes or tea.
But breakdown artists go far beyond that,
like Sarah's work on "The Boys."
On set, the gunshot impacts were created
by putting squibs under the actor's jacket,
which left holes in the costume.
But these tears looked nothing like real bullet holes.
The problem with this is that
it causes the fabric to blow outwards.
It would never do something like this.
Narrator: One way to tackle this is to sew the holes up.
Sarah: A bullet hole actually
looks like a cigarette burn.
The size of squib that they used
made gigantic, bazooka-size holes in her jacket.
Narrator: So off set, the breakdown team
made the bullet holes from scratch,
using a craft knife to guarantee
the holes lined up precisely.
Breakdown artists can also emphasize details
that aren't necessarily realistic but stand out on camera.
Sarah: There is a certain amount of movie-magic lying
that you have to do when you do create a bullet hole
and make it a bit more recognizable to the audience.
Narrator: Like adding a little black paint
around the edges to mimic gun powder.
Some people misinterpret this look of bullet wipe
and think that it's actually gun powder.
You wouldn't get gun-powder residue on a shot
unless the muzzle was directly up against the person.
Narrator: There are a number of tools you can use
to create smaller rips and tears from fights.
Sarah's favorite tool: a steak knife.
But it's less easy to control, meaning less precision.
Since she'll have to make multiple identical versions
of the same outfit as backup,
craft knives and seam rippers are better for consistency.
When it came to "The Strain,"
she had to adjust for this apocalyptic scenario.
So she needed tools like a file,
a rougher,
and a wire brush for more destructive tears.
Some outfits, like this jacket from "The Strain,"
are made of materials that are harder to rip.
For this, she'll have to use a cheese grater.
I really only use this
on things that will not break down any other way.
Narrator: It's not only rips and tears.
There are a bunch of different ways
to represent wounds and blood,
and Sarah has to decide what techniques work for the scene.
In "The Boys," the characters crash into a whale.
The special effects team was tasked
with most of the blood and guts on set,
but the breakdown team had to cycle through
several bloody outfits.
Their biggest challenge?
Getting the color of blood right to maintain continuity.
When the characters first hit the whale,
the blood stains are a brighter shade of red.
As it dries, it appears much darker.
But the breakdown team couldn't let
the fake blood dry on its own,
as they ended shooting the later scenes
in the episode first.
That meant separate shirts for fresh and aged blood
with the stains lined up precisely.
Sarah also had to factor in
the different ways blood reacts
to fabrics and other props.
Sarah: The only time blood would really make drips like that
is on something that's plastic.
If it's on fabric, it tends to run in.
Sometimes I find it's more realistic just to use your hands.
Narrator: For something like whale guts,
the material matters as much as the color.
For the fresher guts, she needed something chunky
that would stick to clothes and only look wet.
The silicone will kind of form to whatever is underneath.
So if you do it flat,
you're going to have a flat-looking shirt.
Narrator: Which is why it's best to use a mannequin.
Sarah: It will keep that kind of wet,
clingy fabric look.
When we were doing this,
we'd start with a brush or with a stick
and then just give up and use our hands [laughs],
because honestly you're just smushing stuff all over
and you don't really have to be artistic about it.
So there's a nice gross piece up there.
Narrator: For the later scenes where the guts have dried,
Sarah switched to latex.
It still had some shine and clung to the fabric.
Sarah: Just like the blood,
when they're dried, they're darker,
they're kind of shriveled up.
Narrator: Blood and rips are pretty common
breakdown scenarios for action projects,
but sometimes a scene will throw Sarah
a less common situation,
like for this scene in "Ready or Not."
Sarah had to think about how clothes decompose on a body.
She had to work on the tuxedo on this corpse,
which had been buried underground for decades.
First, the clothing had to reflect the context.
Sarah: So, this guy gets shot with a bow and arrow,
but he's probably been running around before this, right?
So he might have some rips.
He might have some dirt, definitely some sweat.
Narrator: She used black paint for the blood stains,
as they'd fully dried out and congealed.
Then she had to think about how the bodily changes
would impact the outfit.
There's death, there's bloating, there's liquefaction,
there's putrefaction, there's desiccation.
I really wanted it to look like
whatever body juices seeped out into him,
seeped out into his clothes.
Narrator: This body was also buried in a deep pit.
So Sarah mimicked the dry rot caused by moisture
and added holes from moths and other insects.
That's really where the rougher and file were useful.
To top it all off, because the corpse was underground,
it was covered in dirt.
And believe it or not,
recreating dirt is one of the
toughest challenges of the job.
Using real dirt is really unpredictable,
as some dirt stains could be permanent,
a problem in the event that productions
do need to wash and reuse an outfit.
So Sarah will replicate it with nonpermanent materials.
For the tuxedo, she painted on brown spots
and ground up nonpermanent powder to create mud stains.
And for "The Boys," Sarah had to adjust Kenji's clothes
after he brings down a ceiling on Homelander
and later gets thrown through a wall by Stormfront.
She went beyond dirt powder and added diatomaceous earth,
a powder that simulates the dust and dirt
you'd find in a tunnel.
After Kenji gets thrown through the drywall,
Sarah added this cellulose,
which is the same material used for insulation in houses.
It matched the set debris perfectly.
Even the sweat stains you see on-screen can be fake.
This is especially true for action scenes
that are shot out of order.
To simulate sweat stains that stick and look wet,
she sprays a mix of glycerin, water, and oils.
Sarah: It won't just run everywhere,
it'll kind of stay put where it's supposed to be.
Narrator: None of these techniques we've mentioned so far
would work for these scenes in "The Boys," however,
because of the supersuits.
These costumes were expensive
and shipped from LA to Canada for the shoot,
so the production team didn't have
multiple versions to mess around with.
So how did Stormfront and Black Noir's suits
look so damaged here and here?
Sarah: So we had to come up with
unique and innovative ways
to make the costumes look like they were damaged
without actually damaging them.
Narrator: Sarah used leftover fabric
to recreate Stormfront's suit.
That way the breakdown team could rip it and sew in
prosthetic burn wounds created by the makeup department.
By painting a mushy mixture around the edges of the rips,
Sarah could emulate real burn damage.
Sarah: If you look at a burn,
usually right around the lip of the burn,
there's a slightly lighter color that's left there.
And that gives the illusion
of the edge being singed and kind of melted,
which is, I guess, what you would imagine
for this kind of supersuit fabric.
Narrator: For Black Noir's suit,
the supersuits team deconstructed it into panels,
allowing them to swap the original pieces
for pre-damaged ones
and then back again once filming ended.
And look at the pieces of shrapnel and melted bits
in Black Noir's suit following a different explosion.
Sarah: And then those were sewn one by one onto the costume.
Narrator: So none of the damage was permanent.
Breakdown artists are a lot of things.
They're scientists, they're alchemists, they're detectives.