Westworld Makeup VFX Team on Season 4’s New Drones, Multiple Host Calebs – The Hollywood Reporter

[This story contains spoilers for HBO’s Westworld season 4.]

When HBO’s Westworld revealed its large mid-season twist — that Aaron Paul’s Caleb had turn into a bunch — it inched this cerebral collection nearer to answering its longest-running query: what makes one thing human?

It’s a quandary the collection’ particular make-up results workforce has needed to not solely assist Westworld visually discover all through the present’s run however within the face of a number of of its main heroes and villains turning into hosts, alongside the introduction of a brand new collection of drones imagined by Hale throughout its fourth season.

Executing that thematic exploration with Caleb happened throughout the season’s sixth episode, “Fidelity,” the place host model #278 makes an attempt to interrupt out of Hale’s glass cage after she seeks to isolate what has made Caleb’s human consciousness immune to her mind-control tech. In the method, Caleb runs right into a collection of scary discoveries: previous variations of him, all in numerous varieties, have tried this identical escape to brutal outcomes.

“That episode was maddening,” Jason Collins, particular make-up results designer on Westworld season 4 tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Anytime you shoot one particular person as a number of folks, you need to get a bunch of individuals which might be roughly his measurement, his construct, put wigs on them — do all of the make-up on them as effectively since you by no means know in the event you would possibly catch a facet view of them — after which hurry up and put Aaron in the identical make-up after which shoot him in reverse. That could be very time-consuming.”

Special make-up results make-up designer head Jennifer Aspinall, Aaron Paul and Caleb doubles on the set of Westworld Season 4.

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“Caleb had 4 doubles for the scenes, three of them had been wigged and one had Aaron’s hair texture, so we minimize his hair to match Caleb,” hair head Jose Zamora tells THR of how his division contributed to the various Calebs season in episode six. “As [special makeup effects makeup designer head] Jennifer [Aspinall] and Jason broke down Caleb, we adopted their result in match no matter stage Caleb was at. It was a really collaborative present.”

While make-up head Elisa Marsh, like Zamora, performed a major position in shaping the seems of the person hosts and people on Westworld throughout season 4 — with John Damiani dealing with Paul’s grooming, beard match and scar software — she provides a lot of the credit score in the case of Caleb to her particular results workforce counterparts.

“When we first see him and have an inkling that he’s stage one gen, he’s fairly excellent,” Marsh says. “Then as he tries to flee, he degrades and that was an entire factor that particular results did brilliantly. But he’s in such a small window, it wasn’t like his hair would have grown as a result of now he’s a human as an alternative of a bunch.”

The specificity of the timeline meant the workforce needed to outline each stage of the bodily deteriorating host. To do this, they pulled from an present instance within the universe and the understanding that every Caleb had a life span of about “20-odd-days,” says Collins.

“As Caleb begins to deconstruct, we had a reference to go off of and that was in season two. There is a personality named James Delos who finds out that he was a human [and] now’s a drone,” Collins explains. “You begin seeing little ticks with the man. He’s scratching at his pores and skin and pulling out his pores and skin — self-destructing. It begins from the within and works its method to the skin. So we took our cue from that character.”

His personal work on the collection was supported by Aspinall, who helped him navigate Westworld‘s timeline and cling to continuity for Caleb’s deterioration.

“I’ve been a fan since season one, I’ve seen each episode, however there are little intricacies and all these highways and — in attempting to grasp how they constructed the world of Westworld — typically I don’t see the little minute particulars,” Collins says. “But Jen has been there since season one and can say, ‘Oh yeah. I believe that was this.’ Then we’ll return and watch an episode from season two and say, ‘Ah, there it’s.’”

The character Hector Escaton thirty years later in Westworld Season 4

Courtesy of topics

“There’s a number of self-reference within the present,” he provides. “The present could be very methodical that means.”

While creating a number of Aaron Paul look-a-likes for season 4 might have been one of many harder duties introduced to the make-up results workforce within the HBO present’s newest season, they had been additionally a part of the hassle to ship on Hale’s new drones. They’re a design impressed by a portray supplied to the workforce by showrunner Lisa Joy, the lily flower and high-end automobile tech.

“Lisa Joy got here to us at one level and mentioned I need an developed drone they usually’re going to be in Hale’s world. We weren’t actually initially clear about what they had been going for use for or what they had been going to do. But she had {a photograph} of a portray that she preferred that was this elongated determine,” Aspinwall tells THR.

She and Collins took that and started “researching every little thing from high-end automobile design to vegetation and leading edge 3D printed mechanical limbs” — the form of stuff, the particular make-up results make-up designer says, that will be a steadiness of each boundary-pushing tech and natural entities acceptable for Hale’s world.

Tessa Thompson in Westworld Season 4

John Johnson/HBO

“We discovered our inspiration on this fantastic illustration of a 3D printed picture that was primarily based on a Lily,” she provides. “The Lily form form of grew to become the pinnacle and the physique was primarily based on a high-end automobile design. We took that and morphed that into a very slick-looking physique that had the identical legs Lisa Joy had in her portray.”

Hale’s imaginative and prescient for a physique stretches past the idealized conception and respective organic limitations of some human our bodies. The result’s one thing that appears to embody virtually no differentiation — a rebuke, probably, of the variety of human identification — but in addition embraces totally different determine varieties that, in search of it inside human society, can at instances resemble our bodies with disabilities.

“Hale is driving this AI revolt and hates her mortal, human shell, so she’s creating one thing known as ascension, the place you don’t must have a human physique,” Collins says. “You can go to one thing grander and higher and one thing extra environment friendly for your self.”

Westworld season 4 is offered to stream on HBO Max.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/television/tv-features/westworld-makeup-vfx-team-season-4-drones-host-caleb-1235206149/