So, the big weekend is behind me! The last big shoot weekend in the movie, an effects-laden extravaganza of work and fun and food...
... and rain. Torrential downpours, monstrous flooding drops of doom beating down on our heads, flooding the fields, washing cows down the road...
And when not rain, humidity. Nothing like working with water-based makeup in a tropical rain forest.
Today, I'm a bit muddled. I apologize if this entry is awkward and confused.
In between downpours, we did manage to eat the leg.
Thursday I slaved to make the skin. This is a long process, since it takes an hour or more between silicon layers for things to stiffen up.
The first layer of skin was semi-translucent, to give the leg healthy subsurface scattering (not that it matters). The next layer is an opaque flesh-tone. Under that another thick layer (or was it two?) in icky yellow-white.
During one of the passes, I embedded cheesecloth into the skin, so it would be easy to attach to the actor.
In the last pass, I took the nasty halloween spider web material and embedded tufts of it into the fatty silicon layer. This was to make the skin bond to the gelatin interior. Once the skin was all dry (the next day), I trimmed this fluff layer so it wasn't too crazy.
Friday I had a sequence of events that required long delays for the gelatin to cool.
First I mixed up a batch of meat-red gelatin and poured it into the muscle mold to get the three muscles. I clamp a stretch of cheesecloth in both ends of the mold, so the muscles terminate in cheesecloth tendons.
Then I poured the remnants into the heart mold, all of which promptly leaked out onto the floor. Okaaaaay, that wasn't desired.
While the muscles are quietly cooling in the corner, I hope the heart has self-sealed and I melt and pour more. Man, this floor is getting messy... blood-colored gelatin in the grout. That can't be good.
After a bunch of screwing around, I reject the heart mold as it stands. I come back to it later...
.. but first, now that the muscles have begun to set, I tip the mold flat on its side and place a pan of ice on it, to speed the cooling.
Now I can take apart the heart mold to see that the problem is in a patch I made in the edge of the mold where I broke it. After grinding down the patch, making a fresh batch of gell, coloring it, etc... I pour a perfect heart.
Of course, the first thing our medic says on seeing it is, "a heart? That's too small!" Yeah, okay, so medical models are based on 5'5" tall Indian women, what can I do about it? I guess I need to sculpt a larger heart from scratch someday...
Hmm, where was I?
Oh, yeah! I took the leftover heart gel, added some more, nuked it, and then foamed it (equal parts tartaric acid and baking soda). This got spread along the fluffy stuff in the skin, to make an icky gelatin layer to work against.
While everything continues to cool, I wander off and make some more powder squibs for killing dead people with.
Later, I crack open the muscle molds and am happy. I cut appart the muscles and lay them out around the thighbone. The cloth tendons make it easy to manipulate and bind the muscles into place.
I then take this assembly and fit it into place in the skin shell.
Cut, heat, color, stir, foam... and then pour a big batch of bloody foam into and around the muscles.
And then play with it as it all tries to pour out onto the floor... but eventually I tame it and can walk away while it sets.
The one thing that I never did get figured out was how to supply blood to the skin as it is being cut. I made some blood channels under the skin, but I actualy never used them. I need to do this again, or several times, to work out more details... blood supply primary among them.
When we acted out the gag, I stripped the actor and then wrapped his delicate leg flesh with aluminum screening -- with four layers where the knife was going to approach him, for safety.
Then the leg strapped into place beautifully, and the magic gaffed pants that I made Thursday slipped on perfectly. I rock!
Then we stuck his right ass-cheek into a hole in the ground (which I persisted in calling the "ass hole") and made him... really uncomfortable, I'm sure.
And then we spent far too much time trying to work out the blood supply problems.
And then, ten thousand little niggling delays later, we filmed the scene.
I think that, when finally edited together, it will be awesome! And there are is a "moment" with Rafaella and her victim that is amazing...
Sunday was easier, if longer. Mostly I did some light makeup work and shot holes in a door and a dead guy. It all went off pretty smoothly.
All the rain, of course, transformed this final weekend into a semi-final weekend. Two weeks out we have to shoot the stuff that got rained out. Woo.
But then... post production!
Until then, I intend to sleep a bunch.
Except this afternoon, where I have to visit the dentist so he can do stuff in preparation to putting in my implant stud next week.
Woot.