As you may know, we’ve brought our film production from Grand Rapids, Michigan down to Saltillo to assist our friend and director, Joel Vallie, in producing a feature film, a microbudget experience with a hundred headaches but a thousand grins. So when he writes a scene that has 100 demons in make-up running down Mexican streets, I might be tempted to say, “Oh, Joel. That ain’t gonna work. How are we gonna feed them? Where are they going to make their water? No one is going to show up anyway…and if they do who is going to do the demon make-up?” And his response was always the same, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get on it.” So we didn’t worry, trusted his favor, and sure enough, he delivered by bringing Hawgfly Productions on to set last week.
This movie has some intense special effects make-up and we needed a team that was up for the challenge. Meredith Johns (co-owner) recently finished up working on “Spy Kids 4″, this year’s Coen Brother’s movie “True Grit”, and last year, she was the head make-up artist on Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” (which by the way, if you haven’t seen, is a 2010 gem that was overlooked). So what is she doing on a film where we’re paying people in tacos? Cause she loves film and helping directors reach their vision…on any level.
So, she brought down three amazingly talented, patient, hard working make-up artists with her and they worked magic on a very small budget, utilizing freaky contact lens, patented Hawgfly blood, tattoos of veins, and dentures that would scare even your father. We would’ve loved to have spent $5,000 dollars on face molds and all that good stuff but unfortunately it’ll have to wait for the next time.
See a very brief picture show of the process here:
A relatively clean Ben Chamberlain
Applying some vein tattoos h'yeah!
He passes it to the man...
And BOOM goes the dynamite!
Pretty cool, huh? And we also had to make up our 27-year old production assistant as an old lady demon:
Ah, yes. It’s been good times down here. We’re on Day 19 of 20 today and everybody’s about to roll out of here tired and exhausted but, we think, rewarded. We have 5 days of film production for this movie scheduled in Michigan in April that we will need some help on (and by help, I do mean “free labor”). So who’s interested?!
More later.
PS. Somewhere on this trip, our little Gorilla van that can has developed a new rattling somewhere in the undercarriage, but she’s still running like Prefontaine. 2,800 miles and counting on this trip…
This is our second year of submitting work to the Addy’s, but it was a bit different. I had a helper — one Alexa Hook, an illustrious and industrious senior at Calvin College who is currently interning for us. We offered her the internship right away because we had a feeling she would be a good fit at Gorilla. (I also needed immediate help with the madness that is submitting work to the Addy awards.) 
