V/H/S Viral – Behind the Scenes with FX Artist Vincent Guastini
Steve Barton
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Looking forward to V/H/S Viral (review)? Then have we got a treat for you! Special effects artist Vincent Guastini just released a plethora of behind-the-scenes images from one of the film’s segments. Check it out!
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THE V/H/S VIRAL EFFECTS FOLLOW-UP: As promised, Vincent has released the floodgate of pictures for one of the segments, called “Bonestorm,” directed by Aaron Moorhead & Justine Benson. We pulled out all the stops and I was able to convince the directors to go practical for the effects and not use CGI and also do some miniature effects as well. I wanted to bring back the days of old school scary with modern day aesthetics.
These were specters, cloaked figures that melted & attacked our skaters in the story. Aaron Moorhead was talking about doing things with CGI since he’s pretty damn good at visual effects. I was like ‘NO! You can’t do that. No way!’ I was like yelling in my shop at Aaron and Justin in a very passionate way like a nut saying, ‘you guys ever see the Blind Dead films?’ They were like, no, so I started to show them those movies and I said we have to bring that back into the films of today. So that was the direction, a modern day Blind Dead that melts on camera.
So me and one of my concept designers, Joshua Ballze, started brainstorming and Joshua came back with some amazing designs of the ideas we both had based on the script and me pushing to go practical… From there I got some of my superstar Sculptors, Mike Rottella & Josh Wasylink, and told them to go nuts. We casted them up in rubber and went old school on one stage, and made one prosthetic skull rigged so it literally melts on camera with a bunch of fishing line, drool and other tubes and cables to make the skull just skin itself on camera, peeling back silicone skin with the extra bonus of seeing the eyeball fall out of its head right on top of one of the victims as a GoPro picks up the shot with a bunch of other in camera gags of arms being torn out or heads being crushed in with skateboards.
In the end one of our victims gets swallowed by a T-Rex sized monster at the close of the segment. For that we recast and made a monster I had in stock that never saw the light of day, with a bunch of horns and a big mouth which was for a quick shot of a giant foot to come down forced perceptive and then pick up and swallow one of our actors who is documenting the whole event. So you can see CloverField style the camera being swallowed by the monster. Me and my on-set crew, Ted Cary, Adrian Marcato, Joshua Ballze and myself, were running around making up the army of hooded specters. Was like working on a new version of the Skeleton Army from Jason and the Argonauts. There was also a fair amount of gore effects, fake bodies and limbs to keep us busy as well.
The last shot I did was rigging miniature skeletons that blew apart via fishing line and air compressed powered coffee creamer. The footage was slowed down and greenscreened and comped in over the live action footage. It seems powered coffee creamer mixed with some bits of Styrofoam makes for some fantastic bone fragments.
It was a real challenge but I think my effects on this segment and Todd Lincoln’s was something fresh and different. I love working for these guys – they care, they were like big kids on set, always smiling and joking around, running around going through the scenes with big smiles on their faces I mean it was fun, what filmmaking should be about most times. They make the process a big kid’s toy store and I think with this film and their upcoming film SPRING they’re going to be the next big horror and fantasy guys on the scene. Was truly a blast collaborating with them and I hope to do it again.
Although at press time Todd Lincoln’s segment was omitted from the theatrical release, there are other plans for it that I am not at liberty to talk about. But once that happens I promise to release what we did for that amazing segment as well.
Thanks again to producers Chris White and Brad Miska.
Categorized:News
