Entertainment
Stranger Things step-by-step guide to how Vecna was created, from hours Jamie Campbell Bower spent having prosthetics applied to ‘subtle’ changes to original design-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro
A behind-the-scenes dive into the creation of the horrifying villain.
It was impossible to recognise Jamie under the enormously heavy prosthetics (Picture: Netflix)
Warning: spoilers ahead for Strangers Things season 4 volume 1. There are no spoilers below for volume 2.
When Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 dropped on Netflix, it introduced viewers across the globe to the utterly terrifying Vecna, the brainchild of the show’s creators Matt and Ross Duffer.
The horrifying new villain was shrouded in mystery, until it was revealed that not only did he have a complex history with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) at Hawkins Lab, but he was also originally Henry Creel, who went on to become the enigmatic Number One (Jamie Campbell Bower).
Metro.co.uk recently had the pleasure of speaking to Barrie Gower, the makeup effects department head on Stranger Things, to delve deep into how Vecna was created, from the original concept art to the tough practicalities of making it a reality.
Discover the staggering number of hours Jamie spent having prosthetics glued onto his body, as well as the sheer amount of appliances – made from a combination of silicone rubber and foam latex – that had to be used throughout filming.
Where did the concept for Vecna’s design come from?
Before Barrie came on board for Stranger Things season four – as the founder of film and TV makeup effects company BGFX alongside his wife, Sarah Gower – the concept for Vecna’s appearance came down to the Duffer brothers, who had a ‘clear vision in mind of how they wanted Vecna to look’.
The Duffer brothers had a clear idea of how they wanted Vecna to look (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
Taking concept art on board created by concept artist and VFX producer Michael Maher, Barrie and his team had a ‘blueprint’ for Vecna when their work began.
‘Their brief was that this was going to be one of the first humanoid-shaped creatures/characters/villains as such from the Upside Down, and they wanted him to have a very practical presence on set filming with the other cast members,’ Barrie said.
‘They were very keen to return to a lot of the traditional techniques of the 1980s of having prosthetics and a character in a makeup, rather than approaching it from a visual effects, digital point of view.
‘So even though we had an image and a blueprint of this character that we could work very closely to, it wasn’t until the role was cast and they cast Jamie Campbell Bower – and that would have been January of 2020 – Jamie came to our studio and we took a full body lifecast of Jamie so we could create a full body copy of him, and we could sculpt the Vecna prosthetics over that.’
Jamie’s character in Hawkins Lab was originally known as Peter Ballard (Picture: Netflix)
What changes were made to the original design of Vecna?
‘It wasn’t until we had Jamie’s full body that we realised that we had to make a few changes here and there, a few nuances and compromises that were made to the original design that would just enable us to house this character over Jamie’s forms,’ Barrie recalled.
He explained how these changes were ‘all subtle’, as the original design for Vecna was ‘very sleek, very slender, and probably a little bit more extended than the human form’, resulting in them having to make slight alterations to the proportions.
Vecna’s oversized, creepy left hand was originally considered as the only visual effects element of the costume, with the idea put forward for Jamie to wear a green glove that could be digitally-animated in post-production.
Imagine spending several hours at a time having your entire body covered in prosthetics (Picture: Backgrid/Ruba)
‘But we said, “I think we can actually create something practically.” So we had an amazing mechanic called Adam Keenan who created these aluminium finger extensions that we modelled over Jamie’s fingers,’ the makeup effects expert said.
‘That was housed into a sort of under-glove that he used to slip on every day, and then that had a prosthetic glove sleeve that went over the top of that. So we were able to give him actual extended fingers.’
When it comes to Vecna’s left hand, Barrie estimated that it came to a 50/50 mix of practical and visual effects, especially when the villain uses his hand to attack his victims and penetrate their skulls — but the final cut of Stranger Things ‘is super close to those original concept images’.
How long did it take to apply the prosthetics to Jamie every day?
It took approximately seven hours to apply Jamie’s makeup every day, which consisted of a four-man team of Barrie and three other artists. On one day, they managed to get it down to six hours and 20 minutes, while it took another hour and a half to take off the makeup each time.
The process of glueing all of the appliances onto the actor’s body took around five hours, Barrie revealed, which was followed by the artists ‘blending edges and then using air brushes and inks to overlap the paint work and just tie everything together’.
To make the entire painstaking process even more impressive, all of the appliances – with the exception of his glove and his sleeve, which they were able to rewear a couple of times – could only be used once.
‘All his appliances were pre art-worked by our team here in the UK, to the nth degree pretty much, and then shipped out to Atlanta,’ Barrie said.
‘He shot for about 25 days, so for every single day, he had to have a brand new set of appliances, because when you come to remove everything at the end of the day, that’s like an hour and a half process of us using mineral oils, and it just destroys all the beautiful blended edges on the pieces.
‘So we would have 25/26 up to 30 duplicate sets of appliances, which all had to have continuity and every colour, every nuance of the pieces had to be matched up every day.’
The finished product was chilling to say the least (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
Jamie would arrive in the morning at around 2am or 3am, switching from sitting in a chair, to standing up, being laid down on a massage table to have pieces applied to his back, chest, legs, arms and so on, before also putting in his contact lenses and dentures. No mean feat!
The production team, who Barrie praised as ‘very clever and considerate’, made sure to schedule Vecna shifts on alternate days, so the makeup effects crew could have a day off to ‘sleep, recharge and come back fit and fighting for the next day’, following would could end up being 18 to 20-hour days – ‘such as the nature of doing big prosthetic makeups’.
‘What’s super important with a process like this, when you’ve got four artists and an actor, and you’re spending so much time together – we’re the first person he would see in the morning pre any of the other crew arriving for a good six hours, and then he’d be the last person we’d see at night after everybody’s gone home,’ he said.
Jamie was an ‘absolute trooper’, Barrie said (Picture: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)
‘So you are effectively spending an awful lot of time with this actor and your team members, and it’s just paramount that everybody gets on. The chemistry was really good in the team.
‘Jamie had a little bit of prosthetic experience before, but he just approached it like such a pro, and we never had a single complaint out of Jamie. Never moaned once. He was always excited and just happy to be there as we all were. It’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had in my career.’
How much did Vecna’s costume weigh?
‘An awful lot, I think an awful lot. I mean, just his head and shoulders were several kilos,’ Barrie responded.
‘I would have to say probably about 20 kilos. Maybe a little bit more. It was hardcore. It was a lot of weight for him to wear every day. So effectively every day was like a workout for him.’
Vecna’s left hand was a mixture of makeup and visual effects (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
The makeup effects department head emphasised how much ‘tension’ Jamie would have experienced on the back of his neck, where Vecna’s disturbing vines were attached, so that element of the costume was applied around 20 minutes before he left his trailer.
The last part of the process would involve Jamie being covered in a clear gel, like a KY jelly, ‘basically effectively like a lube that would cover his whole body to make him very, very glossy’.
What was the most difficult aspect of making Vecna a reality?
‘He’s probably one of the most extensive prosthetic makeups we’ve done as a company, because he is covered from head to toe. So I think, just from a technical point of view, we had to brainstorm over how we were going to split up all these appliances,’ Barrie outlined.
‘Rather than creating a rubber monster suit that he just slipped on, we made this decision early on that we wanted everything to be adhered to his skin and glued on prosthetics.
‘So it gave him the best amount of movements, and whatever his body did beneath it would translate through the pieces and it would limit the amount of buckling that you would get with a normal sort of rubber monster suit.’
The second volume of the season has now dropped (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
In addition to working out the ‘head-scratching procedure’ of how to split up the appliances and where they would overlap on Jamie’s body, they also had to think about certain logistics, such as allowing the actor to go to the bathroom.
‘They had a special undercarriage that we could pop open, so Jamie could go to the loo, and the big long finger extensions had to be detachable and removable, so he would have his hands free as well in between setups,’ Barrie said.
The team’s immense hard work definitely paid off, as they were instrumental in creating one of the scariest, most gruesome and sensational-looking villains ever seen on TV.
Stranger Things season 4 volumes 1 and 2 are available to watch on Netflix.
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