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

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

When HBO’s Westworld revealing its big mid-season twist – that Aaron Paul’s Caleb has become the showrunner – it brought the mind-blowing series closer to answering its longest question: what makes a human? People?

It was a problem that the series’ special effects team had to not only help Westworld visual exploration throughout the run of the show but in the face of some of its top heroes and villains becoming hosts, along with the introduction of a new series of drones led by Hale fantasy in its fourth season.

Doing that thematic exploration with Caleb took place in the season’s sixth episode, “Fidelity,” where server version #278 tries to break out of Hale’s cage after she manages to isolate what has been. turns Caleb’s human consciousness against her mind control technology. In the process, Caleb encounters a series of terrifying discoveries: past versions of him, all in various forms, have attempted to flee with the same devastating results.

Jason Collins, a special effects makeup designer, said: “It’s so sad. Westworld season four The Hollywood Reporter. “Whenever you shoot a person as multiple people, you have to get a group of people the same size as his size, his physique, put on their wigs – do it all. The makeover for them because you never know if you can catch a party or not. watch them – and then quickly do Aaron’s makeup and then shoot him back. That takes a lot of time.”

“Caleb had four sets for the shoot, three of which were wigs and one with Aaron’s hair texture, so we cut his hair to match Caleb,” says hairstylist Jose Zamora. CHEAP about how his division contributed to the many seasons of Calebs in episode six. “Like [special makeup effects makeup designer head] Jennifer [Aspinall] and Jason broke Caleb, we follow their lead to confront whatever stage Caleb is in. It was a very collaborative performance.”

While head of makeup Elisa Marsh, like Zamora, plays an important role in shaping the look of each host and person on the planet. Westworld in season 4 – with John Damiani handling Paul’s grooming, beard combo, and scars – she takes a lot of credit when it comes to Caleb to her special effects team colleagues.

“When we first saw him and emphasized that he was in the first generation, he was pretty much perfect,” Marsh said. “Then when he tried to escape, he metamorphosed and that’s the whole thing the special effects did brilliantly. But he’s in such a small window, it’s not like his hair will grow out because he’s a human now instead of a host.”

Timeline specificity meant that the team had to identify every stage of the server’s physical deterioration. To do that, they took from an existing example in the universe and understood that each Caleb has a lifespan of about “20 odd days,” Collins said.

“When Caleb started deconstructing, we had a reference to start with and that was in season two. There is a character named James Delos who discovers that he is a human [and] now a drone,” Collins explains. “You start seeing little ticks with the guy. He is scratching at the skin and pulling it out – self-destructive. It starts from the inside and works its way out. So we took our cue from that character. “

His own work on the series was supported by Aspinall, who helped him navigate Westworldtimeline and continuity for Caleb’s degradation.

“I’ve been a fan since season one, I’ve watched every episode, but there’s very little complexity and all these highways and – in trying to understand how they built the world Westworld — sometimes I don’t see the tiniest details,” says Collins. “But Jen has been there since season one and would say, ‘Oh yeah. I think it is this. ‘ Then we’d go back and watch an episode from season two and say, ‘Ah, here it is.’

“There’s a lot of self-referencing in the show,” he added. “In that way, the show is very structured.”

While creating more of the best-looking Aaron Paul for season four may have been one of the more difficult tasks assigned to the masquerade effects team on the HBO show’s latest season, they’re also part of the effort. deliver Hale’s new drone. They are a design inspired by a painting provided to the team by showrunner Lisa Joy, lilies and high-end car technology.

“Lisa Joy came to us at one point and said I wanted an evolved drone and they would be in Hale’s world. We weren’t really clear at first about what they were going to be used for or what they were going to do. But she had a picture of a picture that she liked that was this elongated figure,” Aspinwall told. CHEAP.

She and Collins took that and began “researching everything from high-end car design to plants and modern 3D printed machinery”—tools, effects makeup designer It will be a balance of both pushing the boundaries of technological and organic entities that fit Hale’s world, special makeup said.

She adds: “We found our inspiration in this wonderful illustration of a 3D printed image based on a lily flower. “The Lily shape became the head and body based on a premium car design. We took it and turned it into a sexy looking body that has legs like Lisa Joy in her painting.”

Hale’s vision of a body goes beyond the ideals and corresponding biological limitations of some human bodies. The result is something that seems practically indistinguishable – a rebuke, potentially, of the diversity of human identities – but also embraces different phenotypes, look for it in human society, can sometimes resemble handicapped bodies.

“Hale is fueling this AI rebellion and hates her mortal shell, so she’s creating something called ascension, where you don’t have to have a human body,” Collins said. “You can go to something bigger and better and something more productive for yourself.”

Westworld season four is available to stream on HBO Max.