Interview: Prosthetics artists Brad Proctor and Rachel Griffin On the set of Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers are a number of people constantly watching and waiting off-camera. Among them are the makeup artists who deal with the many prosthetics used during a day of shooting. Their job is to apply makeup when moisture changes the texture and color of the prosthetic, to repair any tears and to provide that indefinable something that makes alien characters look real. We spoke to two such talented individuals during our Vancouver set visit in May. Q: Do you have a particular alien race you work with primarily? Brad Proctor: I've been dealing with Narn characters primarily, so Bill [Terezakis, the key prosthetics artist] and I were doing G'Kar. But today I was working on Minbari, and I think I've worked on everything but a Drazi. I started off with the Narn. Q: How do you find working with a full prosthetic rather than the pieces of a Minbari prosthetic, where there are four or five pieces that have to be perfectly matched up? BP: I suppose they aren't too different. It's faster with the large pieces, once you get the hang of laying them down. Obviously with the large pieces, it can be a bit more fiddly in the sense that you have that much more bulk. But you don't have to worry about lining ears up properly, either. Rachel Griffin: And generally, the larger pieces are pre-painted. We then just need to blend color around the eyes. That can be a lot quicker than [applying] the Minbari [prosthetic], which has the bald cap and the forehead appliance and then there's the paint and the ears and the crown piece. The Minbari started out being the most complex makeup. Now we've gotten it down to being one of the simpler. Q: Could you walk us through the process of making-up G'Kar? BP: First Andreas [Katsulas] comes in and has a cigarette and coffee. We powder the headpiece first because it then just goes on a lot easier. He flips that on and we glue along the edge and then basically each of us take half of the face. We start at the forehead and we lay that piece down and then we move on down the face. We use different strengths of glue on different parts of the face because some areas don't flex as much and you don't need as much adhesion, and also it makes it a lot simpler in the clean-up process. Once we've got the face pretty much locked down, we go to the throat, lips and eyes. Andreas has had an incredible amount of experience with prosthetics. He was G'Kar for five years. RG: He was helping us out immensely. The first day we did it, he was giving us pointers. And I think the first time, Brad and I were a little hesitant to go faster, but he encouraged us with this to the point where we actually got the application time down quite a bit with his help. BP: You have to listen to an actor who has dealt with a character this long, too. He basically is G'Kar. As he gets into makeup, he's very, very particular about it, course, cause it's his character. When I was first doing the paintwork on it, he was pointing out this big dot that needed to be bit larger or something like that. And you listen to him because no one is going to know better these things about his character. Q: What kind of coloration or paint do you use to blend the prosthetic with the skin? RG: Most of the cowl is done with acrylic paint, and then when you get into the skin area you use a [type of] paint which is mixed with the glue that we actually use to glue the pieces down. Then we usually go over that with an "RMG," which is your traditional rubber/grease makeup paint that has been around for years and years. [The initials stand for Rubber/Mask/Grease.] It hides edges and covers the skin very, very well. Q: How do you get it off? BP: Slowly, very slowly! [laughs] RG: We've got quite a mix [of antiadhesives]. Sometimes it depends on the person's skin — some people are more sensitive to some products than others — and some products work better than others. But with the edge around the cheeks, that's all powdered, and the cowl itself slips off his head. Then we start peeling the face back, slowly but surely, using lots of solvent. And we just pull it all down. BP: The solvent is like an oil, so it's not an alcohol-type thing. We will release the cowl from the face piece with alcohol, but we won't use alcohol on the skin. And we don't want to dissolve the piece either, so that he can wear it for three to four days. Q: What does perspiration do to the prosthetic? RG: It can actually begin to break it down. During the day you'll see us go in and glue little bits down. Anyone who is an effects artist, when they watch a show like this, the first thing they will look for is around the lips. BP: It deteriorates very quickly there. Any skin oils and perspiration will start attacking and start destroying the webbing. So quite often this is the first area where it will deteriorate, [particularly] in the corners of the mouth. Q: You must hate when the actors have to go to lunch! BP: Fried chicken is an absolute curse to anyone dealing with a prosthetic around the mouth. RG: Most of the actors are really good about this; I've gone so far as to feed my actors. And I've had some actors who are so incredible — they say they aren't going to eat all day so that they can save my makeup. That's rare, but it shows you what some actors will go through to preserve the makeup because they know how important it is to preserve the character. Q: What is your background with makeup and prosthetics? BP: Self-taught. You play around with the stuff as a kid. You go through and make all the mistakes you're going to encounter on yourself first, and then you take the plunge or you get an offer or something like that. I moved out here about seven years ago. I worked professionally about six-and-a-half of that. RG: I started off with interest in sci-fi; I saw Star Wars when I was little and actually started making little Super-8 movies with animation and ships and lasers and all that. I took a course to teach me formal filmmaking. Part of that course was to write a script and make a film. I actually made the [film's] alien [character], dropped out of the film course and went into a makeup course. BP: I just want to add that a lot of people are ultimately responsible for the aliens. There are guys who often spend 24 hours a day building the [life-cast] sculptures [from which the custom prosthetics are made]. I used to be one of those guys and backed away from it for that very reason. Those are the guys who sweat blood to get these pieces done on time so that we can stick them on people in time. RG: Yes, it all begins with the life-cast. And then the design work gets done, and the sculpture gets done, and then the mold is made and the foam is run through that. The foam gets seamed and pre-painted, and then it actually comes to set. BP: You could actually have a month's worth of work for a two-hour application for two seconds of film. Or [if a shot gets cut,] for none at all.