Stargate has had a great many magical ingredients, from prosthetics makeup to aliens. One of the key parties is Todd Masters and his company, MastersFX. Dial the Gate welcomes the artist to discuss his work on the franchise, from Asgard puppets to age-advancing makeup. He also answers fan questions LIVE!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:23 – Opening Credits
0:51 – Welcome and Introduction
1:35 – Call to Action
2:23 – Run of Show
2:45 – Guest Introduction
3:41 – How did you get involved in the industry?
7:33 – What movies and television make you fall in love with the business?
10:04 – MastersFX Beyond Prosthetics
13:40 – Effects and the Test of Time
18:44 – Todd’s Proudest Achievements
21:24 – Getting Involved in Stargate SG-1
24:54 – Asgard Puppets
30:05 – Snoopy Goggles on Thor
33:42 – Chaka and the Unas Make-Up
37:38 – Makeup Evolution
40:18 – Photogramming
41:55 – Practical VS Digital
47:44 – Tales From the Crypt
48:49 – Make-up Aging Effects
51:38 – Old Elizabeth Weir in Before I Sleep
54:39 – Wraith Makeup / Todd the Wraith
57:41 – The Future of Makeup and Technology
1:04:02 – Are there any particular animals you study for prosthetics?
1:06:53 – How do you bring an alien creature to life?
1:09:37 – Leprechaun 2
1:11:22 – Has your knowledge of prosthetics helped amputees?
1:13:20 – What advice would you give to novice filmmakers?
1:17:30 – Do you know of an organization that helps with amputees?
1:19:19 – Question for David: How do you prepare for a show?
1:22:49 – Next Week’s Guests
1:24:00 – T-Shirts!
1:25:15 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome to Episode 83 of Dial the Gate, my name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining us. We just wrapped up with Stargate film composer David Arnold and we are moving along to Stargate prosthetics artist Todd Masters of MastersFX. We have a lot to go over because so much of what Stargate about is bringing the aliens to life. Not every alien could be done with a visual effect and there are sci-fi stories where our characters age and all kinds of things. There are some interesting avenues to discuss. Before we get into that, I would like to invite you: If you are a fan of Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. I know it’s one of those things that all the YouTubers say, but it really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live because these talent, particularly in Canada, are working again. Last-minute changes happen all the time. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on the GateWorld.net YouTube channel. This is a live show, Todd is with us live. As the live shows go, under normal circumstances and this is normal circumstance, I will have my run of questions for him and as that is going on, the moderators in youtube.com/dialthegate’s comments thread and live chat will be taking your questions for Todd as we go along. Todd Masters, prosthetic makeup artist and head of MastersFX, founder, welcome to the show.

Todd Masters:
Thank you very much. Thanks, it’s nice to see you.

David Read:
It’s nice to see you. How are things going in Vancouver? You say that you are busy.

Todd Masters:
I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia. We have a studio here in Burnaby and we have another studio in Toronto, actually. We’ve been extremely busy pretty much for the last year solid. We were in lockdown, I think, with the rest of the world for a while. Came back in June and jumped right into a big zombie series for Syfy and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which actually premieres tonight. Good Doctor and a bunch of features. It hasn’t been boring lately.

David Read:
Todd, how did you fall into this? I didn’t realize it until you sent me some pictures, but it’s like you go all the way back to the ’90s. I am privileged to have one of your Borg from Star Trek: First Contact looming over my bed at night. The makeup for that, the fabrication for these creatures that you guys create, how did you get… Hey, look at that right there. Pull it up once again. I didn’t get the full thing.

Todd Masters:
There you go. This is the ILM Visual Effects Crew Shirt for Star Trek: First Contact.

David Read:
Wow. And you know what? That’s holding up much better than my Borg is. That shirt looks good.

Todd Masters:
I’m actually surprised. I just found it. I’m like, “Oh, shit.”

David Read:
How did you fall in love with this stuff?

Todd Masters:
I actually go back to the ’80s. I started in Hollywood around ’85 and did Big Trouble in Little China and Poltergeist II and Night of the Creeps. Like every monster maker kid, we kind of just go, I shouldn’t say everyone, but in those days, if you wanted to have a career in this weird niche of business you really had to be in Southern California. I was 18 and I had not received any art school welcomes. There was one art school that was welcoming me if I paid enough money and then there was another one in Seattle that I went to for a day. I wasn’t really cut out for going to art college, I don’t think. I had already started, actually, in film opticals and animation when I was 12. I already had a couple of films under my belt, this is living with my parents in Seattle. I’d already actually worked on Empire Strikes Back at that time. There was a small film lab called Alpha Cine in Seattle that I started interning with and this film came in that was horizontal because it was VistaVision. and it was like a blue screen snow speeder. I look at my boss, I’m like, “What is this movie?” He goes, “Oh, that’s Star Wars II.” I’m like, “What?” I realized that the lab had actually ended up processing a lot of the Industrial Light and Magic film and we were doing some cleanup work on some of these elements.

David Read:
Only the best sequence in all of motion picture cinema, in my humble opinion.

Todd Masters:
I would agree with that.

David Read:
Oh, really? Well, there you go.

Todd Masters:
That’s a fact. Empire is just unbelievable, that movie.

David Read:
Yes.

Todd Masters:
When I turned 18 and didn’t get accepted to any of these art schools, I took these abilities that I’d already had. I worked in film effects and optical effects and I started making my own monsters in my folks’ basement. I had made some contacts with people in LA and they were all, like, “Well, if you were here, I’d hire you.” So, I said, “OK. I’m gonna move there.” I went there. The day after I arrived, I started working on Big Trouble in Little China and did a bunch of stuff for Boss Films. Like I mentioned, Night of the Creeps and then in 1987 I started my own company, which eventually became MastersFX. We’re gonna be 35 years old next year. Can you believe that?

David Read:
Congratulations.

Todd Masters:
Thanks. It feels like it’s been one long day. It’s been a really crazy 35 years.

David Read:
Depending on how you look at it, I’m sure it is.

Todd Masters:
Yeah. It’s been very, very busy. It’s a strange business ’cause you’re asked to do quite a bit, particularly in the practical effects side. Always under schedule and always under budget. The fact that we’ve survived this long even blows me away.

David Read:
What movies and television made you fall in love with this?

Todd Masters:
Into the business?

David Read:
Uh-huh.

Todd Masters:
I was a big Ray Harryhausen fan, I loved that stuff. Star Wars, of course, came out when I was young and just blown away by that movie. So, many artists really impressed me of those eras. They didn’t just do one thing; they did painting, they did sculpting, they did animating, they did filmmaking. I was really impressed by people that could pull that off and I kind of thought that’s what Hollywood was all about. By the time I arrived, I started working immediately with Boss Films which was Richard Edlund’s company. Things were very departmentalized. I still managed to get my fingers on a lot of different aspects of things ’cause that’s what I thought it was about, especially as I grew into the industry and working in movies. I really looked at those folks for inspiration on how to kind of develop into this next generation of practical effects and makeup effects and visual effects and all that stuff. We still keep people in mind, like Jim Danforth, or Ray Harryhausen, or Rick Baker; these people that really did…

David Read:
Icons.

Todd Masters:
…more than just… Icons. They did it because they were so diverse in their skills and talent. They could do all sorts of arts, from making beautiful paintings to really amazing film moments. That was really what got me excited about filmmaking. It wasn’t really that I wanted to make the best rubber nose, it wasn’t really like that. I’ve always enjoyed making things but I was really about the filmmaking and trying to come up with stuff that people hadn’t seen before.

David Read:
Of course. You wanna create something new and different. But sooner or later, Todd, they’re gonna need a rubber nose.

Todd Masters:
I’m not discounting rubber noses. We still love doing rubber noses. I just wanted our studios to be a place that you could not just be limited by “You gotta do it with rubbing a couple pixels together.” A lot of studios, I’ve noticed, don’t really diversify, which I always think is kinda weird. Especially in these days of visual effects and visual effects and practical effects mixing so much. It’s cool to know a lot of different tricks so you can do that stuff. You can design effects with a lot of points of knowledge.

David Read:
So, at Masters FX, it’s not just prosthetics. Do you also do digital composite work?

Todd Masters:
We’ve done quite a bit of practice into mixing practical and digital effects together. I don’t know too many houses that do it the way we’ve done it, where we really try to marry the two together. I tried to do this in optical effects when I was a kid at that Apple Sydney place working on an optical printer and all that. The desire was there and we could do split screens and stuff like that. But until a computer came along that really was designed for visual effects, where we can actually take millions of colors and composite it, that’s when this stuff came to life and we’ve been exploring it ever since. It’s actually been a lot of fun and I’m amazed that there’s not other studios that are really taking this on. To me, it would be like having a photography studio that doesn’t have a retouch part of their division, of their business. You kinda need to have a little bit of both to make really cool and seamless effects these days.

David Read:
Unless you’re going to spend a great deal of time on the set getting it exactly fastidiously right and if you’re outside, good luck. You’re going to need a light room or some kind of application at the end of the day to sweeten stuff up.

Todd Masters:
Compositing. There’s so many amazing tools now. We could make movies on our laptops.

David Read:
Exactly and reasonably good.

Todd Masters:
It’s all accessible. Software these days is pretty easy compared to what we used to have to deal with. I shouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what it was when we were making stuff on our Amigas and all that stuff in the ’90s. It’s fun to be able to use other aspects, whether it’s visual effects, or whether it’s prosthetics, or other aspects of practical effects. I really like mixing it up. I think the audiences like it too ’cause they don’t get pulled out and go, “Oh, what an obvious effect.” The worst part of this is you don’t wanna design things that are so obvious to such an educated audience.

David Read:
You look at something like Terminator, the original Terminator, when the T-101 rises from the fire, you know? It’s not completely a stop-motion creature.

Todd Masters:
It is a stop-motion creature for that shot.

David Read:
For that shot. They have some close-ups on him.

Todd Masters:
There’s a puppet that they walk around with, but all of that stuff is stop-motion with rear projection for the most part. There are some miniature sets.

David Read:
Then Terminator 2, Arnie’s got the endoskeleton on the outside of him and then by Terminator 3 you’ve got the actor in makeup on one side and then green or blue on the other with some dots and they’ve merged the technology. They’re like, “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. We can have both.” That to me was, in what, 20 years, an extraordinary leap.

Todd Masters:
It’s amazing how fast things change; you really have to keep on it. In fact, you have to be more than keeping on it. You have to create it. You have to come up with new ideas to stay ahead.

David Read:
Absolutely. I was talking with you about having everything go to Blu-ray now and seeing everything in high definition. Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies and in some of those shots with them in the future, when everyone’s…

Todd Masters:
Aged.

David Read:
They had to start somewhere. It’s, “Oof.” They didn’t see Blu-ray coming.

Todd Masters:
I saw that in the theaters and I remember being blown away by how good those age makeups were and I still think they’re quite an achievement. That was foam latex, it’s not the new translucent materials we have. It was done at a time when Dick Smith was still reigning and not a lot of people could do what Dick was doing. Dick Smith is a world-famous makeup artist who really helped develop prosthetics and prosthetic effects. Ken Chase did the work on Back to the Future. I thought it was a breakthrough at the time. We shot on 35 millimeter film, we had big silver halides, we had all sorts of other ways to mask the trick. Then, of course, high definition comes along, Blu-ray comes along, 4K comes along. It’s fun if you’re an effects fan because you can go back and study these things. I love looking at old matte paintings from older films and you could really see the artistry that it required to pull it off. Nowadays, maybe some of those matte paintings, even by the best, it’s quite an artifice there. It’s hard to get past but you still can appreciate the talent that went into it. Nowadays, it’s not like hand-painting a matte or the struggles that people had to deal with back then.

David Read:
It’s interesting because you can go from one project to the other. We were talking about Twister as well and how when that show first came out it was absolutely cutting edge at the time. Everyone was blown away. Now we can look back at it and go, “It holds up. That there.” But then here and there… Maybe it’s because I just don’t have the vocabulary for it, but Jurassic Park. That was one of the earlier films where there were complete CG creatures in that movie and it still holds up, you know? I have a hard time looking at that and finding fault, which suggests to me that if you have the right people and if you have the right technology, you can pull anything off that can really last ages. I’m sure you look at it and see things that no one else would because you’re looking at it with your eye.

Todd Masters:
Budget and schedule also need to be added to that list ’cause there’s a lot of times where you literally run out of time. There’s just no way to get it completely perfect by the time it needs to go in front of camera. There are all sorts of reasons that effects don’t work. I think everybody knows the story of the shark in Jaws and the shark not working and all that.

David Read:
Shark’s still a snake.

Todd Masters:
That was a big urethane and steel contraption, which was pretty amazing for the time. Somehow the movie still works really well. The shark actually was an amazing achievement of technology and it did work. The problem was that it was in saltwater and it all rusted. They kept it in water and let it sit there. It was not in the best of conditions by the time they went to shoot it. You can look at it like that’s the effect’s fault but it takes two to tango in these movies. The magic trick is only good if we can shoot it.

David Read:
That’s true.

Todd Masters:
It is a whole relationship of the whole production and everybody needs to climb onboard to create all this stuff. However, it’s nice when you can blame the effects guys, I guess.

David Read:
“Effects guy over here, we hear that.”

Todd Masters:
You know what I mean.

David Read:
Of course.

Todd Masters:
Particularly with practical effects, it’s always been interesting to try to do practical effects on a schedule. You’re essentially creating a magic trick to perform in front of one eyeball, the camera, usually repeatedly. You wanna have something that you can repeat for take two and three, but it’s tricky and some things just don’t work sometimes. We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had much of those troubles. Most of our stuff is usually pretty solid. When it isn’t, it’s usually the clamoring of scope, schedule and budgets and other things. It’s not usually one of my effects guys fucked up. It’s usually all the other elements.

David Read:
What are some of the things that you have achieved over the years that you are most proud of?

Todd Masters:
I did not prepare a speech. I’m proud of our team. We have a really great team in both shops, Toronto and Vancouver. Some of them just blow me away on a daily basis, they’re so good. I should say many of them are like that. I’m really proud of our studios and the fact that we’re gonna be 35 next year. I don’t know any studio that’s really pulled that one off so that’s pretty cool. I think Rick Baker actually did 42 years, I think was his. Maybe there was somebody else. Any of our companies that make it past 10 years, these kinds of prosthetic companies, amaze me. The fact that we’ve been around for three and a half decades is mind-boggling, so I’m proud for that. Proud that people are starting to look at our stuff like, “We’ve got classics.” “We’ve done the classics,” which is really funny. It’s like I was hip and then I was classic. I think that’s code for something. I hate picking off projects. We’ve done so many cool projects that certainly aren’t the responsibility solely of ours.

David Read:
Correct.

Todd Masters:
It’s when all these pieces kind of click together, somehow from effects, to visual effects, to artwork, to writer, director, actors; that’s when things really sing. I’ve been lucky to have a few of those. I was on a Zoom last night for a show called After Midnight that just came out in 2019. It was the directors and the cinematographer, the writers and producer. I hadn’t seen these guys since when we did it back in 2018 and all that. It was a little project, but those guys were really smart about it. They wrote a really good script and they came to us in enough time with enough budget to do a decent monster. It all worked together really well and it really didn’t cost a huge amount. That’s a good example of a show that has the eye on the ball. They know what they’re wanting to do, they didn’t overachieve, they certainly didn’t underachieve and it’s a good little flick. It’s cool to be involved from things like that all the way to bigger shows that are kind of immense and you have less control over. It’s nice to still be around.

David Read:
How did the relationship with Stargate SG-1 come about?

Todd Masters:
I’m a dual citizen, US and Canada, and I was starting to do more Canadian stuff at the time. I guess this would be like mid-’90s, maybe late ’90s. An old buddy of mine, Steve Johnson, was doing the work to begin with on Stargate. Then it was Dave Dupuis, I believe it was, and then there was a couple other local Vancouver folks that started to do Stargate stuff. As I pushed more north into Vancouver, I started talking to him and explaining to him that I was coming into town, if there was anything we could help him out with. So, by relations, we just started talking more about it. When another season came along of Stargate SG-1, they asked us if we would… I think the first thing might’ve been rebuilding Thor.

David Read:
“Revelations.”

Todd Masters:
Yeah.

David Read:
That’s right, to do a new Asgard model.

Todd Masters:
I think that was it, because Steve, his old company called XFX, I think in Vancouver it was called Pacific Northwest FX, or something like that, they had made the initial Thor, but it was real only from waist up. They just kind of shot it and threw it in a box so Thor just kind of lived in a coffin for a while.

David Read:
Began to deteriorate, yep.

Todd Masters:
Had some trouble. We took it on as a new project and as that kind of happened they were excited to see us do more work. Since we were in Vancouver at that point, it was easier for us to handle series work like that. We started doing some Unas and we started doing some Prior and we started building more and more stuff for the show.

David Read:
The Super Soldier as well, if I’m remembering correctly.

Todd Masters:
Maybe.

David Read:
Were you guys responsible for that? In “Evolution 1 and 2”, Dan Payne’s character in the black suit.

Todd Masters:
That’s right. We might have had something to do on that. I’m sorry, my brain is getting foggy.
We’ve done Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Star… you know. It’s starting to blur together here. No offense to anybody, but when you do series work like this, especially if it’s heavy on the effects, it comes fast and furious. You’re prepping one episode while you’re shooting another, while you’re wrapping another and you might even be prepping another episode that’s got some bigger stuff down the line.

David Read:
This is true.

Todd Masters:
You try to hang on as best as you can. We’re not a studio that just does one series, so even at that time, we were juggling a couple things. We were pretty small back then. As things got busier and busier, we got busier in Vancouver and LA at the time. Somehow we made it into Atlantis, we did all the Atlantis stuff. I don’t know when Atlantis wrapped but that was kind of our last Stargate-related thing, I think, all those Atlantis things.

David Read:
2009.

Todd Masters:
Wow.

David Read:
They started going digital with many of the alien creatures ’cause they were so far out there in the universe that there was no chance of anything really resembling human beings.

Todd Masters:
Perfect.

David Read:
I may be picking your brain a little too deeply here. One of the most beloved characters in SG-1, and Atlantis for that matter, were the Asgard and Thor specifically. His redesign, the version that we really see through to the end of the show in terms of that specific aesthetic and look, was in “Revelations.” From his steel frame – I sold the prop years later – that he had on the inside to that silicone on the outside and the veins and everything underneath. What goes into creating a character like him? Not only the character itself, but then the poles and the attachments and everything else that make him move and then the radio controls for the face.

Todd Masters:
They’re really complicated. It comes from a really talented team. We have really good sculptors and mold makers and animatronics people. It’s really just getting a great team together, people that have had experience making things like this. It was kind of already designed so we didn’t have to necessarily concept it. We started with a sculpture and molded it and then made a core. It’s just called the skeleton form and cast it out of intrinsic silicone, as you noted and had some really cool armature stuff in there. It has rod armature as well as radio-control features. I think the neck might have been a linkage. It’s been a while. Just delicate work all the way, which is always tricky, ’cause I think that one we probably did in five weeks. I think back to some of these schedules we’ve achieved and the work that’s come out of it. It blows your mind sometimes; how did we do that? Thor came together really nicely he operated pretty well for a long time. In fact, I don’t even know if he ever broke down. It was a silicone skin that was all sealed in so it would have been a really challenging thing to try to get in there and fix. He seemed to be pretty well. He also ended up in a box, like a coffin, and they would shove him in storage.

David Read:
Correct.

Todd Masters:
I always felt bad for him. It was like, “OK, great episodes. See you later.”

David Read:
See you later. He had this place to go. For those who don’t know, he came with two coffins, quote unquote, of equal size. They were two black boxes and if you open up, the inner lining was a universe of planets and everything else. It was outrageous when you really think about it. One housed the puppet and the radio controls and some of the gear and then the other one was all of the poles and all the accoutrements that went with him. Morris Chapdelaine talked about, at one point, practically flying with the puppet to some of these conventions in the United States. He was like, “Let’s just get the puppet a ticket. He doesn’t have to go under the plane. He’ll just sit right there with me.”

Todd Masters:
First, or first class.

David Read:
Absolutely. I have to wonder though, when he does break down, I’m sure you’ve left your business card with Stargate Productions. When you design something like that, are you contracted to come in, your team, to come in and facilitate every time he’s on camera so that, for insurance purposes and whatever, if something breaks, then you guys can go and take it over? Or is it, “Here are the instructions. Here’s what you do with him. If something happens, call us and we will figure it out.” How does that work? Is there a budget built in for that, for if he breaks down? What’s at play for a character like Thor?

Todd Masters:
I think it really depends on the production’s wishes. We encourage productions to hire our people for set work so if there is any issues, they know what’s inside that thing and they can get direct and deal with it. Some productions don’t do that. I usually don’t accept things like this, where it’s another group that’s on set with him. If things happen, they don’t know what was built in there and they could change one thing that could alter another thing. It just causes a snowball effect so that’s pretty tricky. Usually, our on-set people for a puppet like that are union puppeteers, like Morris was and a few others we had on that team. They would be contracted directly by production even though they had kind of worked out of our studios and had some familiarity with these things. they would kind of be responsible for Thor, kind of like Thor’s entourage, in a way.

David Read:
He has a whole series of people. Any high-profile actor would.

Todd Masters:
Exactly. I think that’s what kept Thor going for so long is that there weren’t any issues because his team was aware of things that you don’t try to do with Thor. I remember one of the directors came up, and I don’t know where he found these Red Baron Snoopy eye goggles. He takes them up and he puts them on Thor and snaps them on and we’re all like, “Aah! Don’t do that.”

David Read:
There’s electronics.

Todd Masters:
You don’t want to fuck with Thor.

David Read:
There’s electronics just beneath the surface. There are eyebrows and everything else.

Todd Masters:
He had eye balls that blink. I didn’t know the guy that well at the time and I kind of went up to him and I said, “You really can’t do that.” He’s looking at me like, “I’m the director, dude.” I’m like, “OK.” He was cool about it, it was just kinda like getting to know you kinda thing.

David Read:
My first reaction is to laugh at it and your reaction is, you’re freaking out.

Todd Masters:
Horrified. That can be two weeks to fix there, or three weeks.

David Read:
My God.

Todd Masters:
That could really be a bad thing. Our crew is usually like an army that protects the animatronics. If they’re not there, it’s tricky because what do you do? If they do have trouble, we don’t know what the people they hired did to it. It’s always a tricky engagement, but that’s why we like to have set people there.

David Read:
There’s no warranty on him or anything like that? It’s, “We’re building him to last.” I’m sure, because you have union guys and everything, there are dos and don’ts. Don’t snap some Snoopy aviator goggles on the puppet. That’s bad. Don’t wanna do that.

Todd Masters:
We’ve added that to the contract now, yeah. Don’t do that. We’ve been really fortunate. A lot of our practical stuff has always been really stout. Even on Falling Skies, I think we did a lot of animatronic characters on Falling Skies. Every single episode seemed to have something. I think we had one challenge when a motor burned out. Literally a motor inside a skitter head caught fire. You look over and there’s this skitter with black smoke coming out of it. We’re like, “Eh.” Motors are gonna go. That’s just part of animatronics. We fortunately have really good servo motors these days compared to the old days, but it does happen. I saw it once on Falling Skies. It was like the first burnt motor I’d seen in a long damn time. But that’s, again, why you gotta have your set people there to be able to do it.

David Read:
Stargate was pretty good about that, then?

Todd Masters:
Huh?

David Read:
No burnt up motors?

Todd Masters:
Yeah, Stargate was really smooth in that respect. The team on Stargate, the producing team and the cast and the directors that snapped goggles on things, they were all really great. We’re all still really good friends these days, we still take touch base. It was a moment in time. It was a lot of fun to be on that show ’cause it was a really good vibe there.

David Read:
From what I’ve seen of Falling Skies, a lot of the creature effects would have had to have been done outside. Everyone’s on the ground, romping around. Whereas a creature like an Asgard is going to be confined in the soundstage; you’re gonna have controlled conditions. The humidity level is going to be lower than in the outdoors, where it’s always raining and everything else. There are fewer opportunities for things to go wrong, I would imagine?

Todd Masters:
Yeah, I guess so. The elements certainly do kinda add an extra wrinkle to things. Especially in Vancouver, ’cause it does rain and it’s cold a lot. But, again, that’s the reason you wanna have a team there to protect this valuable asset and make sure it is ready to go. That’s it.

David Read:
The Unas makeup. There was a creature that was featured in Season One, “Thor’s Hammer,” voiced by James Earl Jones. Were you involved in that one? When did you come in with the Unas? Did you come in for one of the later iterations?

Todd Masters:
I came in when Chaka arrived.

David Read:
Chaka, Season Four.

Todd Masters:
“Beast of Burden,” I think?

David Read:
This was “The First Ones,” Peter DeLuise episode.

Todd Masters:
“First Ones,” there you go. Peter DeLuise, one of my good buddies.

David Read:
He’s crazy.

Todd Masters:
He’s great…and crazy. We had seen that makeup. I think that might have been a Dave Dupuis makeup? I’m trying to remember who did that one. I don’t think it was us. We had come in and they had hired Dion Johnstone to play Chaka.

David Read:
Brilliant. Physical actor.

Todd Masters:
He’s great. Really beautiful guy. He’s a wonderful performer and he embodied that character really well. He gave us a really good inspiration on the design of him because he was supposed to be like a teenager, like a teenage Unas. There was a bunch of other Unas’, I think, in that episode too. I think that was our first, this new edition. Whatever was done years ago, there was a long break before we saw the Unas again and these were that new brand of Unas and Peter DeLuise directed the hell out of it.

David Read:
I’ve been in situations where I’ve had my head encased in various things for when we were filming the photography for a lot of the Stargate merchandise and costumes over at Propworx. It shocked me how quickly my head heated up when it was completely encased in Jaffa armor. It was, “whoa!” I cannot imagine what it would be like for someone like Dion Johnstone or Alex Zahara later on, who came in to play a number of these roles, to be in that all day long.

Todd Masters:
Total kudos to Dan Payne.

David Read:
Dan Payne, saint among men.

Todd Masters:
And Dion. There’s been a variety of actors that we actually have a list of, actors that can do this stuff really well. Not just endure it, which, of course, is a Zen, but also to bring life to it. I don’t know how much prosthetics Dan Payne wants to do anymore, or Alex. We occasionally hook up with them. We have a kid show that we produce called Aliens Ate My Homework and Stole My Body. There was actually quite a bit of Stargate installed in that show. I begged and pleaded those guys to be our alien characters just ’cause I know that they would not only be able to endure it, but perform through it. I certainly can’t say it’s not uncomfortable. Those guys really manage their emotions about it. Foam latex prosthetics are a lot easier than, say, a big helmet that has no air escaping it or something like that. There’s been a couple actors; Chris Heyerdahl is another one who’s done a few prosthetics for us. These are just genius actors that have such control of their craft that they can understand their new face and work it, perform it. After you apply all this makeup on these people, you kinda learn whether or not they’re gonna be able to bring it out. Sometimes you see actors in front of the mirrors with their new faces, really looking for their best faces, which is kind of fun when it really works together. those folks are great.

David Read:
I want to talk a little bit about the evolution of the technology, the makeup, over the course of your career. We’ve gone far from rubber heads, like you were saying, foam latex and everything else. You want to free up the actor as much as possible to give the most articulate performance here if you can. At the core of science fiction and horror and everything else, it’s nothing if it’s not about humanity and the human nature of whatever kind of critter it is. Because that’s how we as audiences go, “Ugh.” We identify with something.

Todd Masters:
You really have to connect with something on the screen if you’re gonna watch a show and be engaged in it so you can actually ride along with those characters. If they’re just a big blob, or, I don’t know, something CG, it’s really hard to get any soul out of them.

David Read:
Exactly. Though, I think that Seth MacFarlane has done a pretty reasonable job with Yaphit on The Orville. But still, it’s nice to have a critter in there somewhere. Tell us about watching that makeup evolve so that it creates a better experience for the actors over the years.

Todd Masters:
Makeup technology?

David Read:
Yeah, and taking a fraction of the time to apply it as opposed to before. That comes down to repetition as well.

Todd Masters:
Yeah and technology and methodology. It’s certainly changed throughout my career. I came in and it was pretty much foam latex and fiberglass was kind of everything. There weren’t silicones, there weren’t a lot of rubber molds or anything like that. Nowadays, we still use foam latex and we still use fiberglass and items like that but we’re a lot more dialed into a fleshier silicone substance for prosthetics. If we’re gonna do an age makeup, we wouldn’t do that in foam latex these days. If it was a big monster head that had a lot of dense paint on it, then yeah, maybe it’s foam latex. There are all sorts of new methodologies to create this work. We can scan actors instead of life cast them. We can generate even molds out of our 3D printing, so it’s fun to experience the transformation of prosthetics over the years and hopefully be one of the leaders of that.

David Read:
That’s cool. I did not realize you can scan an actor now instead of doing a life cast. Well, “duh David!” That makes a lot of sense. We’ve really come far. Holy cow!

Todd Masters:
We started photogramming in Hemlock Grove. We didn’t quite have a Toronto shop yet then; we had an LA shop, we had a Vancouver shop. To deal with the location issue, we started photogramming some of the actors, this is almost 10 years ago. We had a great team in the LA shop that would just put it all together and create our 3D models. Nowadays, scanning’s gotten a lot better. It’s easier to have a portable scanner. My buddy Louie on the set of Live, he uses that quite a bit to shorten up his pipeline ’cause he has to make prosthetics in four days or three days or something. He’s been using scanning and printing quite a bit. There are a few other artists that are really making it a part of their work. We are as well, we did quite a bit of that on the Child’s Play movie, the recent Child’s Play Chucky sequel. The hands on Chucky were so small that it was just easier for us to do it digitally, print digital molds and make digital armatures and all that stuff. We have a way to go to really make it as common as, say, face casting. We definitely are using it and it helps quite a bit.

David Read:
Is there a desire to achieve as much practically in camera as possible rather than to say, “Well, you know what, in order to get this to work, we’re just…” With Chucky’s hands, “We’re gonna have to achieve this digitally.” Is there a, not letdown is not the word that I want, when you have to achieve something digitally, but I’m sure you would probably agree that 99% of the time achieving stuff in camera is gonna be much more realistic. Or maybe I’m wrong.

Todd Masters:
That’s kind of the fun of designing effects. If you’ve been around long enough to see all sorts of different types of effects like I have, you don’t wanna just throw it out with the bathwater. It’s like the digital baby and all that thinking. You wanna be able to take what we’ve learned over the eons of filmmaking and effects. We all have to take what the previous successes were and then stand on those shoulders and so on and so forth. Hopefully making it better-looking, more natural-feeling, more believable, better for actors, better for directors. There are quite a few elements to choose from in terms of designing effects; you have to be pretty experienced to know why and when. We have a new show that we’re doing now where the visual effects supervisor and I, we worked together 10 years ago, and fortunately we have this really great handshake together. He and I speak almost the exact same language because we know that the assets of one methodology might be the liability of the other and there are ways to mix them so they both support each other. The nice thing about practical effects is it looks real because it is real. It looks organically there because it actually is organically there. The negative, if you wanna look at it this way, for a particular situation, is that it’s actually there. You can’t bend physics; you have to deal with an object that’s physically there so you need to find when and where to use what. The other thing that evolved, probably out of the Falling Skies experience, is we really had to fight for some of those gags to be practical, ’cause we knew that we would be able to deliver something better. Probably because of experiences on this show, Star Trek: First Contact, when we had Alice come down and head and shoulders plugs in and all that. We really fought for that one too to be practical because we knew that having Spiner and Alice acting in the same room together was gonna be magic. If we shot Alice three months later, from Brent, and comped her in, it wouldn’t have been the same thing. You need to know when and where to do it. On Falling Skies, like I was saying, we had Doug Jones, the great Doug Jones, in a prosthetic, a character called Cochise. We really pushed it to another level there where we had him show up in a full prosthetic, where he could move the mouth and the head and all that, but his eyes were way out here and he had to see through these little slots in his nose. We went back and we enhanced his performance, actually using his voice track to drive a lot of the eyebrows and all that stuff. It really came up with a whole new way of doing prosthetics and achieving things like that for television, because television usually doesn’t have a lot of time to do 3D characters. We knew eventually either Cochise was gonna disappear or he was gonna be marginal. For a character to really take us through a show, like a Cochise or anything like that, you have to really believe it. You have to believe that thing has soul, you have to believe that he’s really there. You want something that the other actors can believe in and be blocked with. Directors, they don’t like blocking with tennis balls on a C stand, so much better to have something there.

David Read:
Something with life and some kind of an expression.

Todd Masters:
It doesn’t work for everything. There’s a lot of cases where the practical/digital handshake can work and knowing the where and the when is really the trick to it. There isn’t really a base set of rules. There’s a lot of guidelines, but the whole point is to make something fresh and surprising.

David Read:
I would imagine, again, going back to the lead time that you have in pre-production, the better off that’s gonna be.

Todd Masters:
I’ll be saying that until I’m dead, you never have enough time.

David Read:
Also at the same time, do you want your director to still have the freedom of coming up to you on set and saying, “I’ve got this idea. Do you think we could achieve this, or would this completely derail the whole thing?”

Todd Masters:
Absolutely. That’s why you gotta have this knowledge base. I used to do Tales from the Crypt and Bob Zemeckis used to do a bunch of those. Bob is notorious for doing exactly what you just said; coming up to you on set going like, “I got an idea” and you don’t wanna say no to Bob Zemeckis.

David Read:
No, you wanna make him happy.

Todd Masters:
You have to make sure that you’re ready for anything. You design and prep as best you can and then you gotta be ready for rain, you gotta be ready for actors not showing up or any possible combination of madness can happen which will derail plans. That’s what the whole gig is, is being prepared, having a B plan and rolling with it if you have to.

David Read:
Did your team do the Crypt Keeper puppet?

Todd Masters:
No, it was Kevin Yagher and his team. We probably did the most episodes in makeup effects. There were quite a few seasons in there that we were the solid go-to prosthetics house, but in the beginning there was a couple other artists. I actually did the Crypt set from the very beginning. I sculpted that whole damn thing. I kept going to the producers, “I’m not a sculptor of rocks and stuff. I just happen to do this, you know? I actually do prosthetic effects. You guys should hire us for prosthetics.”

David Read:
I’m sure they’ll be, “You’re fine. Keep going.”

Todd Masters:
It took a couple seasons for them to finally go, “Oh, you do prosthetic effects? OK, well, put this one…” So, we started doing that and eventually we became the go-to Tales from the Crypt effects guys and we did the first movie, Demon Knight, and we patched up the second movie, Bordello of Blood.

David Read:
The aging effects, we talked about it a little bit with a project that you weren’t on. I’d like to talk about it with a project that you were. It can be really hit and miss. You can tell when it’s done well and other times it’s like, “I guess that works.” The process of aging characters like the SG-1 team in “Unending,” last episode of the series. What were some of the techniques that were used then? Are those the same techniques that are used now? I’ve seen this kind of, I don’t know if it’s like a spray on or whatever, but they stretch the face and apply stuff and then let it go back into place. You’re watching Bob Ross create something out of nothing. It’s a magic trick; just bringing the stuff to life.

Todd Masters:
It works great on some faces. It works fine on some faces. That’s old age stipple you’re talking about. What is the year, episode you’re talking about? Did I do it?

David Read:
It was called “Unending” and it was the final episode of Stargate SG-1. My understanding was that you guys were responsible for aging the SG-1 team.

Todd Masters:
We have aged some of the team. I’m trying to remember that episode, to be perfectly honest.

David Read:
Yeah, they were all stuck on board the spaceship together for 50 years and they progressively aged.

Todd Masters:
The mind is a horrible thing to age.

David Read:
No, it’s fine.

Todd Masters:
I’m presuming from back then, it would either have been gelatin or foam latex. Both are materials that we really don’t use anymore for aging. Nowadays, we do still use stipple, which comes in all sorts of formulations. We still do prosthetics. We usually do them out of a silicone material for aging so they’re very natural feeling and moving. They look translucent because they actually are translucent. That’s a standard makeup effects trick. If you’re a makeup effects artist, you need to be able to do the aging. We’ve done quite a bit of them. I gotta say, I don’t remember that episode. We’ve done quite a few on Atlantis. It’s usually lifecast, sculpture, a concept design in there somehow to design what this character might look like and then hair pieces and all that. These days, that’s kind of Makeup Effects 101, to be able to do that. At least you better be able to do a good age makeup.

David Read:
Understood. That’s one of those where it’s like, we all know what our grandparents look like. We know what older people look like. We’re seeing characters, actors that we’re very familiar with physically. When you transform them, some people are gonna buy it and some people just aren’t. It’s amazing to watch. I remember Torri Higginson talking about, in a Season One episode called “Before I Sleep,” she wakes up in a stasis chamber and she remembers having the makeup applied. When she looked in the mirror, she saw her grandma.

Todd Masters:
I did that one. I know I did that one. Torri was amazing. That was kind of a funny moment for her. She was one of the actresses that looked in front of the mirror and just played with it for a while, which was really cool. She got some really great expressions. One of the tricks to doing film aging is what you just mentioned. The actor, the producer, the director, they usually want a sense of the actor in the makeup. As you probably know from experiencing life, people don’t really look like themselves 40 years down the line. Sometimes they might just have a nose that you are familiar with or something like that. It’s tricky to remain believable in aging because everybody wants to age beautifully. They don’t want their jawline down here and their big wattle. It’s just part of life. The truth of the matter is we all age and some people do it beautifully. Most people, they drink garbage and they smoke and they eat crap food.

David Read:
Abuse their bodies.

Todd Masters:
And their bodies show it s it’s this weird little balance. Whenever I’m doing concepts of age makeups, I’m always trying to imagine what that character would live through those times. Torri’s character, I didn’t expect her to be doing drugs or drinking garbage or something like that, so I tried to do her gracefully.

David Read:
She was just in a stasis pod. She’s aging extremely slowly

Todd Masters:
Exactly, and beautifully. Other characters, you wanna kind of really play up that stuff and really kind of show some of the results of their choices, you know? It’s really funny. I can look at people and see where they’re gonna age and how they’re gonna age. It’s just something after doing so much aging design over the years, you see it after a while. You see what’s gonna be believable.

David Read:
It’s the human form and gravity is constant.

Todd Masters:
Their choices are gonna be evidenced on their face, you know? It sucks when you’re dating someone and you look across the table and you just go, “Oh shit.” I just Photoshopped your face. Damn it. Why did I do that?

David Read:
You wanna see how someone ages? Look at their parents.

Todd Masters:
Not always true, actually.

David Read:
Not always true?

Todd Masters:
Not always true. No. It’s usually kind of the result of life choices. We all make dumb decisions. None of us want to eat salad.

David Read:
That’s true. That’s a fair point. I’m trying to look through the information that I have here. Were you involved with the Wraith makeup?

Todd Masters:
Yes, actually one of the Wraith was even named after me. There’s a Wraith called Todd.

David Read:
Todd. That’s correct.

Todd Masters:
That was hilarious, Chris Heyerdahl’s character. Yes.

David Read:
I didn’t know he was named after you. That’s great trivia.

Todd Masters:
I have never had any of the writers come up and say, “Hey, we named him after you.” I was kind of a permanent staple there for a while and then all of a sudden, who’s gonna name a Wraith Todd? I guess it was an inside joke.

David Read:
Sheppard did. That’s funny. He was the most prominent on the series, yeah. Chris Heyerdahl was extraordinary as that character, and Andee Frizzell, going back to the pilot. Dan Payne was in, I’ve got one of the soldiers in my house, that it’s an extraordinary piece of makeup. What you guys did with James Robbins’ designs! We talked about this; he creates them and then you will them into solid reality which is an extraordinary achievement. It’s mind-bending that he can think it and you guys can, “We’ll have that in a few weeks.”

Todd Masters:
Pretty much. That was quite a little Wraith actor there for a while. Chris Heyerdahl has a little Kiss makeup concept of his own.

David Read:
Yes, he does. Tattoo.

Todd Masters:
I loved Kiss growing up. We were doing a lot of tattoos in those things. I must have been working too long ’cause I was designing so much stuff at the time and crazy schedules. All of a sudden, we ended up with a Kiss tattoo on one of them, like “Oh, shit. Hope nobody notices.”

David Read:
Andee has talked at length about how, when she first did it, especially for “Rising,” she had gloves that she would put her hands in, so those weren’t actually her fingers. By the end of it, that had changed. They were doing something other than a foam latex; my understanding was at the start of it. You guys had moved, later, into other things that were just quicker and easier for her to emote and express herself with.

Todd Masters:
The original ones were an early form of silicone makeups, just as silicone makeups were really starting to become on the scene. A lot of development still had to be done. We made the faces very translucent just take advantage of the material. Her gloves were actually made out of this thermoplastic shit that we actually made out of sex toys. Andee was wearing sex toys on the movie.

David Read:
Any port in a storm. Jeez.

Todd Masters:
Andee’s great. She was another one of those actresses, or actors and actresses, that can really pull it through, the makeup. She really had such a presence in that film. It was really, really fun to watch.

David Read:
What do you see on the horizon in terms of this technology evolving in all of its various forms? Not just the tech, but the methodology like you said, that you are most excited about, that’s in development, that you’re seeing people use? Or theoretical material that’s coming out or maybe more use with the digital space in terms of hybridizing what’s on set and what exists in the makeup space and in the digital space?

Todd Masters:
All of it. You just answered it. All of that stuff is what we’ve got our focus on. We like to be a studio that has more options than anybody else. The mixing of practical and digital is a lot of fun and there’s really nobody else that does it like we do. That’s great. Pushing more into scanning and 3D printing is also something that we’re doing. Eventually, we’ll really push that. There’s a great studio in the Valley down in California called Legacy that has a really amazing digital print department. They don’t even do molds much anymore. That’s something that we need to push into. I think I mentioned before we hopped on, we’re starting to make our own movies or have been making our movies for a while and we’re starting to do a lot more of that, which, to me, is really what the point of all this is. Like I said earlier, not to diss rubber nose-making, but I always wanted to do more than prosthetics. I wanted to create characters and I wanted to create moments in cinema if we could. Now we’re pushing even beyond; we wanna make cinema, period. We have our own little production situation developing, or I should say developed. We’ve actually done quite a few, like I mentioned, the Aliens Ate My Homework series. Psycho Goreman’s Masters of Wax project, co-production. There’s quite a few of these that we’re playing with, that we’re finding a lot of fun. We can do ’em unlike anybody else, so it’s pretty cool.

David Read:
The sky’s the limit.

Todd Masters:
I guess. We’re talking about Stargate here, it’s even beyond the sky.

David Read:
It’s SG4, but hopefully Brad’s got something cooking.

Todd Masters:
I think it’s Brad’s birthday today, actually.

David Read:
Is it?

Todd Masters:
Happy birthday, Brad, if you’re out there. I think Brad is having his birthday today. I think he’s 27.

David Read:
That sounds about right. No, I think it’s 26.

Todd Masters:
He’s 26?

David Read:
Yeah, I think he’s 26.

Todd Masters:
OK, happy birthday.

David Read:
Happy birthday, Brad Wright. I’ll be darned.

Todd Masters:
There you go.

David Read:
It’s a significant one, if you’re looking at the date. Good for him.

Todd Masters:
Fantastic. What was he, 30?

David Read:
Times two.

Todd Masters:
Congratulations, Brad.

David Read:
Absolutely. Brad, happy birthday. One of the people who is absolutely making all this possible for us to talk about years later, it would not be possible without the people like Brad Wright. One of the things that I think is absolutely mind-blowing to watch was The Mandalorian and the volume, that LED lights rig.

Todd Masters:
You’re talking the digital production stuff? That’s fantastic, isn’t it?

David Read:
Mind-blowing, because if nothing else, get rid of that friggin green screen and have an actual reflection of the surrounding light on the characters’ faces that is accurate to the space that is intended.

Todd Masters:
Real time in general is definitely something that’s arrived. Quantum computing and all this stuff, we’re gonna see some amazing stuff the next 10 years. Some of the fun is to try to guess where this is gonna go and try to stay ahead of it. Digital production is probably something that a lot of people aren’t quite aware of. I think Mandalorian is probably the biggest popular use of it so far, but there’s been a lot of other stuff that’s done this way. Real/fake is another thing that’s gonna come in and really transform things, so that might take away old-age makeup. There’s a lot of this stuff coming down the pipe. People always love to develop stuff and make cinema easier and better. These are some pretty exciting tools.

David Read:
The velocity at which Hollywood has to keep up with the technology that even is available in the hands of consumers. They spent so much time working on Tarkin and Leia for Rogue One and then I saw a deepfake a year ago that, in my opinion, particularly with Carrie, looks better ’cause it’s actually her face. You’re right, I think it’s gonna be 10 years from now, for good in terms of entertainment and for ill in terms of us questioning reality as consumers with the media and everything else. It’s gonna be an extraordinary development over the next several years.

Todd Masters:
That’ll be really interesting when they have video of politicians saying things and that you’re supposed to believe, but you shouldn’t.

David Read:
Exactly. How can you disprove it when the uncanny valley is just shattered?

Todd Masters:
“I saw it with my own eyes.”

David Read:
“Saw it with my own eyes.” Absolutely.

Todd Masters:
No, we need to educate people, not just our age but new people, young people, how this is really gonna kick everybody’s ass if we’re not careful. This has gone off track.

David Read:
If it’s not handled right, we could be in real trouble.

Todd Masters:
This is all those science fiction stories that we’ve been reading forever.

David Read:
Correct, so many of them are coming to life now. Black Mirror can’t keep up with it.

Todd Masters:
We need to be aware, as a society, that this is gonna be a huge part of it. Our kids need to be aware of it. We need to be aware of it. I don’t think it’s an unknown concept, like news is BS. It’s gonna become more BS…

David Read:
It’s gonna be crazy. I’ve got a couple of questions from fans for you. Is that OK?

Todd Masters:
Sure.

David Read:
Teresa Mc: “Are there any particular animals that you study mostly for prosthetics?” I guess she’s speaking beyond humans.

Todd Masters:
I study the human animal. That’s a good question. Yes, we really try to have a good knowledge of every single critter on the Earth if we can. There are some amazing things on our planet that are great inspirations for making aliens. They still are somewhat grounded on our planet. If we just show up with a toaster, for instance, you’re not gonna really give a shit. You want something that you can identify with and relate to, whether it’s a salamander head or whatever. We do like to look to things that are natural to our planet and steal a paint scheme off a tropical fish, for instance. Or sculpt a face that was a newt or a mole. We’re always looking for stuff like that to inspire the creativity. You can sit there and draw crazy little lines, which is a lot of fun to do these days with all these iPads and all that, but you have to make it something that people can connect with one way or the other. Otherwise, it just doesn’t quite work. So, yes, we do look at a lot of different animals. I can’t say anybody in particular other than the human animal. We’re definitely studying that all the time.

David Read:
Particularly with aliens. I know the Nakai in Stargate Universe, they’re based on a deep-sea fish. A translucent fish that everyone who looks at it is like, “That’s not real. Oh, that’s a real animal. OK.” Nature is the best guide through geometry and particularly symmetry; it’s just extraordinary.

Todd Masters:
Also that natural chaos. There is a certain chaos to nature and things aren’t symmetrical. If you put a line down the face and you mirror both sides, they’re gonna look like brothers of that person because we’re not so symmetrical.

David Read:
That’s fair.

Todd Masters:
There’s a certain natural chaos that makeup effects artists, the good ones, have a touch of. We call it the touch of God. There are certain artists, Dick Smith was a great example. He could put his touch on it and it wouldn’t be styled, it wouldn’t be a design-y thing, it would just feel believable. Many artists have that, even designing the weirdest shit. Steve Wang is a great example. Steve Wang designed the Predator for Stan Winston, he along with Matt Rose. Steve has this amazing ability to give things a soul as well as a weight, no matter how bizarre it is. His stuff is breathtaking for that reason. There are several artists like that, but he was special.

David Read:
That’s why they’re called artists. They imbue things with life. Kicks 394, this is a little bit broad. I’m hoping you can narrow it a little bit to the fundamentals. “How does the process of bringing an alien creature to life work?” Can you scale that a little bit?

Todd Masters:
The alien creature’s parents get together, they have a bottle of wine and… no, I’m kidding. The way it begins in the film world, and not everything’s the same of course ’cause we’re weird filmmakers. We usually get a script, which is type on a piece of paper that describes it. We have a meeting and we talk about what we all read and then when we start designing. I’m actually doing this on a show right now, literally this afternoon. I have to interpret what is in the script and hopefully it’s within the vision of the creators, the creative people. That step is concepting so we do a lot of drawings. I do a lot of hand drawings as well as computer drawings. They range from really fast scribbles to get tone to more detailed drawings. Sometimes we’ll even do a deep dive, a mood board. Find all these weird creatures that are in the world and show the director, “You know, there’s that and maybe…” Once we get the image done, the concept approved, then it’s a matter of figuring out how to actually build it. I usually like to make the concept even without thinking about how to build it. I like to make weirdness. If someone likes the weirdness, then you go, “OK, then we need to make that part CG, or that part practical or this part’s animatronic or that part’s a rod.” We start figuring out those aspects of it, which comes into working out with camera. We’re doing magic tricks to one eyeball, which is the camera. We can fool the audience by not showing that part or not showing that part. That’s something I like to do with the director, usually with storyboards, designing gags out. I usually pitch a scene that I scribble out in storyboards and see if it’s close to what they’re thinking and then we design the effects from there. I have a guy that gets a screwdriver in the jaw coming up in a show and I drew all that out to figure out exactly how do we do that part? How does it stay in his chin? They didn’t want a fake head; they wanted to do it on the actor. Those are little tricks that we all have to figure out. Then it’s into the actual creation of the prosthetics or the creature, which is sculpt, mold, cast, paint, animatronics and that whole pipeline. Makes sense? Hope that answered it.

David Read:
It does, absolutely. I have a specific one from Arnold G asking about Leprechaun 2. That was Warwick Davis, was it not?

Todd Masters:
Yes, but I did not do the Leprechaun makeup. That was Gabe Bartolos who did that. I never get questions asked about Leprechaun 2.

David Read:
Welcome to Dial the Gate, Todd.

Todd Masters:
No kidding. We did all the other gags. There’s a skeleton that attacks somebody in that movie. I think that movie was from the ’50s, it was a long time ago. No, I don’t know why, but it was a long time ago.

David Read:
I caught it actually in a motel room a year ago. It was on.

Todd Masters:
Very appropriate, very appropriate. I’m sorry, what was the question on Leprechaun 2?

David Read:
The work that you did for it?

Todd Masters:
OK. It was everything but the leprechaun. All the makeup and effects other than what Gabe did with Warwick. They were on their own little corner in their own trailer and having a lot of fun. We were just making our stuff. That was shot in San Fernando Valley of LA, back when we had our LA shop. I would have to see it again to see what the hell we did on it, but I know there’s a lot of makeup effects, gags.

David Read:
Those horror films, man.

Todd Masters:
At that time, I think that was a Trimark film. I don’t even know what Trimark was on.

David Read:
I think that’s right.

Todd Masters:
It was that kind of time where we were making a lot of these medium-low-budget films and pumping them out for, I guess, video, ’cause none of that stuff didn’t get screened.

David Read:
Tremors 10 now, they keep on rolling.

Todd Masters:
Exactly. I love that there’s still fans of Leprechaun 2 out there. That’s so cool.

David Read:
Two more. I’m interested in your answer for this one. I think this is fascinating. Jett Ison wants to know, “has your knowledge of prosthetics to rig up a hand, a foot, arm, ever been applied… Have you ever been consulted for actual people, for amputees, military personnel?”

Todd Masters:
Can’t talk about that. We have done amputee stuff. We’ve done quite a bit of subtle little prosthetics. Some of our crew actually did one not too long ago; I think it was an ear on somebody.

David Read:
For an actual human being?

Todd Masters:
Yeah, sure. I did Michael Jackson disguises for a while so he could walk around in the world.

David Read:
I wouldn’t even think about that.

Todd Masters:
Michael, he was having every makeup artist in town do stuff. I was working with him with Steve Johnson during Smooth Criminal. At one point Michael asked us if we could do disguise makeups for him so he could go to his brother’s concert or go to the grocery store. Michael had an entire arsenal of costumes in one of his closets. He had a fat suit, he had some gloves. An amazing assortment of stuff that Rick Baker made or Stan Winston made. We started doing some of that stuff and we’ve done a lot of other stuff that’s outside cinema and television. Yes, but I don’t know, did I answer that question?

David Read:
Yes, that’s fascinating.

Todd Masters:
Yes. The medical advances that are coming now, especially for military personnel who have lost parts, things like that, to give them greater mobility in homes and everything else, it’s amazing.

David Read:
Just extraordinary.

Todd Masters:
Boston Dynamics and all the robotics that are happening.

David Read:
Spot and everything else. You wanna talk about some double-edged sword right there.

Todd Masters:
It’s Terminator 12.

David Read:
Exactly. Final question for you, chronoss chiron, “what advice would you give to novice indie filmmakers who are wanting a crack at this space?”

Todd Masters:
I don’t know what point you are at in your career, or amateur development, or whatever point you’re at, but my advice is the same. I like five-year plans. I like to make a plan. I usually do ’em within five years when I literally write it out. I sketch out where I think I’m gonna be or where I wanna be and I try to plot it out. You’re always gonna be wrong, no matter what you do. ‘Cause if you write tomorrow’s plan today, it’s not gonna be completely perfect. If you do five years, you’re definitely gonna be wrong. The idea isn’t to be accurate; the idea is to plan. It’s essentially goal-making if you’ve ever taken a goal-making workshop or something like that. What you wanna do is figure out where you wanna be in five years and sometimes it’s really hard for people to do that. What I recommend is to do the exact opposite. Figure out where you don’t wanna be in five years. Figure out that you don’t wanna be working at the insurance company in five years or you don’t wanna be in a dead-end job or in a dead-end life, if you don’t. Really try to think this through. Figure out if you do have a desire to make films, or makeup effects, or any part of this craziness, or even just being an artist or a writer, make yourself a set of goals and achieve ’em. I like to physically write it down and have it remind me where I should be. It’s almost like charting, when you’re sailing a ship to a location. There are many little points along the way where you might have to adjust, but eventually the goal is sorta the same. Come up with a methodology for yourself to achieve your goals, to make your life happen, because life goes by like that. If you don’t do this, life will just drag you along. If you do wanna make movies, if you do wanna do any of this stuff, just do it. Just fricking do it. Come up with a game plan, try to figure it out in a time period. I like five years. You can certainly plan it out this month, you can certainly plan it out 10 years, whatever you want. But figure it out and don’t make any excuses. You’re in charge of your own life and just fricking do it. Obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that.

David Read:
But it has to start with that.

Todd Masters:
You can’t let anybody else kick you in the pants. You need to kick your own pants. The best way to do that is goals. Like I say, my favorite way of trying to determine goals is to try to determine the non, the anti-goals. “I don’t wanna be pregnant. I don’t wanna have a shitty car. I don’t wanna live in a shitty part of town.” Whatever it is, if you don’t plan for what’s around the corner, it’s gonna hit you in the ass.

David Read:
If you wanna be reactionary in your life, or proactive. That can be said for anyone looking to advance in the industry or not, just in life.

Todd Masters:
In any aspect of it.

David Read:
I cannot recommend a five-year plan enough. The more granular your steps along the way, the more realistic it will be. The end result.

Todd Masters:
Just as long as you’re not gonna damage yourself with it. You just have to keep in mind every step of the way, this is to be revised. None of this is real. This is a game plan that’s most likely wrong, that you have to keep updating. That ship that’s going along, or an airplane that’s going from point A to point Z, there’s a bunch of little adjustments because a storm cloud came along, or a shark, or whatever.

David Read:
Things happen.

Todd Masters:
Shit will come. It will happen, so prepare. Like winter, storms come all the time.

David Read:
This is true. Todd, one of my producers asked me a last-minute question. “One of my students recently lost a leg in an accident and his family is very poor. Does Todd know of an organization that helps people who need prosthetics, or anything along those lines that you can advise?”

Todd Masters:
I don’t offhand. I know that on Instagram I follow #prosthetic and I know that a ton of that is medical prosthetics. I would start networking like that. Here’s a great example. Your goal is to get a prosthetic from here to here. What are the points between here and there that have to be achieved? To me, it sounds like making contact with a variety of different prosthetic service companies. I don’t do those kinds of prosthetics. I don’t do medical prosthetics, like legs and stuff like that. I would first look into that. I knew a guy that worked at a VA hospital in San Francisco years ago that used to make the greatest eyeballs for me. There are places throughout – I don’t know where this person is – throughout the States, throughout Canada, that have prosthetic materials and ways to make ’em. I would reach out to them and see if there’s some way to do it.

David Read:
Perfect. Todd, this has been terrific and fascinating and nuanced, all of the above. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your stories.

Todd Masters:
Thank you. I’m glad that we got the right time zone. I was so afraid I missed it. I’m like, “Oh my God.”

David Read:
No. There’s something wrong with Google and Arizona; half the year we’re in one time zone; the other half we’re in another. I’m glad we made it work.

Todd Masters:
Me too. So, very nice talking with you and hopefully everybody listening got something out of it.

David Read:
I do appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time.

Todd Masters:
Pleasure.

David Read:
You take care of yourself. Bye-bye now.

Todd Masters:
Take it easy.

David Read:
Todd Masters of MastersFX, makeups and prosthetics maestro. You’re listening and watching, or both, or not… one or the other… to Dial the Gate. I’ve got, I think, one question for me here. Kicks 394. “Is there a process or routine that you go through when you prepare for an interview?” It depends on who it is. Primarily, especially with this show, the intent from day one was to be a legacy archive for the franchise. With each episode, I wanted to cover a certain piece. Initially, for the first episodes that everyone appears in, it’s a much broader introduction in the event that we don’t get them back. Some of them, it’s definitely designed to be a one-off, unless something else comes along, again, that has an additional reason for them to return. But sometimes one episode really, really covers it, really says it all. I try to hit at least 35, 40% of the show about them, and 60, 65% of the show about their relationship with Stargate specifically. Suanne Braun, her Hathor hosts show, she spends a week or two researching the individual that she’s gonna have on. I do very little of that because it’s a Stargate-related show and all that information, 90% of it is in my brain already. I just need to go to internet resources to make sure that my information, what I’m thinking of, is correct and anything that I’ve potentially missed. I think that generally strikes a pretty good balance. Something like Hathor Hosts is much more about the person that she has on, whereas with Dial the Gate, it’s the relationship of that person with Stargate, so the answer is largely I don’t even prepare a lot of the questions in advance. A lot of the times, particularly if it’s someone that I have never spoken with before, I will ask them if they want questions in advance and oftentimes the actors say no. With Christopher Judge, never give that man a question in advance. He doesn’t want it. He likes being surprised and he likes being put in a corner that he has to work himself out of. That’s just who he is as a person. One of these days we will have him on, but we’re working on that. That’s pretty much the answer to the question. Technically, on my side, I have to build up all of the title and end cards. I have to promote the show with Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. That process usually takes a couple of hours every single week. The scheduling is a bitch. That is a tough one because I may send out 10 invites, 5 of which will respond and 4 of which will be a yes, 3 of which will be a yes, somewhere around there. There’s a lot that goes into the process of preparing to have them on. Speaking of, next week I do have interviews that are in the works. I’m a little behind right now in terms of scheduling, but I’m pretty sure I have two scheduled for next weekend. I do have a Stargate Universe cast member who has agreed to come on, someone I have not actually sat down and interviewed since before the show actually aired. I’m really looking forward to speaking with him again. Someone else who is no stranger to Unas and Super Soldier makeup and is someone that may hold the… What am I trying to say? The record. In fact, I’m pretty sure he holds the record for the most appearances in Stargate in terms of the different characters that he’s played, if you can figure out who that is. He’s basically said yes as well. I’ve gotta sit down and organize those times, but those are gonna be coming up. Rachel Luttrell has also agreed to a second appearance. I’m trying to reach out to Paul McGillion right now to bring him back as well. Those are the things that are really in the hopper right now and really are happening. We have T-shirts. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching. If you wanna support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. We’re now offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, and hoodies for all ages in a variety of sizes and colors at Redbubble. Checkout is fast and easy and you can even use your Amazon or PayPal account. Just visit dialthegate.redbubble.com and thank you for your support. That’s all we’ve got this week. Next weekend, keep an eye on dialthegate.com for those schedules to be posted and we’ll keep that moving. My thanks to Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys, Antony, Sommer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, Jennifer Kirby. These are the people who are responsible for making this show come to life; could not do it without them. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, I appreciate you tuning in. Next week, we’ll be seeing you again. I’ll get the schedule posted on dialthegate.com. We’ll get the live segments ready to go on youtube.com/dialthegate and we’ll see you on the other side.