Oh he is, folks, it's show die. People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater.
They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters.
In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
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Oh hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Steve Newburn. He is the designer of the Creature suit and the creator of the creatures from the film Sasquatch Sunset. It is a relatively new film from David and Nathan Zelner. It was great getting a little bit of a peak behind the curtain when it comes to some of these makeup effects. Had a great time talking with mister Newburn, and I hope you have a great
time listening. Thank you so much. Obviously, I want to talk to you about Sasquatch Sunset, which is a tough name to say repeatedly, especially. Can you tell me a little bit about how you even decided to get into the business and how you started to do makeup effects.
I think it's true for everybody my age, but we all just grew up in the era of Star Wars and Jaws and all those kinds of plan of the Apes and all that stuff back in the seventies and early eighties and whatnot. And it just a fan and it wasn't something I started with that direction in mind.
It.
I actually went to school for business and everything, and it was just I grew up in Los Angeles, so just being in Los Angeles, I just connections and stuff and it was like, Oh, would you like to check this out sometime, and Oh, yeah, that'd be really neat. I've been a fan of that I was a kid and going in and just it was one of the big Los Angeles shops, creature shops, and it just it turned into a thing where it's like, oh, you want
to come back, Sure, I'd love to come back. But kept coming back and became a part time gig and then a full time gig and then a career.
That's amazing. What were some of those early effects that you were working on.
The earliest things that people would recognize It would be like Starship Troopers and Alien Resurrection and a lot of stuff coming out around then. The early like first X Files movie. The company was Ady, I was Sam and Alex. They started with stan Winston back in the day, and they got off and set their own company and did Jumanji and a bunch of other stuff back then. But yes, yeah, fell in with them in mid nineties.
In this line of work, do you tend to specialize in one area or over something else.
It depends where you are in the world, I think, and Los Angeles is very department wise, so you tend you tend to fall into a certain you know, area of the of the job where there was sculpting or molding or painting or whatever. But a lot of the world it's jack of many trades. Meeting in Los Angeles, I fell into the kind of what they can call the lap part of it, which is all the technical side of it res supposed to the artistic side of it.
And that was just a good place to get your feet wet and for people who had, you know, the drive to be there, but didn't necessarily have refined artistic skills they were looking for. And with me just being a fan, I you know, it was stuff I tinkered with, but I wasn't nearly as refined as some of the guys who were, yep, the experts of the time. So as far as artistically speaking. So I fell into the
technical side of it and just grove from there. And eventually my wife's Canadians, so we'd moved up to Canada at one point where we had kids, and Canada is more of a you do everything kind of situation, and some of the smaller shops now LA were the same. So I did first aside at that point, and this is maybe five years in, I would say, and just got in, got my hands wet and Pete wet doing everything. Yeah, it just down for crows from there.
You mentioned the X Files, and I know they shut a lot in Vancouver set around where you were at.
Yeah, that was the TV series I like, I specifically worked on the first movie, which was in and around Los Angeles. A lot of it was twenty Century Fox Studios. Yeah, we were doing all the back then it was all hushash, top secret. But it was like the Aliens and all the various stuff that came along with them, but that was all in the studio a lot.
Tell me about Sasquatch Sunset. How did this project come to you?
Yeah, and so I have a relationship with Ari Astor and Lars Nissen, and like they had their company Square Bag, and I've been with Ori since Hereditary and it was just one of those the next projects that kind of came across their plate. And Tyler, who's one of the other producers there with them, he cast me pretty much for everything they have that comes along that has some sort of prosthetic or makeup of that kind of thing
happening in it. And it was the height of COVID and nothing was really happening, and they were like, we have this perfect movie. That's a COVID movie. It's the tiny little bubble shooting exteriors. You won't be around people, would you be interested? And I was like, sure, why not? Sounds interesting? What is it? And then so it's about a family of sasquatch and I was like, really tend
me this script. But just growing up, I'd been a huge fan of Hary and Anderson's which with Baker's Harry Suit I still think is like the that's the pinnacle for a sasquatch, by that thing you're not oh yeah, yeah. So I'd always looked at that. In these days, it seems every time you see a sasquatch, it's either a you know, a furry monster in the woods killing campers, or it's a jerky commercial, and so so this coming along was oh, wow, we could actually do something that's
better than a jerky commercial. And these are characters and not just a monster in the woods. So it was that got my intrigued. And then just by fact virtue of the fact that it was for and ours and those guys, that was just I didn't no matter what. But as a fan of Harry I've always He's been my top three movie monsters. It was just a natural. I wasn't walking away from it no matter what.
So how much of the design comes from you versus is there like a character designer? Like, how does that process work?
I talked to the brothers. It's like, right after talking to David, I had an idea my head, just based on again being a fan of Harry, and like what I liked about that idea, and it was if I ever had a chance to do a Sasquatch, what would I I had an idea in my head of what I would want. They're talking to David and Nathan. They had their ideas and we batted them back and forth and we were very much on the same page. It was coming up with a character as opposed to a
movie monster. It was something that you could relate to, that had emotions that just it's another animal in the wild going about it's daily business. And so I in that sense, I think we were very much on the same page. I have some photoshop guys I work with, and then the people I work with, we all mutually got together and refined it based on at the time
who cast was going to be. That tweaked a little bit, but in the end it was like, okay, so we have Riley, we have Jesse and Nathan, we had Christoph.
How do we take this script which was quite this, very descriptive actually right down to the tiny details, so you knew who these characters were, So how do we convey those personalities in the looks while maintaining this kind of aesthetic aim of trying to do something that's better than a jerky commercial and hopefully living up to whatever we can do with without time or money to try to do our own.
Harry, Well, it's going to be interesting to bail the characters with the actors and allow the actors to both inhabit the makeup effect itself with their own personality and that's got to be pretty tough to do.
It took them back and forth and we certainly refined things a little bit as far as internally with us, and then it was But the funny thing was is we again, we did these these two d renders and photoshop just immediately my concept was and I forwarded those over to the brothers and they were like, this is
actually very close to what we had in mind. We didn't really have a lengthy design process, and the movie was with finances and everything, it was on and off for a couple of years before we finally made it, so we had a lot of time to back things back and forth and just little tweaks. And the biggest design attribute, I guess you could say that I wanted and they agreed with completely, was that if these are characters,
they have to perform as characters. We don't want to do contact lenses because eyes of the window to the soul. Confe and the Brothers were completely on board with that and agreed that it was we're getting name actors and burying them under all this stuff. There's got to be something there that says that's Jesse, that's Riley. There's a reason for having these performers in these things, and I go back now and watch the movie, and I like
Riley especially. It's like the thousand yard stare that she's got or the beaten down, battered woman kind of thing going on. There's I'm gonna keep these idiots alive. It's all in the eyes for me. It's so that for us just makes our lives a million times easier.
So obviously it's not just the face, it's the entire body, hands, feet, everything that you're doing. Obviously they don't have to wear that all the time at the same time, but it's gotta be tough for those actors, and then it's gotta be tough for you as far as it's not just you doing all this. I imagine no with.
Myself and three others with me on set, So we each had our own character that we dealt with. Primarily juggled them once they were put together, but in the morning we each put our own character together. But yeah, they were in those suits every day for fourteen fifteen hours while we filmed, and yeah, no brakes. Acup doesn't come off. It's not a mask, it's glued down. The best we could do was n zip the suit occasionally and folded down like you would have a wet suit.
Christoph had done this kind of stuff before, so he was completely knowing what he was getting into. Napan was like, as he put it, it's my movie. If I can't handle this, how can I expect somebody else to. Jesse looked at it as a challenge of being an actor. Riley was, I think that much in the same bank. She looked at it as part of the challenge. It was an experience. The haster point, what made you do this because it's so different from anything you've done before,
and you've never been in prosthetics before and anything. And she just said, it's that's why I've never done anything like this. I just walt the experience and don't think she knew what she was in for, And it was it's rough the first couple of weeks when you're not used to the sort of things. I know, Jesse and Riley certainly had their bonding moments or something. Sure, you get to that point where it just becomes part of the routine and you learn to live with it and
you get do the acting part. So for them, that's a conversation to have with them and I know I've certainly had those conversations with them, and I know they didn't love it. They rose to the challenge.
Well, in memory search, you've put yourself in pressIt x many times for as well.
I've been in things here and there, I wouldn't say many times, but not like that, nothing in those conditions. This is the biggest thing where I got to commend them, because where you get these creatures superformers, you get a Doug Jones type, if you know what that is, and these guys who have been around for decades doing this kind of stuff, and you'd think ninety nine percent of the time you're on a sound stage in idealized conditions and working with a nice trailer outside that you can
go and sit in cool off any or whatever. And we were out in the wilderness and there was nothing around, and the weather was what it was. If it was dumping rain on us or snow on us, or eighty five degrees outside, you just had to deal with it. They got thrown in the deep end in a worst case scenario.
Not only are you designing the use and putting these on and everything, but then that they have to worry about the weather because like you're saying, like, normally, yeah, you're safe and environed, and then here you are now out in the wild. That's a head to have made it even tougher today. Yeah, yeah, I mean zero luxury at all. So I mean for them, I admire what they did.
I don't know. I would beat my own way through it if I had to it, if I was ever in their shoes. But most people, and certainly most legitimate actors can't even begin to understand. You hear the horror stories over the years about people on certain type profile movies and I couldn't deal with it. I needed to hire a guy who's the Navy seal to train me
to for torture for whatever. And you're on a down stage with an air conditioned trailer out there and you get to sit back and drink your latte and just kind of stuff. And they didn't get any of that. But it was like, no, you get to sit in a launch chair on the side of the road and cook or freeze or whichever it was. It. I talk about them endlessly because I admire what they did, but from our standpoint, we've got exactly the same thing. We're thrown into the deep end again, no time, no money,
don't have ten copies of each suit. We had plus a backup, and so it's if they got thrown like Jesse thrown in a river and it's like that river there, it was like forty one degrees or something like that bahrenheit. And so he's still out there and happy to come out, and we're trying to just figure out how to be suits out so you can actually wear it. The next day said not freezing it aft and up in the snow.
I think they welcomed the colder days because these suits are so hot, and the foam suits are hot to begin with, and then you throw a layer of hair over that. Nothing but admiration.
Now, if they're in snow, are they still Sasquatch or do they become yetty.
They're not white, but I don't know if there. Yeah, the movie was always intended to go across four seasons, and when we finally he was on off, like I said, finances and all that kind of stuff. And when we finally got it, we thought it would be too early in the season to actually have any snow. And we were about halfway through the shoot and they were like, it's dump snow in the mountains. We're going to the
mountains tomorrow. And it was like sixteen inches of snow suddenly came down one night and it was up in a blizzard then and wich started warming up and then turned into freezing rain and just yeah, it was miserable for everybody. Again, I have nothing but trudos.
Do you have like Sasquatch experts coming up to you and saying, Oh, the nose wasn't broad enough, the forehead wasn't high enough, funny enough.
Our locations. Guy in the movie was like the vice president of some like International Sasquatch Believers Society, and he would just come over to me daily and just stand next to me and just kind of mumble things like, this isn't what it's like, right, Like, dude, I think I rained on his parade because it's like the one film that famous film there was I can't even think what then or something Patterson Gimlin film. Yeah, and it's
it's a known thing. That was a guy named John Chambers that made this thing back at the time, and it's just no one in Hollywood circles. This is what happened. And I mentioned it to the guys I've heard that rumor. It's completely debunked, and I'll tell you why did for him? What makes them happy? But yeah, there was no convincing of otherwise. But no, it was fun because it was all real sasquatstor this is the land where you supposedly
see these things, which we never did. But I'm sure there was a lot of logging truckers driving by that would see them on the side of the road that I'm sure we'ren like, well, wait a second.
A lot of sightings in the local paper.
Yeah, exactly. So what are you.
Working on these days? What's got your attention right now?
I am in Budapest at the moment. It's finishing up until dawn with David Sandberg as the director who did Shazam and Lights Out and those things, and we're just literally on our last week of that and we finished some nine months on Del Toros. Frankenstein recently just did another movie, Ari's latest, Eddington, which was shot down in New Mexico just prior to coming out of the Buddha Pest.
It's been what sounds like it. How do you get your gigs? Obviously you've worked with Ari several times. It sounds like it's a natural for you to be on the next one of his or this one that you just did. But are they just like, hey, we need this guy, Like you've been in the business for a couple of decades now, so yeah, yeah, do they just go, okay, give me Steve Newbern.
It's everybody has their kind of go tos, it feels so the producers, all the various people, they all have their go to people. My go tos keep was busy. So it's like, aren't Ari and his productions, whether he's directing or do this produce thing. They kept us quite steady for a number of years now since the Hereditary being out here with on this movie. This is again with David. I've known David since Hizam and we actually have done a few things together now and this is
just another one. So it's like I said, it's just shoting. Once you have a handful of contacts in your pocket. It feels like the industry kind of works in cycles, and so that guy will be finishing his project and editing for the next eight months, but oh, the next guy is falling into place with his project and it just works. I was out pretty well it's usually very little downtime and more often than not overlap several projects.
I don't want to ask you to spill any trade secrets or anything, but you've got an interesting credit for Frankenstein, which is prosthetic bodies? Right, What did you do for that one? Or can you even say that.
You can imagine? No, the answer is no, you can't talk about it. Obviously they just wrapped this week on in the UK, I believe, But yeah, we had nine months of you can figure it out. It's friend the story. You can figure it out.
When I see those prosthetic bodies, I will definitely be thinking about you.
Oh, there's dirt plenty. There probably be lots this day. Nothing to do with the title monster, we'll see that. That was Mike Hill who's done like to shake of water and all those things, and he worked his magic for that and a lot of a lot of it was farmed out to other people. And then that's our piece.
Of the puzzle. How much are your designs and your actual makeup effects? How often are they enhanced with digital effects or it's a pure makeup.
It all depends on the show. Like Sasquatch two is no digital so they didn't have the time or the money or whatever for it, so it was just like what on camera is exactly what was there on the day.
That's why we've for us that was a big, you know thing, because we're patting ourselves in the back of that because how often do you see but usually what we do is it's namely in the background on Star Trek, it's something that passes through a scene, or it's a it's hiding in the shadows, and we were out there in broad daylight for every single frame of the movie.
It's an achievement. If nothing else that the fact that we did that, because the whole few people in our industry have ever tried to been approached to do anything like that.
It's been saying oh yeah, cheating aloud with that.
Yeah. These days, you go in with the intectic. You know, you'll do as much practically as you can and in camera, and it depends on the director. Again, the project we're on now until Dawn David loves is in camera. If he can get it in camera and not have to enhance it, he will. I'm not opposed to computer enhancement. It's just the nature of the business these days. They don't give you the time to do this stuff. Funny Moore, that used to get six months to prep something. Now
you're lucky if you get six weeks. When it comes time to shoot it, Inevitably, we're always just put it off to the last shot of the day, and second units for practical stuff and a camera work are becoming fewer and further between, it seems like these days. So it was nice to see recently like Alien Robulus was so practical, for example, but which we're shooting at the
same studio right now. It's expected that they're gonna ceg over and use a lot of what we've done practically as an element or at least a pretty point of foundation to build on. Totally find with that whatever gets the vision on screen and looks the best, So combinationtive tools.
Mister Newmer, thank you so much for your time. This was so great talk with you.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
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