A NOTE FROM TEAM STAN WINSTON SCHOOL:
This in-depth article celebrating the fantastic makeup effects created by Tony Gardner's Alterian, Inc. for Foo Fighters' horror-comedy Studio 666 was written just before Taylor Hawkins' tragic passing in late March 2022. Out of respect for his family, friends, and bandmates, we put the article on hold at that time. Now that the band have completed their incredibly uplifting Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, and with Halloween upon us, we received their blessing to finally share this behind-the-scenes article with horror & Foo Fighters fans worldwide.
Rest In Peace, Taylor, you will never be forgotten.
- Team Stan Winston School
Jump To Section
- Behind the Scenes of Studio 666
- How Studio 666 Was Inspired by a True Foo Fighters Story
- Paying Homage to Classic Horror Films
- The Caretaker in Studio 666
- Creating the Kill Effect for Skye Willow AKA Jenna Ortega
- The Gory Effects Used for Will Forte’s Kill Scene
- Combining Practical and Digital Effects to Make Dave Grohl Puke
- Behind Dave Grohl’s Possession Makeup
- Creating the Gutting Dave Grohl Effect
- Using Practical Effects for Slayer Guitarist Kerry King’s Electrocution Kill Scene
- The Foo Fighters’ Fatalities in Studio 666
- Making Prosthetics for Chris Shiflett’s Grill Scene
- Following the “Death by Sex” Horror Movie Trope
- Making Up the Shadow People
- Keeping it Practical
- 80s’ Nostalgia in Studio 666
Behind the Scenes of Studio 666
by Michael Martin
Studio 666 is an entertaining horror comedy based on an original idea by Foo Fighters' frontman Dave Grohl with a script by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes and directed by BJ McDonnell (Hatchet 3). The film stars Grohl along with Foo Fighters band members, the late Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Rami Jaffee, and Chris Shiflett. Also appearing in the film are comedian Whitney Cummings, Will Forte, and Jenna Ortega.
The makeup effects for Studio 666 were produced by Tony Gardner and his Alterian Inc. studio. Tony started out working with Rick Baker on the original Michael Jackson music video for Thriller. He would go on to make a name for himself creating eye-catching effects for such films as The Return of the Living Dead, The Blob, Army of Darkness, Hocus Pocus, Three Kings, and 127 Hours. Tony also directed the Daft Punk music video "The Prime Time of Your Life."
Tony spoke about his work on the film with SWSCA co-founder Matt Winston.
WARNING: This interview contains MASSIVE spoilers and images of artificial gore. Read on at your own risk.
(Stan Winston School of Character Arts co-founder Matt Winston and Studio 666 special makeup effects designer Tony Gardner.)
How Studio 666 Was Inspired by a True Foo Fighters Story
Does Studio 666 have a cool Rock n’ Roll band? Check. Lots of bloody kills? Check. Creepy creatures that emerge from a basement vortex? Check. Special makeup effects created by long-time special makeup effects designer Tony Gardner? Absolutely check!
(L-R - Foo Fighters Nate Mendel, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Shiflett, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear and Rami Jaffee star as themselves in Studio 666. Image courtesy Open Road Films.)
Studio 666 begins when Foo Fighters lead singer Dave Grohl suggests the group record their tenth album, “Someplace we’ve never been.” So they choose…a haunted mansion! There are spooky dolls hanging in the trees, weird neighbors, and a strange basement with an altar. Of course, the gang discovers that the mansion turns out to be a kind of portal into another dimension filled with evil creatures. And that's when the fun begins.
The original idea for the film was inspired by real-life to a degree, said Gardner, Grohl “had been recording in a mansion out in Encino where he had actually stayed when he had his house renovated. And then when they were doing their 10th album he rented it out and they recorded there. It's this big, weird, creepy old house.” Gardner continued, “They kept saying, ‘What if this place was haunted?’ and started making up stories.”
Grohl eventually contacted Tony Gardner and asked, “‘Hey, do you have a list of ways you might wanna kill people that nobody's ever let you do before?’” said Gardner. “And my response was, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’”
“I'd worked with [Foo Fighters] a couple of times, starting with the 'Run' music video,” said Gardner. For the 'Run' video, Gardner and his Alterian team had transformed the band into rebellious elderly nursing home residents. This previous experience working together paid off. “It was fun having already lifecast them for the music video, knowing who's gonna be the most tolerant of lifecasting and prosthetics.”
And that’s how Studio 666 was born. “[Dave Grohl] asked me to put my ‘Kill List’ together and he had like a page and a half of a story he’d written out and I think I had like two and a half pages of deaths.” Gardner continued, “From there, he hired a writer and their agenda was to merge these two documents and create something out of them.” There was one problem, though. “There's only so many members in the band to kill. So we got to step outside of that limitation a little bit, which was fun.”
Since Grohl’s story idea relied on Gardner’s ‘Kill List', and the band was already together, the makeup effects crew was able to get an early start on the work required. “Even though the script wasn't written, we had access to the talent and we were able to get right into it,” said Gardner.
The film's director, BJ McDonnell, had previously helmed Hatchet III and a trilogy of Slayer videos. Those directing experiences, combined with having operated camera and steadicam on countless genre films, made him a perfect fit for the job. “He knew our language,” said Gardner. “So it was really easy working with him.”
Paying Homage to Classic Horror Films
Part of the fun of Studio 666 is that it subtly (and not so subtly) references everyone’s favorite horror films, including the original Evil Dead, The Exorcist, Burnt Offerings, and more. “The Exorcist came up in discussions quite a few times,” said Gardner. “There's actually a scene showing the front of the house at night with the delivery guy [played by Will Forte] standing at the bottom of the stairs out front. That's an obvious homage, but a really cool one.” Another nod to The Exorcist is a scene where the demonically possessed Dave Grohl is copiously vomiting, just like actress Linda Blair did in Dick Smith’s groundbreaking possession makeup.
Other film references included Friday the 13th and The Amityville Horror. “Dave kept referencing The Amityville Horror as a film that really scared him when he was a kid. Watching this guy's descent into madness really impacted Dave, because it was played so real,” said Gardner. “In the [Studio 666] script there was a sense of trying to fit that same sort of descent into madness into everything that we were doing.”
The Caretaker in Studio 666
The mansion's possessed caretaker, played by Marti Matulis (American Horror Story, Sleepy Hollow) wore prosthetic appliances created by Gardner's team at Alterian Inc. The Caretaker was supposed to be 'one with the overgrown mansion,’ so his makeup design incorporated roots and moss growing through and out of his skin.
(Marti Matulis in caretaker makeup. Top right picture credit: Kyra Gardner. Images courtesy Alterian Inc./Open Road Films.)
Creating the Kill Effect for Skye Willow AKA Jenna Ortega
Studio 666’s first death occurs during a flashback to 1993 when the members of another band, Dream Widow, are being murdered at the mansion. Their lead singer, Skye Willow, played by Jenna Ortega, has her head crushed as she is crawling across the floor. Gardner describes the graphic eye-popping effect, “it was pretty straightforward, really. We built a dummy head of Jenna Ortega and just let Marti Matulis [as the Caretaker] pound on it with a hammer. I think that Marti was actually pretty traumatized by the process, as it was so visceral.”
The Gory Effects Used for Will Forte’s Kill Scene
A food delivery guy, played by Will Forte, meets his end when he is beheaded by the caretaker wielding a pair of gardening shears. “That was another one of those, ‘How far can we push this moment?’ type of scenes,” said Gardner. “Will’s fake body is just packed with [blood] hoses, and the pressure was set ridiculously high. We figured, it's night, you're not gonna see much of the blood spray, so one more excuse to go big. Right?”
The delivery guy's body was loosely jointed and made of silicone, so that it would have weight when it collapsed. “The head had a little ram sticking out into the stump of the neck that was pressure fit into the body. We could have launched the head probably 15 feet if we wanted to. It was ridiculous,” said Gardner. “But the cool thing was once you pulled the pin on the bottom of the body, the whole body would collapse onto its knees and its arms would just kind of flop forward as it fell into the dirt. We trial-and-errored the approach a few times in the parking lot, just with water in the tubes to make sure everything worked."
Combining Practical and Digital Effects to Make Dave Grohl Puke
Over the course of the movie, Grohl's character becomes obsessed with the creepy symbols on the walls of the mansion’s basement. Before long, he's having haunting dreams and eventually becomes possessed, leading to The Exorcist-inspired power vomiting. For some shots, the vomit effects were accomplished with a combination of practical effects and digital compositing. The special effects department, led by Elia P. Popov, built a practical ‘vomit rig’ that could shoot out puke that was then digitally comped in over Dave Grohl’s performance. The special effects team experimented with “the quantities of the stream and how far is 'too silly’ in an effort to balance out the comedy with the grossness,” said Gardner.
Behind Dave Grohl’s Possession Makeup
For Grohl’s possessed look, Tony Gardner used prosthetics. “It's kind of funny, because Dave can't really look mad or evil, not to save his life,” Gardner said. “He can look a little angry but he can't scowl or frown or look super mean. He's just not wired that way.” So for those ‘Evil Dave’ scenes, he’s “wearing a prosthetic forehead with punched brows sculpted at the classic 45-degree angle.”
After gluing down and blending the sculpted forehead/brow prosthetic, Gardner’s team added chapped lips as another “little nod to The Exorcist,” said Gardner. Custom contact lenses and fangs helped complete the look. Two stages of upper and lower fangs were used to reveal how possessed Grohl was. For the more advanced possession makeup, small occult designs were added to Grohl’s cheeks and the forehead/brow prosthetic, mirroring the symbols found on the altar in the basement of the house. Lilo Tauvao was responsible for the little transfer pieces for markings.
Grohl’s fangs were created by Chris Lyons from Fangs FX, who Gardner praised for his consistently amazing work. The contact lenses were produced by Dr. Jonathan Gording with Sean Kinney acting as the onset lens tech. “When I did the test makeup," Gardner said, we “did a photo shoot for Mojo magazine. [Grohl] actually looks a little more like a vampire there, but [the filmmakers] didn't wanna give away any of the possession aspect of the makeup, as the original intent was for the magazine to release before the film came out. It's all his own hair with just a little bit of product added in.”
Creating the Gutting Dave Grohl Effect
Early in the film, as Dave Grohl sleeps, ghostly creatures with glowing eyes known as 'Shadow People' begin to emerge from a dimensional portal. Taking a little inspiration from An American Werewolf in London and its startling dream-within-a-dream sequence, Studio 666 delivers its own take on the waking nightmare concept. Grohl “has this weird dream where he’s visited by a demonic, burned Krug, and then he wakes up and thinks that he's okay. As he lays back down we realize that he's still in the dream,” said Gardner. “He gets attacked and then gutted by a bunch of zombies that climb over the sides of the bed while the Shadow People are watching from a distance within this black void that the bed is now floating in.”
To achieve the ‘gutting Dave’ effect, the Alterian team used a tried-and-true old school technique. They created a “fake torso, with Dave laying underneath and through the bed,” said Gardner. “We'd done the same thing on The Blob” with one of the characters, and the concept worked great. Dave’s fake torso was then packed full of artificial guts and slime that the ‘Nightmare Zombies’ could pull out of the body on cue. The DP focused the lighting very strongly on the bed, “so that the bright red from the intestines really kicked against the white sheets on the bed,” said Gardner. “If you look closely, the zombie on camera left, right next to Dave...that's me getting one more zombie cameo in.” Gardner has a long history of making gory cameos in films he’s worked on over the years. “Lately these days, it's just my severed head that shows up,” said Gardner. “There's an ongoing joke that my severed head should have it’s own IMDb page at this point because we’ve used it in so many movies.”
Using Practical Effects for Slayer Guitarist Kerry King’s Electrocution Kill Scene
For the scene where band technician Krug, played by Slayer lead guitarist Kerry King, is electrocuted, Gardner and the Alterian team relied solely on practical effects. The effect began with King, in prosthetics, flailing around on the ground, while a smoke machine spewed smoke.
(Nate Mendel and Dave Grohl are horrified by the electrocution of their band tech 'Krug'. Image courtesy Open Road Films.)
And then “we were able to swap Kerry out and use somebody else for closeup body shots while we were upping the gross-out factor of Kerry’s facial makeup for progressive stages of electrocution.” King’s electrocution makeup was achieved via a combination of out-of the-kit makeup, silicone appliances, and Pros-Aide transfer raised veins.
The Foo Fighters’ Fatalities in Studio 666
Once Dave Grohl is possessed, each of the Foo Fighters band members gets to meet their own grisly end in the film. Rhythm guitarist Pat Smear gets run over by a van that bass guitarist Nate Mendel is trying to hotwire.
(Pat Smear and Nate Mendel hatch a doomed survival plan in Studio 666. Image courtesy Open Road Films.)
“I think Pat came up with the idea that it would be funny for the two of them to both kill each other accidentally.” For Pat Smear's death, the Alterian team created a jointed body with a silicone head over a rigid foam core filled with shredded urethane and silicone. Barney Burman re-sculpted a clay pressout of Pat’s head. The hero silicone-skinned head “was packed full of blood and then we had a nozzle that went to a pressure tank that was all primed for an immediate spray," said Gardner. To ensure the ‘Pat’ head would burst when the van’s wheel rolled over it, the Alterian team pre-scored it with an X-ACTO blade and the special effects team rigged it with squibs as well. The effect was shot twice “so that we could get the wheel and the explosion timed as close together as possible,” said Gardner.
After Pat Smear’s death, Nate Mendel takes a twisted wire to the eye. “We wanted to show the wire going into his eye in extreme closeup, so we [created an] oversized ‘closeup section’ of Nate’s face,” said Gardner. “Bryan Christensen did a 3D scan of Nate making the appropriate expression, which was 3D printed out at twice life size. We made a mold of that print, and then Carol Koch re-sculpted a clay pressout from that mold, adding all of the skin detail and texture. And then Denise Baer punched some amazing lashes and brows into the final silicone piece.” A steel rod with twisted wires on a camera slider was then guided into a tiny hole in the middle of Mendel’s oversized eye to achieve the effect. “When the camera cuts away from that close-up impact shot, then we’re back to Nate with some eye blood on his face.”
But Nate Mendel’s not dead yet. He then has a knife shoved up through his chin and out the top of his head. To achieve the effect, the Alterian team created a simple rig that would make blood run down Mendel’s forehead and into his face. “We made a little skull cap with blood tubing and hair on it that we could literally put on over his own hair in a few minutes.” A digital knife tip was later added in post-production sticking out of the top of Mendel’s head.
Making Prosthetics for Chris Shiflett’s Grill Scene
To pull off lead guitarist Chris Shiflett’s death-by-BBQ gag, grill-striped prosthetics were applied to Shiflett’s face. In addition, “we had all these little latex bacon strips [aka ‘nurneys’] that we glued to his face along the burn lines, and then we glued the other ends of those stretchy strips directly to the grill,” said Gardner. “Nurneys are stringy, veiny sort of things made out of latex. They’re easy to make and they work for everything from guts to burning faces,” explained Gardner. “On action, [Shiflett would] pull his head up and if they snapped off, it's not like it really mattered… it actually made the effect grosser." Audiences will also see bloody nurneys hanging out of the decapitated Will Forte’s neck in an earlier scene.
Lighting and smoke effects beneath the grill helped sell the effect. A fake head of the rocker was also prepared with the same grill-striped burns and rigged to spurt blood upon being stabbed with a knife.
Following the “Death by Sex” Horror Movie Trope
Many 80's horror movies have a scene where horny lovers get killed seemingly as punishment for their promiscuity and often in as bloody a fashion as possible. Studio 666 serves up its own version of this "Don't Have Sex" trope. Gardner and the Alterian crew devised an ingeniously gory effect where a couple engaged in amorous activities both get sawn in half by a chainsaw that rises up from beneath their bed.
(Rami Jaffee meets Samantha, 'The Girl Next Door', played by comedian Whitney Cummings. Image courtesy Open Road Films.)
"I wanted to one-up the arrow coming through Kevin Bacon's neck [as seen in the original Friday the 13th] and see how far we could go with it. And we went and basically sliced a guy and a girl in half with a chainsaw while they’re having sex on a bed. With comedy, you can really push stuff. And fortunately for us, Dave and BJ let us go for it,” said Gardner. “It's so ridiculously extreme. There's more blood in that scene being sprayed around the room than there would really be in both of their bodies combined. It's just everywhere in the room. It's on the ceiling, it’s on the walls, and it’s on the floor about an inch deep by the end of the scene.”
Given keyboardist Rami Jaffee’s ease with the lifecasting process, Gardner felt he’d be the perfect band member to perform the effect. “Rami was great. We were like, ‘Are you up for a full body [lifecast] and all of the work that this scene will entail?’ and he responded with a very enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ My response to that was, ‘Okay, I have this death in mind that we would need somebody to basically be naked for. It'd be very bloody, and incredibly over the top.’ And Rami said, ‘I'm in.’” The ambitious effect “involved a lot of life casting and a lot of pneumatics and a lot of hoses and a lot of blood. We storyboarded the entire sequence before we even started the lifecasting so that everybody understood what we were doing,” said Gardner.
To execute the outrageously bloody effect, Rami Jaffee’s fake body was built with a jointed fiberglass core on an aluminum and steel armature. Gardner’s team cast the core of the body in urethane foam from the base of the neck up inside the head and then everything was surfaced with a silicone skin. Jaffee’s fake head was pre-scored by Alterian mechanics Peter Chevako and Erik Beck, who built a pneumatic rig to actuate the splitting and falling apart of the body. The entire process was controlled by a ‘switchboard,’ and the action could be re-set and repeated over and over. The oversized chainsaw was on a motorized rig of its own, so that all of the chainsaw movement and blood spraying could be properly timed and coordinated. Ralis Kahn built and operated the blood sprayers and canons that went off through the length of the body as the chainsaw traveled through it.
“The foundation of Whitney [Cummings’] body was actually a sex doll that Whitney had purchased for one of her comedy routines that she still had lying around and didn't need anymore. Whitney donated her doll body to the cause and we just replaced everything from the collar bone up so that it looked more like her. Her entire head was silicone over an aluminum armature, and it was pre-scored. The head had silicone teeth as well, so that the chainsaw could travel up through the face safely.”
Before the cameras rolled, the FX crew loaded the Rami & Whitney dummies with chunks of organic-looking debris and two 55-gallon drums connected to the body were filled with blood and then primed. “As the chainsaw went through the body, there were air-cannon explosions of carnage and gore launched up and out of the body in tandem with the non-stop blood spray from the body that was timed to the movement of the giant chainsaw blade through the body,” said Gardner. The effect was filmed twice, but “the second time, you couldn't really show the walls of the set on camera because blood was literally already everywhere. We had to wait for the ceiling to stop dripping in order to film take number two.”
Making Up the Shadow People
The creepy Shadow People that invade Dave Grohl’s nightmares represent the original murdered band members from the violent flashback that opens the film. They are envisioned as entirely deep black ‘silhouettes’ with sharp teeth, glowing eyes, and long skinny fingers. They wear the same hairstyles and outfits of Dream Widow, that first band of victims. The Shadow People performers wore black unitards that covered their entire face and body. A vacuum-formed head shell with lights mounted to it gave them their glowing eyes. Alterian mechanic Erik Beck created a system “where we could control the intensity of the light in the eyes of each head based on how the scene was lit or how far away they were [from the camera],” said Gardner.
For the long shots of the Shadow People, the creatures’ hands would be simple gloves, but for close-ups the appendages were “all prosthetics, so that the hands had more character and more dexterity, and they could remain super skinny,” said Gardner. In an homage to Alien, one of the Shadow People's hands reaches into the wires inside the back of a studio console prior to Kerry King’s character being electrocuted. The hand was covered in prosthetics that included extensions and claws and painted with non-reflective ultra-black PAX paint “so that the hand looked like a shadow” even when well-lit.
For close-ups of the Shadow People emoting or screaming, a generic puppet head with an internal light source was built. “We took this Blob sort of approach to the aesthetics of the face, where the jaw distends really big when the face is screaming. We had all these nurney tendrils inside the mouth attached between the upper and lower jaw, so that when the jaw stretched open, all of the webbing and tendrils stretched out and got thinner, and you'd see more of the light behind and through it,” said Gardner. “We had a little gelled light panel in the puppet head on a dimmer so we could adjust for each shot. And then we could film that and [the filmmakers could] digitally comp that puppet head onto any of the Shadow Peoples’ bodies if they decided that they wanted to see the characters’ mouths opening and screaming on camera.”
Keeping it Practical
Tony Gardner is proud of how much he and his team at Alterian Inc. achieved with in-camera practical effects, and on a relatively tight budget. “There are a lot of effects in the film that people assume are digital. People think the [close-up] shot of Rami’s head splitting in two is digital. But it was the same body that came apart in the wide shot.” For the scene featuring floating ghosts, little heads with long fabric tails were constructed and shot in a water tank, just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The practical ‘ghosts’ were then digitally composited in.
80s’ Nostalgia in Studio 666
Regardless of whether or not you’re a horror film fan, Studio 666 is the perfect treat for Halloween season. Besides all of the mayhem detailed above, it also features fun cameos by Lionel Richie and legendary horror director John Carpenter. In fact, Carpenter wrote the film's theme song!
Gardner fondly summed up his experience working on the film, “Well, for me personally, it was 100% an 80’s flashback in regards to the approaches that we took towards achieving the makeup effects as well as to the films we were referencing along the way.” And that ‘Kill List’ Gardner has? He assures us “there's still enough stuff on that list for a sequel.”
Special Makeup and Animatronic Effects By Tony Gardner and Alterian, Inc.
Alterian, Inc. Crew:
Project Manager:
Jack Santry
Project Supervisor:
Bryan Christensen
SFX Makeup Artists:
Thom Floutz
Barney Burman
William Corso
Susan La Prelle
David Woodruff
Bianca Appice
Richard Redlefsen
Glen Griffin
Art Department Supervisor:
Lilo Tauvao
Sculptor:
Carol Koch
Storyboard Artist:
Villamore Cruz
Mold and Eye Specialist:
Ken Banks
Molds:
J. Michael O’Brian
Silicone Specialist:
Aaron Romero
Contact Lens Manufacturing:
Dr. Jonathan Gording, O.D.
Contact Lens Technician:
Sean Kenney
Specialty Dentures:
Chris Lyons / FangsFX
Zombie Prosthetics:
Roland Blancaflor / RBFX
Wardrobe Supervisor:
Day Blackmon
Hair Specialists:
Denise Baer
Ashley Mulldorfer
Mechanical Design:
Peter Chevako
Erik Beck
Ralis Kahn
PJ Evans
FX Technicians:
Cynthia Garza Medrando
Johnnie Espiritu
Sven Granlund
Emmanuel Lemus
Clayton Martinez
Video Camera/Editor:
Kyra Gardner
Project Assistant:
Joshua Schneider