The Make-Up of "Zombie Spider" - Written By A Kid Ep 11 Behind The Scenes

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SAMANTHA JEWELL: Oh--
LINDSEY MANN: Makeup.
SAMANTHA JEWELL: --makeup The makeup was terrifying.

NICHOLAS HUMPHRIES: One of the really specific detail in
Aiden's story was that the character of Jake was fat and
had a mohawk.
And I felt kind of weird about casting a fat kid in the role
of a fat kid.
SAMANTHA JEWELL: You take a kid like Dawson, for example,
who we cast as Jake, and he is a skinny 13-year-old, and we
needed to make him a fat 13-year-old.
It was just a fat suit, fat make up, and luckily we had
Sarah Elizabeth on board.
NICHOLAS HUMPHRIES: I had a conversation with her, and
said what can we do to make Dawson super fat?
So she came up with a plan, and told what she wanted to
do, and I trust are entirely.
So we just kind of let her go with it.
SARAH ELIZABETH: To do a prosthetic, the first thing
you have to do is make a life cast of your actor.
So we brought Dawson to my house one day, and we covered
in alginate, which is a gooey, jelly sort of thing that makes
a full impression of his head and face.
DARLA EDIN: Next, we covered the alginate in plaster
bandages to create a hard outer shell to
protect the face cast.
It's actually really funny because the person is entirely
encased in plaster.
SARAH ELIZABETH: Once those plaster bandages are hardened,
then we take everything off, and we fill the alginate with
plaster, which is then what we sculpt on.
NICHOLAS HUMPHRIES: Darla had to dye the hair for the
mohawk, and sculpt it ahead of time, so that it could come
off of his head when the spider bites it off.
So there's a lot of really complicated little makeup
pieces in there.
DARLA EDIN: To make the mohawks, I used an old school
technique called float method, where you take loose hair,
glue it to a plastic head, add product to hold it together,
and then remove it as one solid piece.
Because this was done for film, we needed to have a few
different mohawks on set, so that we could attach and
remove as necessary.
We also needed a couple different sizes since we were
working with miniatures.
SARAH ELIZABETH: The only time we had Dawson was when we did
the life cast.
We never actually got to do a makeup test.
So when we did get to shoot day, we weren't 100% sure what
we were going to come up against.
DAWSON DUNBAR: I didn't really know what the makeup was going
to be like.
We spent four hours in the makeup chair putting on
prosthetics and a full head cast.
And in the end, I was bald with a mohawk.
NICHOLAS HUMPHRIES: He had a bit of a fight sequence where
he had to battle these giant spider legs.
And so in addition to the prosthetic makeup and the fat
suit he was already wearing, he had to put on another 10
pounds of sporting equipment.
So again, he was really restrictive.
But I think he really used the constraints to his movement to
add to the character.
DAWSON DUNBAR: The makeup couldn't really
make me move my head.
I could only move it from side to side like that.
And I had to move my whole body to turn.
Once I saw myself in the mirror, I
developed the character.
It was creepy in a way, but awesome.
NICHOLAS HUMPHRIES: The stuff that we were seeing on screen
of him stiffly swatting at the spider legs with the golf club
really worked out well.
I He used the time before we shot to kind of get used to
the whole setup he was stuck in and used
it to his full potential.
DAWSON DUNBAR: Good times in the fat suit.

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