That Sweet, That Nasty Gushy Stuff
The gory deaths for Final Destination 5 is a collaboration between two departments, the practical make-up FX done on-set by Toby Lindala and his team, which is then combined with computer-generated FX, overseen by Ariel Shaw, both of them returning from Final Destination 3.
After we were done watching them shoot a few takes on the bridge and talking to whomever was available, we were driven a few miles from the studio to the workshops of Lindala Makeup Effects, where Toby Lindala’s team has done the effects for Vancouver-based shows like “The X-Files” and “Millennium” as well as other movies shot in and around the city like Slither and Black Christmas. (The connection of course is that James Wong and Glenn Morgan, the filmmakers of the first and third “FD” movies, were also heavily active on “X-Files” and “Millennium.”)
Lindala’s workshop was a treasure trove of maquettes and models and lots of familiar-looking creatures and corpses from their shows, as well as a very prominent trash can full of body parts (possibly ones that didn’t pass the muster or had already worn out their use?). When we arrived, Toby’s team were experimenting with different consistencies of blood. Fun!
Earlier, we had a chance to talk to Lindala on set where he was working on David Koechner’s make-up for his grisly tar-covered death on the bridge.
Q: How would you describe the FX demands on this one compared to the last “Final Destination” movie you did?
Toby Lindala: Umm, different? The demands are greater with the 3D, the resolution that we’re required to show up with, the quality. The finer details really have to be that much more precise.
Q: How are you adjusting your methods to work in these new formats of HD video?
Lindala: Luckily, things have kind of come together nicely this time. The stuff we’re doing at the shop has gotten a lot more detailed since the third [film] a few years back, and some of the materials have changed. We’ve been using a lot more silicones and a lot more translucent adhesive appliances that blend out finer. We can produce better textures in them. We’ve had some real challenges, tons of small appliances, which is just a nightmare. Full-body pieces would have been a nightmare just a few years ago, but with this new material, it’s come together really well.
Q: What’s it like working with Steve Quale and what does he bring to the franchise?
Lindala: I was excited from the first meeting with Steve for the fact that he really wanted to take the time with these things. We’ve done a lot of tests. We don’t often get the chance to test our stuff as extremely as we have on this. A lot of this is new territory for me. They choose the spectrum of tone that they’re going to be running through the camera â I think they call it a lutz filter or something â and we’re mixing up mixing up about 20 different tones of blood, with varying consistencies and different textures and colors. We’ve used I think four different tones now for different lighting situations.
Q: And do you test that to see what it looks like?
Lindala: Exactly, to see it playing back, and even with the 3D, the resolution we’re seeing here is crazy. It’s really, really neat, and it’s been a real pleasure working with Steve, because he’s getting these wonderful shots. It’s looks like we’re just going to be splattering the first ten rows of the theatre. So that gets me excited.
Q: Artistically, how much freedom do you get in a movie like this with your carnage sequences?
Lindala: This has been a really wonderful experience. Artistically, there’s some elements that stayed exactly as scripted, and there were some things that were very much in development. So we got to be a part of that process and offer in what we could do and what we were most confident with our materials. So artistically, it’s been great.
Q: When you bring 3D into that, do time constraints become an issue?
Lindala: We haven’t had an issue so much with time constraints, thankfully, but artistically, the 3D has definitely thrown an angle in. We’ve been really milking the 3D angle, not in a cheesy way, but really just using that effect, designing things in ways to really get the maximum effect out of that.
Q: Did you get to do anything new, to put your own mark on this movie?
Lindala: Oh yeah. I wish I could get into details. (laughs) Yeah, definitely. We designed things in ways that â again, some of the classic homage to poking out at the audience â but even in the way things are framed. Like, there’s great moments of implements just hanging over the audience and just oozing blood. The choices made with some of the actors and their performance, to really help linger on these things, they’re great.
Q: How bloody does this get compared to the third movie?
Lindala: It’s definitely juicy. We started out thinking that it was going to be kind of dialed back a bit, but yeah, I’m happy to report that, yeah, the guts are flyin’. There’s been a lot going on, and a change in the feeling to really ramp it up.
Q: So you’d say it’s probably going to be the goriest of them all?
Lindala: It’ll definitely be in the range. The gore could surpass the previous films, but a lot of that is going to come down to the decisions made in editing. These pictures are really exciting to work on. I’m really happy to be working with Craig and Ariel again, the digital effects team. They achieved amazing results on the third picture we did with them in the franchise, so some of the stuff we’re bringing to the table, the different elements, we’ve got a whole bunch of faith in the fact that they’re going to piece them together and make something really spectacular.
Hopefully that gives the fans of the franchise some idea of what’s going into the fifth movie without giving too much (or anything) away. Final Destination 5 opens nationwide on August 12.
Source: Edward Douglas
