Old Photos In The Attic: Running Scared (2004)
I recently found an old shoe box in the attic filled end-to-end with photos from my former career as a sculptor and modelmaker for film and TV. We all know that something didn't really happen unless there are pictures of it on the Internet, so I thought I might as well scan these photos in and post them up.
These images are from my time sculpting for the prosthetics department on the 2006 gangland thriller Running Scared. Our job was to supply all the mob violence in the script - bullet hits, gunshot wounds, gory injuries and so on. The film's story was set in New Jersey, but the interiors were shot in Prague, CZ to save money, and that's where we were based.
For whatever reason, our workshop had been set up on the ground floor of a residential apartment block, so we constantly had our neighbours complaining (justifiably!) about all the terrible industrial chemical smells coming from our mouldmaking and casting processes. And then every so often we'd need to go out into the shared courtyard to test our bullet hit blood splatter rigs, causing... a commotion. We were a big nuisance.
This was one of the best summers of my life, just a fantastic adventure working with wonderful people in a great location.
A fake chest I sculpted, so that we could run tubing under the surface and spray out blood and grue to simulate a bullet hit on bare skin. The picture on the right shows the arrangement.
Making a fake head to receive a shotgun blast. The actor was lifecast with a neutral expression (left); I wanted the head to have an properly pained grimace, so I ended up resculpting the face (work-in-progress sculpture on the right).
Test paint scheme for the injuries Paul Walker's character receives, done as a demo piece for production. Very simple, just a plaster life cast of Mr Walker with clay wounds sculpted on top by Brian Wade and me painting the whole thing with acrylics.
Sylvia Graefke does her best to expose my work as the fraudulent sham it is. We were teamed up with an all-girl gang of German makeup artists on this one, and they were a *terrific* laugh - we were out as a giant mob in Prague most nights of the week
An ear bite prosthetic I sculpted, and the result in the final film as applied by the makeup team. Ouch.
Some of the above effects as seen in the final film. I put happy music over the top to counter the unpleasantness (caution: unpleasantness)
Workshop hijinks with (clockwise from top left) Klara Varadi, Lisa Buscher, Sarah Wirtz, Ross Tallent, Conal Palmer and Neil Morrill
During pre-production I was also responsible for buying hard-to-find tools and materials in London, to be shipped over to the workshop in Prague. For some reason the entire budget was Western Unioned to me *in cash*, so yeah, photo opportunity
At one point I was roaming the streets of Central London with *ten grand* in £10 and £20 notes crammed into my little backpack. I don't find myself in these sorts of silly predicaments now that I work in the video games industry
On a tangential note, check out this mad-looking building right outside our apartment