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" When you got the job, did you feel a lot of pressure to deliver on the effects? The Thing is the shining example of amazing practical creature effects. TOM WOODRUFF: Youre right, especially for our world. We dont do visual effects, we only build practical stuff. The Thing was the big movie in 1982 that reoriented everybody toward bigger, louder, crazier, wilder effects. It was way above and beyond what we had seen up until then. You must have been thrilled that the filmmakers of the prequel decided to make use of practical effects rather than going full CG. ALEC GILLIS: Its a double-edged sword. You get the call that youre in the running to do the effects for The Thing and youre immediately very excited, but its daunting because of what Rob Bottin did. And at the same time, youre a little concerned because you havent read the script, you havent met the director or the creative team, so you dont know what their attitudes are like. Are they just there to cash in and make a quick buck on the name, or do they really care? Fortunately for us, and for the fans, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman were very reverent toward the Carpenter film, and when we met Matthijs van Heijningen, the director, he was a great defender and gatekeeper of the style of filmmaking of Carpenter. So we thought, if anybodys going to pull off a prequel, its these guys. What were they asking you to do? WOODRUFF: From the very beginning, there were two objectives. One was to create creature characters that spoke to the same story we saw in 1982. Since its a prequel, we had to develop characters and creatures knowing that storywise, they evolve into what Kurt Russell and his team find left behind in the later part of the story. And the second thing was, they came to us because they wanted a predominately practical approach. Its easy to go overboard with digital work today. They wanted us to create and produce animatronics, makeup, and all kinds of puppet effects, which meant we could show up on set and these things could exist on the set in the proper environment, in the proper lighting, and in concert with the performance of the other actors. Where did you start? I imagine you had to do a lot of research before you could even start designing because you had to end where the previous film begins. GILLIS: The first thing we did was to pull up all of the Bottin stuffall the pieces he made for the film. We looked at them to figure out, what is the aesthetic of The Thing? What is it that needs to be reinterpreted, if it even needs to be reinterpreted? Theres a tendency for people to fix what aint broke, and we didnt want to do that.   I think Bottin and Carpenters goal was to confuse the audience as much as possible, so they had things like an upside-down human head that will sprout insect-like legs. At the time, crashing human textures and hair up against insect textures was very exciting and novel. But now, all these years later, those ideas have been ripped off by the people who have been influenced by The Thing. Its been done to death.   So we had to go, All right, what is it about this that resonates? And to us, what resonates is the human flesh being repurposed to become something else. It doesnt mean that we dont lean toward insect-like legs, or what have you. We just try to integrate them into the human flesh a little bit so you feel like its pulling out of the human being rather than, like, an insect leg stuck into a socket.      Do you think the whole film should have been done practically, with no CG? GILLIS: I think less digital is more effective, but some of the hardcore fans are unrealistic in their expectation that anybodys going to make a movie today and not touch a single frame with digital work. You cant do it because theres too many benefits. There were creature effects that we were able to do because we had the benefit of knowing they could go in and add a digital leg or tentacle or remove a puppeteering rod in postproduction. That gave us a tremendous advantage over what Rob Bottin was doing back in the 1980s. What was the coolest and craziest creature you had to create? WOODRUFF: Theres a scene in the film when things have started to happen but it hasnt hit the fan yet. They bring a guy into the rec room and hes not feeling well at all. Theyre carrying him, supporting him, and hes got his arms around the other guys necks. His arms pop off and sprout legs and become creatures. His legs come off and become their own creatures, and then, in an homage to the upside-down head in the Bottin version, his entire body sprouts a weird cluster of asymmetrical legs and a tentacle out of the chest. He starts attacking everybody in the room, spearing another one of the Norwegians and bringing him down to the ground, climbing on top of him and then melding faces with him, which sets up the two-faced creature from the Carpenter version. After that everything starts going to hell. It was a fun sequence to design, and it required a lot of overlap between the animatronic effects, makeup effects, environmental effects like fire, and also the visual effects aspects. How long did it take build and film this sequence?  WOODRUFF: This was probably one of the most complicated effects because of all the working parts. Probably three and a half or four months out of our build was dedicated to this effect.   GILLIS: Theres probably 7 to 10 various pieces, whether its makeup or burn masks or floppy stunt creatures in that sequence alone. What materials were you using? WOODRUFF: Theres a variety of materials, and our choices are based mostly on how its going to look, or how its going to move. If we get the opportunity well use silicone, which is a great material because its translucentit reads and photographs like real flesh. If its something where movement is more important and it has to be more lightweight than silicone, then well go with a traditional material like foam latex and fiberglass underskulls and structures to give it support, and rigid form building aspects. But for us, the decision comes down to what looks cool and what moves well. How many pieces or creatures did you build total? GILLIS: There were seven main things we made, and then within those there were additional pieces and backup pieces. And you had makeup, too? WOODRUFF: Yeah! Probably the coolest one was. . .there was a great sequence where what used to be the arm of one character morphs into a creature and climbs up this other characters arm and latches onto his face. We did this very cool makeup where these tendril-like claws on the front of the creature are extended through the skin on his face, and its distorting his skin. And again, all this is coming from guys who arent crazy about gore makeup, who are more about character stuffbut this was really a cool effect, and a very involved practical effect. Tom, you also performed in some of the creature suits. What was that like? WOODRUFF: If you want to get the low-budget version, go out and get a wetsuit, sew up a neoprene hood over it, and stand around in that for 4 or 5 hours. Cause thats what it feels like! I love doing it. If youre just creating and designing a creature and throwing it to a stunt guy, thats part of the creature that youre not really developing. If Im inside the creature suit, and Alec is on the outside puppeteering, then that performance is as designed as the rest of the creature was. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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