Since 1980, Jason Voorhees has been hacking his way through the American imagination, becoming an unlikely object of affection along the way. With Crystal Lake , the Friday the 13th prequel series starring Linda Cardellini as his murderous mother, Pamela, we’re going back to where it all began. Behind young Jason’s gruesome appearance is Special FX makeup artist Dave Presto , who spends hours transforming actor Callum Vinson into the budding killer. And Jason, as it turns out, is only the beginning. There are dislocated jaws, skinned bodies dangling from the ceiling, bear traps, and all sorts of other nasty surprises. To get into the Halloween spirit, and to celebrate the show’s renewal for a second season, we decided to ask Presto a few pressing questions about how he turns a perfectly good cast of actors into some of the goriest, nastiest, most realistic creatures we’ve ever seen.
It’s amazing how a single moment can ignite a lifelong passion. Thriller was that moment for me. I was 10 and could not wait to see it. Back then it was on MTV. I was watching the behind the scenes documentary The Making of Thriller and it was Rick Baker’s creature designs on that music video that hooked me, along with the landmark work of Dick Smith ( The Exorcist , Amadeus ) and Rob Bottin ( The Thing ), which defined modern practical makeup effects. I spent years studying their techniques, from Dick Smith’s pioneering work with overlapping foam latex appliances to Rob Bottin’s complex mechanical puppetry, which is the classic blueprint for mastering the craft. Eventually I took Dick Smith’s Professional Make-up Course for good reason. It codified the transition from my crude methods to sophisticated, anatomically sound prosthetic design.
What’s the secret to making fake blood look real?
To make fake blood look real you have to use more than red. It takes yellow, blue and green to make the blood color look real. Its not just color, it’s the texture of the blood. Real blood is slippery and does not beed over skin. Fake blood tends to bead on skin, and especially silicone. We add a few ingredients to our blood to break the surface tension between the blood and the skin.
What’s one thing people would be surprised to learn about prosthetics?
One thing that surprises most people about prosthetics is that most prosthetic pieces can only be used once. Even though a detailed appliance (made of silicone, gelatin, or foam latex) can take weeks to sculpt, mold, and pre-paint in a workshop, the paper-thin edges required to seamlessly blend the piece into an actor’s skin are destroyed during removal at the end of every shooting day. Because of this, we have to create a brand-new set of prosthetic duplicate pieces for every single day of filming.
How long does the transformation on Jason take?
Bringing Jason to life took hours in the chair. 2.5 for younger Jason and 4.5 hours for adult Jason. Both makeups were multi-piece appliances covering their face, head, neck, and partial back. Usually we’d start early in the morning before anyone would get there.
There were so many! Here are a few: When Valarie gets the meat tenderizer to the face. That moment was so gnarly on set. Her whole jaw was just hanging there by a thread. I told Brad [Caleb Kane] my vision of the effect and he said, “That’s disgusting. I love it.” I went back to my shop and explained what we were going to do and they all looked at me like I had two heads. Then Tree Beard. That’s what we called the guy who takes the tree branch to the face. This effect was all done on camera in broad daylight. We built a dummy head and torso that can be hit with a prop tree branch which was just as heavy and hard as the real thing. The head was designed to split right down the mouth and rest on his back. The eyes would be staring right into the camera’s lens in a close up. Once it opened blood would shoot out and all the gore would be exposed. The stunt guy must have hit the dummy like 15 times. By the time we were done the underskull was shattered. The effect worked and everyone was happy.
Willow’s ankle. She gets her foot caught in a bear trap and tries to pull it off devolving her shin and ankle in the process. There was a lot of gore here. We made two fake legs, one that would activate the real bear trap and the other would be devolved and bleed on camera. A prosthetic appliance was made to be applied to the actress’s ankle. The actress would use the appliance on cue to de-glove her own skin. It was very gory and everyone on set cringed. That’s when you know it works. Then Willow’s skinned body. This was a great opportunity to do some great gore. Her body had to be skinned upside down. I wanted to keep her face untouched so we could recognize her right away. Bryan Blair took the lead on this one and did an amazing job.
Your favorite look you’ve done for Crystal Lake?
That’s a hard one to pick. I will give you my top 3: Young Jason, a dult Jason, and when Valarie gets the meat tenderizer to the face.
What’s your favorite detail on Jason that viewers might miss?
His teeth. You don’t see his teeth that much in the show but they are there. That goes for both young and adult Jason.
John Carpenter’s The Thing . Still the best practical effects to date in my opinion.
What’s the most unusual material you’ve used to create a special effect?
The most unusual material is household unflavored gelatin combined with used coffee grounds, cornstarch, and a touch of liquid glycerin. While commercial silicone and foam latex are industry standards, recycling expired kitchen gelatin mixed with damp coffee grounds creates a remarkably convincing, pliable texture for decaying zombie flesh, burn scars, or rotting tissue. The coffee grounds provide instant, organic particulate texture that mimics dirt-embedded necrotic tissue without clogging airbrush equipment, while the glycerin keeps the gelatin flexible so it doesn’t crack when the actor moves.
What’s the hardest thing to make look convincing on camera?
Subtle human aging. It’s difficult because heavy prosthetics rely on shadow and sculpted depth, which are easier to sell under dramatic lighting. However, making a young actor look authentically aged by 40 years—or making fake sweat, tears, and saliva look organic rather than like globs of glycerin—is brutally difficult. High-definition digital sensors capture microscopic light reflections. Fake skin texture or rigid collodion wrinkles easily look like painted plastic or tape the moment an actor smiles, squints, or moves under harsh lighting. Capturing the true, translucent depth of real aging skin requires hyper-delicate layering of alcohol activated translucent paints that mimic real vascular micro-patterns beneath the epidermis.
Source: Fashion
