First teaser trailer for the upcoming movie Madden, directed by David O’Russell and starring the great Nicolas Cage and Christian Bale just came out a few days ago and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Lots of work went into creating all of the makeups needed for this one and the entire team will be undoubtedly proud of the final result. Can’t wait for Thanksgiving 2026 when it will be coming out.
Repost from @amazonmgmstudios Your first-look at Nicolas Cage as John Madden and Christian Bale as Al Davis on set of the upcoming film, Madden. Production is currently underway.
The film follows Madden’s remarkable journey—from his Super Bowl-winning partnership with Al Davis and the Raiders, to creating Madden NFL, and becoming one of the most iconic voices in football history.
David O. Russell is directing the film, which also stars John Mulaney as Trip Hawkins, Kathryn Hahn as Virginia Madden, and Sienna Miller as Carol Davis.
#MaddenMovie#christianbale #sfx #dianachoi #aldavis #wigs
Another super fun effect done for the movie Thanksgiving where the character of Lizzie (played by the very funny Amanda Barker) gets rammed by a car against a dumpster, severing her body in half at the waist!! I first cleaned up and the facial expression on the cast, then then the head and hands were expertly molded and casted in silicone by Dalton Kutch and Tim Jarvis. Joe Cowell handled the “body-splitting-in-half” rigging duties. I then made the acrylic eyes and teeth and painted the head while Jamie Grove painted the hands. Kathy Tse took care of the hair work. And finally, Joe Badiali handled and supervised the effect on set.
Always feels like Christmas morning when you first arrive on a movie set and open the crates that your shop has packed and sent for you. Filled with fake heads and limbs. Prosthetics neatly mounted on vacuform bucks. Silicone intestines and organs. Buckets of fake blood and makeup FX supplies goodness!
How could anyone think that this is not the best job in the world?!
Seen here are some of the pieces made for the dinner scene in Thanksgiving.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! This year, the youngest member of the family wanted to go trick or treating as Zomboss, a character from the Plants VS Zombies video game and comic books. I quickly sculpted a pull over mask in 3D over a scan of his head, 3D printed the mold and pulled a latex/polyfoam cast from it. Painted with PAX paint and sewn a Mad Scientist type lab coat just in time for tonight! Since I didn’t want him to be alone from that video game, I’ve ordered a Pea Shooter costume online for me to wear. Can you tell which one out of the 2 costumes is homemade and which one is store bought? Hahaha
In the summer of 2017, the producers and director of the movie Vice called me to see if I’d be interested to act as a makeup and prosthetic consultant and advisor for the pre-production and actual shoot of the movie.
Being a huge Adam McKay fan, I was thrilled at the idea of working on one of his films. In addition, the prospect of (potentially) collaborating with one of my lifelong makeup hero, Greg Cannom, was equally exciting to me.
It was decided by the producers that they would give me the duties of the conception, fabrication and on set application of the makeup for the Donald Rumsfeld character (played by the legendary Steve Carell) so that I could be physically present during the shoot.
Fantastic makeup artist Erik Porn helped me gluing down the pieces in the morning and I handled the rest of the makeup application and on set maintenance. Our pieces were sculpted by my long time right hand man, Michel Bougie and the I believe that the wig made by Justin Stafford (but I’d be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong on this one).
The project turned out to be a once in a lifetime opportunity by allowing me to be working alongside a true who’s who of makeup superstars like Chris Gallaher, Kenny Myers, Wesley Wofford, Jaimie Kelman, Kate Biscoe and many more….
Real live on set animals are notoriously difficult to work with. I’ve actually often heard directors say that “Real animals and babies on set equals frustrating times”. This said, I’m willing to bet that those same directors are saying the same exact thing about makeup effects when we’re not around!
For the movie Pet Sematary there were many scenes where Church, the family cat needed to be sleeping in a corner of the room where the action was taking place.
So instead of having a poor animal pretending to sleep for days on end, the production asked us to build a sleeping and breathing replica of the real cat.
For Alex Aja’s Crawl (2019), we had to build a series of makeups, fun gore and blood effects, dummies and animatronic animals that brought us a wide range of challenges. One of those fun effects was for a scene where 2 looters are being eaten as they ransack a flooded convenient store. Alex came up with a great shot idea where one of the 2 thieves gets pulled under water by an alligator and gets violently bashed against the store window. All of it was to be filmed in a single shot starting on our actor (George Somner) walking knee deep in the water in front of the store, getting pulled under the water and at that moment an animatronic dummy we made, mounted on an hydraulic piston was bursting out of the water right in front of the store and was to be projected repeatedly against the metal bars in the window while we pumped fake blood through a series of tubes.
The dummy was expertly painted by master painter Cyril Hipaux and the hair done by Kathy Tse back at the shop. Me and Pierre-Emmanuel Kaas handled the effect on set. Our job is SO MUCH FUN!!
Around 2015-2016, we were asked to create full body prosthetics and costumes for a docu-reality movie called First Man (not the Ryan Gosling one) depicting the life of our early ancestors. There were 55 individual characters makeups and suit to design, sculpt, mold, cast, paint, sew, fabricate, hair…. in only 7 weeks time! We then flew down to South Africa for the shoot. I stayed there only for the initial makeup tests and the super talented Caroline Aquin handled the makeup team supervision duties after my departure. Shout out to Clinton Aiden Smith and his team for their invaluable help with the application and maintenance on set! Here are a few pictures of the process and of the final makeup creations.
I have been a massive Stephen King fan since the age of 12 years old. To this day, I still read every book that the author writes and releases. With my favourite one being Pet Sematary, I was beyond myself when we were chosen to handle the makeup effects duties for the 2019 film version of the novel.
We have created tons of different makeups and effects for the film, including a dummy (head seen here) of the Ellie character played by Jeté Laurence. The lifecast was poured in clay and cleaned up by Michel Bougie. After being molded and casted in silicone, Michel expertly painted the head and the hair work was done by Kathy Tse. This head was so lifelike that there was something very unsettling when you would be looking at it in person.
As we were already working on the animatronics and makeup concepts for the 2016 Warcraft movie, the producers asked us if we could build lightweight life size Orc stand in figures for light and photographic references on set.
Short of making those characters as full animatronic creations, it was still a lot of fun to sculpt, mold, cast and finish these giant figures. Here are a couple of the Orcs that we made. Hope you’ll like them!
