10 Practical Film Effects You Probably Thought Were CGI
9. The Cabin The Woods Monsters
You walk into the meeting with a list of 20 things you wanted to talk about, designer David Leroy Anderson told EW about his usual experience working on big movies, and you leave the meeting with two things that you get to build, and everything else goes to visual effects.
When he worked on Joss Whedon and Drew Goddards The Cabin In The Woods, he was thrilled to find that this wasn't the case anymore. I felt like I was being Punkd, he recalls. But no, this pair of talented creative types really wanted Anderson to go to town on practical effects for Cabins movie monsters.
With just three months to go until filming began, Anderson got to work. The monstrous ballerina with a mouth for a face was somehow achieved with make-up, sculpted by Anderson and applied to a real dancer. The zombie redneck Buckner family were also real actors caked in make-up.
Slug-like monsters were operated by puppeteers, and even the merman in the image above was achieved with practical effects. For the performer on set, it was definitely the most painful makeup, Anderson remembers. He was completely immobile. He was basically a fish for 12 hours and had to be carried around on a stretcher.
Thats a small price to pay to honour old-fashioned ways of moviemaking... right?