How Vikram is like a ‘Hobbit’ orc

The gigantic monster from Godzilla intimidated viewers, while the fantasy lands of The Lord of the Rings and Avatar swept them off their seats. The common thread? The Oscar-winning New Zealand-based design studio Weta Workshop, making their foray into Indian cinema for the first time with Tamil director Shankar’s I, out on January 14.

Ahead of the release of I, tabloid! caught up with Weta prosthetic make-up specialist Sean Foot, who has been working at Weta Workshop for the past twenty years, working on the likes of The Lord of the Rings, The Last Samurai, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He created two looks for Vikram, and four other characters in the film. “I can’t reveal them at this point,” he says. “Viewers will be surprised and shocked when they see them onscreen. I don’t think anything like this has been seen in Indian cinema before, if not in the world.”

Next up is the armour for another Indian film — Baahubali, a Telugu-Tamil bilingual directed by S.S. Rajamouli.

Q. How did you create Vikram’s different looks?

A. We worked on two looks. The prosthetic make-up were made at our workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. The beast make-up [for the Ennodu Nee Irandhal song sequence] was mostly a foam latex costume, similar to the Orc costumes that we made for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Vikram could just slip into it and zip it up at the back. The face mask was made of silicone, which is very soft and skin-like. It took about an hour and a half to glue it on. The face for his other look, that of a hunchback, was also made of silicone, in six separate pieces that also took an hour and a half to glue onto him. During the removal process, which takes around forty minutes, the pieces get destroyed. So new pieces were made at Weta every day. My colleague Davina and I ended up doing the make-up around 70 times, which is huge amount of work. For the body of the hunchback, we used 20 to 30 separate pieces — around five hours of work to put on.

Q. How did that affect his skin?

A. Vikram had to keep on the costumes for around 14 hours a day, over two weeks. The material does not breathe and causes heat and perspiration. There were minor irritations which were dealt with moisturisers and skin creams.

Q. How was it working with Vikram?

A. I can’t really say enough about how good it was to work with Vikram. This project was an incredibly hard job on all of us with long hours and lots of travel to some beautiful places. If I was ever to go into battle or attempted to climb the highest mountain, Vikram is one person to have by my side. He went out of his way to help us and make sure that we had everything we needed. Not to forget the delicious home cooked meals from his family.

Q. How was working with Shankar?

A. It was a wonderful experience and a pleasure to work with a director who had a clear vision of what he wanted. He was constantly pushing us to do the best work possible, giving us enough time to get it right, which is often a rare thing in this industry.