By J.M.Jeffrey
August 2007
Goremaster.com
GoreMaster talks with Gino Acevedo, award winning Senior Visual Effects Prosthetics Supervisor for WETA Workshop. |
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GM: How did you get started working in the Special Effects industry?
As I said Barry [Koper] kind of took me under his wing and invited me out to Los Angeles from time to time. I would go out there and he would take me around to some of the different workshops where he knew some of the artists like Rick Baker, David Miller and Greg Cannom. I was gaga just looking at all the stuff that they were doing…it was just pretty incredible. I would go out there quite a few times a year just to visit Barry and we would hang out, and we became really good friends. He would teach me things and I would come back home to the Halloween shop [were] I had a little workshop there that they gave me. I could do my mad experiments on my friends and stuff.
In fact, I made up one of my good friends as a werewolf experiment. My friend John always loved the horror movies and he knew what I really wanted to get into. We talked about a show that we used to watch when we were kids called Dark Shadows (1966-‘71) and basically it was an old show kind of like a soap opera. But it had a werewolf and it had a Dracula and that kind of stuff in it. He had always wanted to be turned into a werewolf. So after I had started with the Halloween company, I told him “I can turn you into one for Halloween.” So that’s kind of how it all got started he came over to my little shop and took his life cast. I had a friend of mine in Phoenix, AZ, his name is David Ayres and he helped me out. He taught me quite a bit of stuff. David actually ran the foam latex for me for John’s [werewolf] piece. So I made John into a werewolf from being at the Halloween company.
Then Barry [Koper] had always said “You’ve got to come and move out to L.A.” I thought, “Oh, I don’t know about that. There is too much competition!” but he kept egging me on for years and years.
I was probably about 22 years old I guess when Barry called and said “Look, I got you a little part-time gig it’s just for a couple weeks and it’s going to be at NBC. They need a prosthetics makeup artist to makeup a couple of people.” and then he said “You know I put your name forward and they are really interested in meeting you and basically you got the job if you want it.” I thought “Oh my God!” I was really nervous about it. I talked with my mom and Larry [Liff] at the Halloween company said “Oh! Of course! Go for it! Take three weeks off!”
I went to do it. This was really my first gig in Los Angeles and it was at NBC and it was for a Dick Clark show called Friday Night Surprise (circa 1989) and basically it was a take off from an old 1960s show called Masquerade [Party] (1952-’60). At that time they used to get celebrities and have makeup artists make them up to look like other celebrities. It was an audience participation thing where the audience would have to guess who these actors were.
We did kind of the same thing. I made up Alan Hale Jr. and Bob Denver, you know, “the Skipper” and “Gilligan” from Gilligan’s Island (1964-’67). I made Alan Hale Jr. up as W.C. Fields and Bob Denver up as Mae West. So that was my first thing. It was really exciting for me because I’m a huge Gilligan’s Island fanatic it was just the first time that I’d ever been star struck this way with “the Skipper” and “Gilligan”! (Laughing)
After I finished that job I had about a week left over. Dave Miller asked me to come help him do some sculpting work with Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989) [part 5]. Dave Miller is the one who did the original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) he designed the makeup for “Freddy Krueger”. I said “Sure!” and I spent a week over there. In the mean time what had happened back home was that my mom was always pretty sick she had cancer. I was always worried about leaving home in case something were to happen to her. But she was always very encouraging saying “Oh just go if something’s going to happen [it could happen] while you’re here or while you’re there where ever.” Unfortunately while I was over there working with Dave’s shop on Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child my mom passed away in Phoenix. It was a very sad period obviously. But it was at that point more doors opened for me because I really didn’t feel that there was anything left in Phoenix as far as for my career. I thought that this might be a good time to actually make the jump to move to Los Angeles and so I pretty much did shortly after that.
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