Gino Acevedo Braves Goremaster's Lair: The Weta Workshop will Never be the Same
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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Gino as a Corsair Pirate
GM: How did you get started working in the Special Effects industry?(con't)
I went back to help Dave finish working on the Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child film and then from there worked on a few things with him. Then I moved over to another company called A.D.I (Amalgamated Dynamics Inc.) These guys had hired me because they knew of my mask making experiences that I had back at the Halloween company and they were working on a show called Point Break (1991) with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. They’re basically are surfer guys going around robbing banks wearing President masks.
So they brought me in and I made the masks with them which was a lot of fun.
During that time Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff who own A.D.I., got the call do Alien 3 (1992). These guys used to work with Stan Winston. They were Stan Winston’s main guys for many, many years and they decided to branch off on their own. They asked me to come along for that and so I went to London for a year and worked at Pinewood Studios with them on Alien 3. We came back and filmed for another 6 months in L.A. Shortly after that, we got Death Becomes Her (1992) with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. We did a bunch of animatronic puppets. At this time I was really doing a lot of experimenting with silicones, silicone skins, and we came up with this really great formula for the silicone. The silicone itself is just amazing material because it’s so translucent it’s so much more like flesh than the foam rubber and any of the other kind of urethanes. I developed a paint system for the silicone and I think we were really the first shop and the first film that got to use the silicone and got it on film. It was the puppets we did of Meryl Streep.
After that we got Demolition Man (1993) with Stallone. We did a bunch of bodies for that. Then we got Wolf (1994) with Nicholson and again just doing a bunch of puppets and things of Jack (Nicholson) and James Spader. We also made some animatronic wolves.
I moved around from shop to shop. I did some work with Rick Baker on The Nutty Professor (1996) Men in Black (1997).
I worked with a friend Patrick Tatopoulos, a great guy and great artist. I started with him on Independence Day (1996) and we went and did Super Nova (2000) and Godzilla (1998) and it was about during that time when I got approached by Richard Taylor.
Dwarf Lords from Lord of the Rings.
Let me go back. At that time I was working at K&B Creations with Howard Berger and Howard had said he had these friends that live in New Zealand and they do all the makeup effects and everything for the Hercules (1995-’98) and Xena (1995-2001) shows. They were coming out to recruit people to work on King Kong when it was originally going to happen, this was over 10 years ago now. So my friend Howard said that “Richard [Taylor] really wants to meet you and see your portfolio.” They came out and I met Richard and he said “Pete Jackson and I both love all the stuff you’ve done. Your specialty is airbrushing and designing the paint schemes and we’d love for you to come out and design the paint schemes for Kong and the King Kong dinosaurs.” I said “Sure! That’d be great!”
We kept in touch and of course the film fell over and it fell over because Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young (1998) were happening at the same time that year. The studios thought, “We don’t want to do another third giant creature that (laughing) tears up the city kind of thing.” So they decided to cancel it. It was really a good thing that they did because the technology just wasn’t there yet. It couldn’t have been done like it was, [what] you saw on screen here [in 2005].
Dead Boromir
So while I was working on Independence Day I came out to New Zealand for a trial thing for 3 months with Richard [Taylor]. We both wanted to see how we worked together. I took a leave of absence from Independence Day and then came out here. I then went back to finish up Independence Day. At that time we started on Godzilla and I came back to New Zealand again. I should say this was all during the pre-production for The Lord of the Rings [trilogy] so I came back [to New Zealand] three times. After the third time I had finished up Godzilla and I thought “Oh, you know, this place is pretty amazing and the stuff that they are doing is just uncanny.” It’s just stuff that I’d never seen before as far as designs. It’s really, really cool! I thought “This is just a great place to be.” So I decided to pack up the bags and move out here and stay on for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). I was on the show for about 7 years and right after that we got right into King Kong (2005) really without a break or anything and its just been non-stop (laughing) ever since then! It’s been fantastic!
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