Robin Mathews: special effects makeup artist

Makeup Artist Robin Mathews

By J. Jekyll
March 2010
Goremaster.com

Ms. Mathews started her career as an actor, but was bitten by the special effects "bug" and has been creating effects in fantastic movies ever since. Some of the titles he has worked on include: Into the Wild (2007), The Mist (2007), The Final Destination (2009), and Twilight: New Moon (2009. Read on to learn more about her jouney into the makeup special effects world.

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GM: When did you make your decision to enter the field?

RM: I started as an actor believe it or not, and fell in love with special effects make-up from there. I graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where I took a theatrical make-up course taught by Scott Ramp, owner of Screamteam. Screamteam was one of the 1st companies to mass-produce all-inclusive prosthetic MU kits and appliances for public consumption. They also did the prosthetics for 6 Flags Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest every Halloween. Scott was my mentor, and I worked for him honing my chops for about 7 years doing 30+ full facial prosthetics a day at 6 Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest.

GM: What or who inspired you to start? Who was your influence?

RM: Scott Ramp was absolutely my 1st influence in SPFX MU. He took an interest in me and taught me the basic info required to start in the make-up effects business. It seems so long ago, but I remember meeting Michael Key one year at Fright Fest, and he was telling us how he was going to start a Make-up Magazine called “Make up Artist Magazine”.
From there I started getting hired as a SPFXMU artist on films and television.
My other greatest influence would definitely be Sean Penn. He believed in me from the start, and hired me as his Dept Head for every thing he’s directed for the past 8 years. In my eyes, I owe him my career.

Robin Mathews In Alaska, Into the Wild working on Emile Hirsch with Sean Penn looking on

GM: Favorite early special effects memory – movie scene – book – TV show?

RM: Ha-ha, you have to always start at the bottom if you’re going to have someplace wonderful to grow! I remember being the SPFXMU Dept Head for A LOT of “late night” HBO and Showtime specials in the very beginning of my career. (And by the way, those shows were not the high quality HBO, Showtime projects you see winning Emmys now a days).

GM: What are your top five special effects movies?

RM: Of course “The Exorcist” stands out in my mind as my first “real” scare, but I think this is much too difficult a question for my overworked brain at the moment.J “Scareface” is up there too, for sure, and Tom Berenger’s scar in “Platoon” certainly left an imprint (no pun intended.)

GM: Who is your favorite special effects person?

RM: I have to give benevolent props to Matthew Mungle. He has been a mentor of mine from the very start, and he never fails in lending a helping hand. One of the most talented MUFX artists in the business, I’m very honored and proud to have his help. His MUFX products rule, and are unmatched by anyone in the business. Hello, have you seen his aging work??
I’m equally in love with all my friends from KNB. Not only is there work incredible, but they are a constant supply of humor and mental relief for me. Because Department Heading can be such a stressful position, I find it imperative for my life to revolve around humor. I consider it an honor to work along side them at any time.
Christian Tinsley is a God in the MUFX world too, and I wouldn’t think of ordering my tattoo transfers form anyone else. (Funny, but somehow, EVERY show I do has at least one tattoo in it; wonder if that’s an artistic choice?) :)

GM: How did you get started working in the Special Effects industry?

RM: Unlike many other MU artists in the industry that started in MU or Beauty school and then learned FXMU, I was the opposite. I started working professionally in MUFX right away and learned beauty afterward. If there is something I don’t know, I will study it with obsessive like compulsion until I know everything about it, and can accomplish the task. I feel more and more that it’s a rarity in the industry to find artists as good in MUFX as they are in Beauty, and visa versa. I see this evidence when Line Prods/UPMs are hiring. They don’t believe we exist either. I have faith that we are not a dying breed though and I try to take projects that allow me to excel in both fields equally. Almost weekly I get inspiring emails about this subject from artists starting in the business. They want to excel in both too, and I think that’s great.

GM: Whose current work do you admire?

RM: My gosh, who’s work don’t I admire??? Again, there are so many, way too difficult of a question at the moment, but I was just catching up on some movies this weekend and saw “W.” I was noticing how perfectly subtle the aging was in that movie, especially because I am in the process of designing “Bella’s” aging make-up for “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”. When the end credits of “W.” rolled, who was the prosthetic designer of course, but Matthew (Mungle). No surprise there. :)

GM: How have you gotten work in the industry?

RM: I really had an amazing opportunity starting off by applying and removing so many prosthetics at Magic Mountain. Very few people get to have such intense training grounds AND get paid for it to boot!
After that, I just believed in myself and tried to never show a lack of confidence. If a director asked me to do something, I said “Of course”, then studied and called around asking advice until I felt confident I could do the task. I was working professionally as a SPFXMU artist, for a producer that was crewing up a new television series. I asked him if I could be the MU Department Head for the new show. He gave me the Dept Head job and the rest is history. Oh, by the way, that was my first experience on a film or television show doing straight/beauty make-up! I had never even day-played on a television show or movie as a straight artist before. I knew I could do it, and I had the confidence in myself to prove it.

Mathews working on Emile Hirsch for "Into the Wild" (2007)

GM: What was your toughest job?

RM: That’s an easy one… “Into The Wild” was the most challenging but amazing experience of my life. We shot for 9 months, 39 different locations, 7 states and 2 countries, including smack dab in the middle of Denali National Park, Alaska in the summer, spring, winter, and fall. Our skeleton crew camped out under the stars with NO tents, bathrooms, or electricity, for days at a time. Trust me; MOST people in Hollywood have NEVER had an experience like this. Base camp? Trailers? (Even an enclosed area to use the restroom or sleep?) HA!
I got really good at hand-laying facial hair on that movie because Sean didn’t want me to use any lace pieces, and Emile Hirsch was still a bit too young to grow enough facial hair of his own. It’s a nice compliment when people tell me they didn’t realize every bit of the beard and stubble was fake.
I could go on for days about “Into the Wild” because I can’t believe we accomplished what we did much less shot a movie while doing those things!
My other most intense job is for sure “The Final Destination 3D”. We were the first to shoot a High Def 3-D Live Action Horror movie, and the first to shoot on the Pace High Definition 3-D cameras, so it was constantly a learning experience for everyone. We would camera/make-up test, see the results, then send the cameras back to Pace with our notes for adjustments. That alone was about a month long process before principle photo even started. We originated/ built many of the camera rigs and established a ton of industry standards for High Def 3-D shooting. Our UPM kept getting calls from other movies getting ready to shoot on HD 3-D asking if I could be released early to Dept Head their movie since I had been through the trenches already and knew the innuendos of shooting on this media. Shooting in HD 3-D is like High Def on steroids. You can see every tiny pore, seam, and slight color difference in HD 3-D. Let’s say you airbrush a foundation the same color as the person’s skin and leave a bit of the true skin peeking through which on film would give the illusion of “natural” skin, well, the very slight color difference from the foundation to the real skin is blindingly obvious on HD3-D. We must have tested 20 different foundations before we found the ones that looked natural on this media. Prosthetic edges? Get out your magnifying glass! Oh, and lest I forget, in post they can change the convergence (focus) to zoom in on an “extra” 20 yards away that you didn’t even know was there while you were shooting. EVERYONE must be PERFECT at all times! I positively NEVER sat down once while shooting that movie.

Robin Mathews on the set of The Final Destination 3-D

GM: What was your favorite job?

RM: “Into The Wild” was a life experience that will never be matched. I was talking with Sue Cabrall Ebert, president of IATSE Local 706, telling her that that no job I did seemed to measure up to my experiences on “Into the Wild”. She said, “Robin, they probably never will. That was a once in a life time opportunity.” So now I don’t try to compare, I look for the unique good in each new project.

GM: How do you pick out materials to use for a project? Do you make your own? Are there any brands that you recommend?

RM: Christian Tinsley changed the industry for the better by inventing prosthetic transfers. It now takes minutes to apply amazing looking pieces that took much longer before, and time is money. Matthew Mungle simplified the application of the “Transfer” concept even more, if you can believe that. His are applied with a squirt of alcohol, eliminating the transfer paper. (But now I’ve given away one of my best secrets, because for some reason not many people know about his process). Of course PPI products were positively industry changing too. Can any MU Artist even imagine working without a Skin Illustrator pallet? Their products put us light years ahead. For straight make-up, I use a little of everything, constantly testing new lines and products. That seems to be an issue with some artists. They find something that works, and they stop looking at new products. In our industry, the media is constantly changing though, and some of those “oldie but goody” products don’t look great when your film is shown on a high def screen.

Robin Mathews The Mist
Robin Mathews (holding camera) on set of "Stephen King's The Mist" (2007)

GM: Are there any new breakthroughs or ideas in the industry that excite you?

RM: I’m excited by the make-up artists that can do it all; SPFXMU, Hand-Laying Hair, AND amazing Beauty.
I also want to give props to the female MUFX artists out there that kick butt in what may be considered a male dominated field.

GM: What is a current project you are working on? Or what project are you excited about?

RM: My movie “The Final Destination” in HD 3-D comes out Aug 28. That was a serious labor of love, so I’m stoked to see that!
I just saw a screening of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” that rocked! (Wait until you get a load of Tailor Lautner and the wolves). We got to shoot part of “New Moon” in Italy, so that was a total trip. I wish I were back there now. :(
I am in Vancouver right now starting “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”, and 2 days prior to coming here, I wrapped “The Runaways” with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. (Those two were unbelievable; completely playing their own instruments and singing themselves. You’ve never seen Dakota Fanning look like this before. This will be a breakthrough role for the both of them I’m sure. They were undeniably fantastic. Oh, hanging out with Joan Jett every day didn’t suck either!).

Joan Jett, Kristen Stewart (as Joan) and Robin Mathews on set of The Runaways

GM: Do you have advice for a beginner or someone just getting started in the business?

RM: Ok, here is my standard answer for that question which I get asked A LOT…My advice to ALL starting make-up artists would be to study Drag Queen make-up, or at least (good) Porn make-up. It is an extreme study of how unappealing features can be sculpted into beauty, and how bone structure can be morphed into something completely different.

Robin Mathews Aging Kristen Stewart for The Twilight Saga Eclipse

GM: What was the best advice/training you ever received?

RM: Sean Penn taught me to never question, never debate, just get it done…now.

GM: How do you envision the future of makeup SFX? (do you think CGI is hurting the industry?)

RM: I think CGI is helpful in certain instances. Let’s face it, with HD, you can see every little unblended edge, flaw, blemish, etc. Help in post can make shooting go much faster, and save time and money, as well as make a better, more seamless product. When you can inform the director it will take 15 minutes to fix a small MU issue or he has the choice of smoothing it over in post, it gives the production a viable option. I believe it is helpful in these ways, but am not a fan of films that are completely GCI.
I think “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was a great example of combining the two industries.

Learn more about Robin Mathews work:

The Final Destination (3-D) thefinaldestinationmovie.com

The Twilight Saga: New Moon twilightthemovie.com

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse twilightthemovie.com

The Runaways therunaways.com

Welcome to the Riley’s www.imdb.com/title/tt1183923/

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