IMATS Toronto 2009 - Pt 2

(For more on IMATS Toronto check out Part 1 of my report)

I want to start by saying that, like Doug Jones and John Alexander, Mike Elizalde is another one of these supremely nice, friendly people that Guillermo Del Toro seems to surround himself with (I'm telling you - there's something in the water on the Hellboy sets... and whatever it is, I want some).
The last event of the Toronto IMATS was Mike's keynote address on Sunday (that's a picture of Mike, on the left, being interviewed by IMATS chief/Make-Up Artist Magazine editor Michael Key at the top of this post ). The keynote addresses are typically less of a speech and more of an interview (vaguely like an episode of Inside The Actor's Studio but without the questionnaire at the end). This one began by showing a demo reel for Spectral which had TONNES of behind the scenes shots of the monsters of Hellboy II - including some fascinating "skinless" views of some of the Troll Market animatronics in motion. Cool side note: Apparently when Spectral’s top animatronics wizard Mark Setrakian isn’t creating movie monsters he works at a robotics lab for the US government. So there’s some cutting edge electronics up there on the screen. Also on the reel were some shots of the Sleestaks from Land Of The Lost that look so cool they've almost convinced me to watch the film, Will Ferrell or no Will Ferrell.

Then the discussion moved onto how Mike got into make-up and effects (in elementary school he used to save blobs of paint on little wax-paper palettes, re-wet it once he got home, and use that as face paint since he couldn't get his hands on the real thing). As an adult, after a stint in the army, he moved out to California and worked as an air-conditioner repair-man in between looking for FX work. One day it turned out that the warehouse next to one of his job sites just happened to belong to Stan Winston Studios. Armed with his ever-present pocket album full of pictures of his work he eagerly knocked on the door. "They were very nice but they told me to come back when I had more practice," Mike said.

Eventually Mike DID get a gig – on a movie called Arena and from there he moved from film to film, befriending people like Steve Wang, who would one day come and do work for Spectral Motion.

What I had not fully realized until listening to Mike's talk, was just how instrumental Guillermo was in Spectral Motion's beginning. Mike Elizalde met Guillermo while working as a make-up artist on Blade II. Guillermo told Mike that if he got his own shop together then Guillermo would hire him on to do the effects for his next film. After a few hiccups along the way that next film eventually turned out to be Hellboy.

The fact that since then, Spectral Motion has gone on to become one of the top runners in the FX make-up field, expanding at a time when many shops are actually downgrading or outright closing, is a major accomplishment. At the IMATS “afterglow” party on Saturday night, where exhibitors and guests were free to mingle and hang out, Michael Key mentioned that make-up really is a field driven almost solely by passion. Very few make-up artists become either rich or famous. We do it because we love it –and Spectral Motion is an excellent example of that. From their small start Mike Elizalde and his team have gone on to create some amazing make-up and creature effects and from the looks of things have a fantastic time doing it. The fact that they are now being recognized as a leader in the field and receiving Oscar nominations and other awards is, I’m sure, just icing on the cake. Keep up the good work guys!