Warning: MAIN SPOILERS NEXT for vol. 1 of Strange things Season 4.
Strange things Fans had to wait nearly three years for season 4, and the show rewarded viewers with a new villain that makes Season 1 Demogorgon pale in comparison. Vecna establishes psychic connections with the victims in Hawkins without leaving the Upside Down, opening a new door with each person she kills. The last episode of Vol. 1 revealed his identity before being banished to Upside Down, he was One, played by Jamie Campbell Bower. One and Vecna could hardly look more different, so prosthetic makeup artist Barrie Gower explained how the team transformed Bower’s One into Vecna.
Vecna was actually the third iteration of this character, as the finale of the final episode of Volume 1, aptly titled “The Hawkins Laboratory Massacre”, revealed that its origin story dates back to the 1950s as that of Henry Creel, but it was after his killing as Uno that Eleven sent him upside down, ultimately making him the monstrous villain of the Strange things Gift. Unlike the Mind Flayer physical form which was the product of amazing special effects in season 3, Vecna is the actor of some noteworthy prosthetics and Barrie Gower explained why the show came with bad practice in season 4 that broke records :
The Duffers very much wanted season 4 to have a very simple and down-to-earth character. He has a humanoid shape. They were very interested in having someone who has a very simple presence on set who could interact with the cast every day, rather than a character who is a real visual effects, someone in a green screen costume. So we were super excited to be part of Vecna’s creation. We are very excited, after watching the episodes, that what you see on screen is roughly 90% – 95% of our work. She is a practical character.
Clearly, Matt and Ross Duffer were determined to make the Season 4 villain more “down-to-earth” and “practical,” which is undoubtedly why this season launched the first Upside Down threat that doesn’t really. was. torments the victims from within their own minds. The Vecna that fans saw in action in the first volume was not entirely computer generated or produced 100% visual effects, but its appearance was largely created by the practical prosthetics. That meant a lot of time for the prosthetic makeup team and Jamie Campbell Bower, as Barrie Gower explained:
Jamie wears 24 or 25 pieces of prosthetic makeup that stick to the skin every day, and we had new braces for every shooting day. So in total we had around 26-27 sets of devices that we needed to produce for Vecna. It was kind of a daily make-up marathon, which we started with a make-up test in November 2020. I think it started with a process of around eight and a half hours with a team of four to apply it. this trick, and then we managed to get it down to about six hours and twenty minutes at the end. It was our fastest record, but it was like an orchestrated dance we had to do with Jamie every day.
It’s safe to say that Jamie Cambell Bower’s time in the makeup chair performing One for Eleven flashbacks was much shorter than his transformation into Vecna, but Vecna is sure to be one of the more unforgettable parts of Season 4. It offers different types of fears than the Demogorgon in season 1 and the Mind Flayer incarnations in seasons 2 and 3, with an almost Freddy Krueger set of powers. (which Barrie Gower also spoke of experience of working with Nightmare on via Elm by Robert Englund for Strange things .)
So what started Jamie Campbell Bower’s prosthetic transformation process in Vecna? Barrie Gower explained how it all started and the long process of perfecting the new villain’s look:
Let’s start with a full-life cast. We had to sculpt all the makeup with modeling clay. We then had to separate it into different parts, make molds, and then inject two different products into the molds, a silicone material and a latex foam material, depending on where it was on the body. And then it was like big pieces of patchwork quilts, all pre-molded in London, like yet another elementary. So when we showed up for makeup every morning, everything was pre-designed. We stick everything together on the actor’s skin, then airbrush and ink all the dots together and make it perfect. So it’s a huge undertaking and a very long process from start to finish.
There’s a reason it took six to nine hours to create the makeup chair look every day, and Barrie Gower came to Netflix success with an impressive roster of hit shows to her artist name. game of Thrones, ChernobylYes The sorcerer. Spectators who have already completed Vol. 1 and look forward to the flight. 2 can certainly appreciate the amount of work that went into the final villain product. After all, few would have guessed that the actor playing One was also the person behind Vecna when he was first introduced! Gower continued, explaining why they had an edge in creating the villain for Strange things Season 4:
We’ve been very lucky because going from show to show, different franchises, sometimes we get together early and we can design the character from scratch, do a lot of concept art, be part of the design process. . Something like Stranger Things is obviously a well-oiled machine, a very established franchise. When we got the call to join them, they had written the scripts, they had written the whole story. But they also had a very clear vision of what they wanted Vecna to be like. So we were introduced to concept art and shooting by Michael Mayer, who was the concept artist but also the visual effects supervisor. He worked closely with the Duffers and they were very clear on what this character would be like.
The long hiatus between season 3 and season 4 actually gave the Duffer brothers time to write the entire season before filming began, which Executive producer Shawn Levy revealed that he was the first in the show’s history. . Vecna’s plans had been in place for a long time, which helped the design, as Barrie Gower said:
We were initially given concept art, so we knew exactly where we were going to take this character, which is weird. Getting into a production is rare and people are very clear about it from the start. “This is how we want you to look like the character.” Sometimes you can spend weeks or months coming up with plans and trying to get things approved and trying to fix things and really understand exactly what showrunners care about.
The story of Vecna is not over yet, as vol. I ended up with him seemingly more powerful than ever. He has Nancy in her clutches and Dustin’s theory that he is Mind Flayer’s “five-star general” creating gates to help plan to take over the world from the Upside Down. the trailer’s promise that “war” is coming in a whole new light. Heroes might really need to get started reduce this distance between them if they want a chance to save Hawkins!
flight. 2 of Strange things (opens in a new tab) Season 4 premieres on Friday, July 1 at 12:01 am PT. for Netflix subscribers . You can spend the next month checking out the first three seasons and all seven episodes of season 4, or check out ours Program of the first TV 2022 for some viewing options to pass the time until Vecna and company return.
Source: Cinemablend
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