While I'm not new to Myers collecting, I'm fairly new to painting. Having done some of my own analysis lately in preparation for getting a 1:1 paint job on my own H1 replica, these are some conclusions I came to about how the H1 hero mask was painted.
Tommy Lee Wallace (production designer) said in an interview he picked up a William Shatner mask from a local costume store, cut out the eyes, stripped the eyebrows and sideburns and painted it white with Krylon appliance paint. Voila! Instant scary mask. Many fans believe the layers of dirt and exposed flesh tone evident by the second film was earned after days of handling and abuse at the hands of actors and filmmakers. You can see Wallace talk about making the mask here:
I think the weight of the evidence shows the mask was never plain white: it was deliberately weathered by an FX artist during production of Halloween in 1978, and essentially retains it's original paint job even today.
The general weathering of the mask did not change between H1 filming (1978) and the time Dick Warlock took possession of the mask after H2 wrapped. The same weathering patterns appears in photos taken many years apart:
Even the mouth area has experienced almost no change between 1978 and the 1990's:
At some point between 1985 and the time the following photo was snapped in 1996, the chin, jawline and neck were repainted, evidently to hide repairs that were made in the throat area. You can see the sloppy repair work to the neck in the photo below:
It looks like a rip occurred on the set of Halloween 2, probably from putting the mask on repeatedly. Check out the throat here in 1981:
This strongly indicates that aside from the repairs to the lower jaw, chin and neck, the mask's current paint job was received during filming of Halloween '78.
Looking at the photo below then, the face is exactly as it looked in 1978. To my eye that cannot be incidental weathering caused by careless handling during production... unless it was handled by a coal miner or a guy who had just changed his oil. It appears too dense and too uniform across the mask. It does however look just like what you can achieve with a small paintbrush, a sponge, and a thin wash of black and purple acrylics, very similar in technique to how many of the Jason masks were painted.
You can further see that slight purple accents were added to make some of the shadows pop above the eye cuts, on the nose, the lips, ears and even traces on the cheeks. While purple may seem like an odd color, it was commonly used by FX pros for accents. For example, at least a couple of different cowls worn by Jason Voorhees actors in F13 part 6 and Jason Goes to Hell were shadowed with purples.
Collector Billy Kirkus noted on a forum post on Michael-Myers.net that John Carpenter once said the Myers mask had some blue tones in it to prevent the blurring that would have occurred had they attempted to film a pure white mask. He may have been referring to the weathering that you can see here.
[EDIT: I'm probably wrong about the purple. Turns out that when you have a reddish flesh tone and paint a cool white over it the flesh tone can show through slightly purplish. I learned this by repainting my own keeper mask. See the new photos here.]
So that leads us to the question: who painted it? This looks to me like the work of a professional FX artist, and there were none on the set of Halloween (hence the bloodless kills). That leads me to the only other possible conclusion: the hero mask was painted by Don Post Studios.
This is not to say Wallace was lying. Many fans have surmised that he did indeed discover the Shatner/Captain Kirk mask and modified it to get the look he wanted, but that Don Post Studios was contracted to create some additional copies that would hold up better during filming. I've even heard rumored that DPS has a log book with the names of John Carpenter and Debra Hill that dates to 1978. DPS employees have stated openly that they created masks for them at that time as well. To me, the paint job on the H1 mask bears this out.
So I think the most accurate way to re-create a perfect H1 mask is with a combination of thin black and purple washes, with some additional accents to make certain features pop. That's essentially what I've done on my own keeper H1 here:
If you make the purples subtle enough, they're hardly noticeable.
Tommy Lee Wallace (production designer) said in an interview he picked up a William Shatner mask from a local costume store, cut out the eyes, stripped the eyebrows and sideburns and painted it white with Krylon appliance paint. Voila! Instant scary mask. Many fans believe the layers of dirt and exposed flesh tone evident by the second film was earned after days of handling and abuse at the hands of actors and filmmakers. You can see Wallace talk about making the mask here:
I think the weight of the evidence shows the mask was never plain white: it was deliberately weathered by an FX artist during production of Halloween in 1978, and essentially retains it's original paint job even today.
The general weathering of the mask did not change between H1 filming (1978) and the time Dick Warlock took possession of the mask after H2 wrapped. The same weathering patterns appears in photos taken many years apart:
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| Left: 1985 or later. Right: 1978. |
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| Outline of matching weathering patterns. |
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| 1996 vs 1978. |
At some point between 1985 and the time the following photo was snapped in 1996, the chin, jawline and neck were repainted, evidently to hide repairs that were made in the throat area. You can see the sloppy repair work to the neck in the photo below:
It looks like a rip occurred on the set of Halloween 2, probably from putting the mask on repeatedly. Check out the throat here in 1981:
This strongly indicates that aside from the repairs to the lower jaw, chin and neck, the mask's current paint job was received during filming of Halloween '78.
Looking at the photo below then, the face is exactly as it looked in 1978. To my eye that cannot be incidental weathering caused by careless handling during production... unless it was handled by a coal miner or a guy who had just changed his oil. It appears too dense and too uniform across the mask. It does however look just like what you can achieve with a small paintbrush, a sponge, and a thin wash of black and purple acrylics, very similar in technique to how many of the Jason masks were painted.
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| Screen-used Jason Goes to Hell dummy |
Collector Billy Kirkus noted on a forum post on Michael-Myers.net that John Carpenter once said the Myers mask had some blue tones in it to prevent the blurring that would have occurred had they attempted to film a pure white mask. He may have been referring to the weathering that you can see here.
[EDIT: I'm probably wrong about the purple. Turns out that when you have a reddish flesh tone and paint a cool white over it the flesh tone can show through slightly purplish. I learned this by repainting my own keeper mask. See the new photos here.]
So that leads us to the question: who painted it? This looks to me like the work of a professional FX artist, and there were none on the set of Halloween (hence the bloodless kills). That leads me to the only other possible conclusion: the hero mask was painted by Don Post Studios.
This is not to say Wallace was lying. Many fans have surmised that he did indeed discover the Shatner/Captain Kirk mask and modified it to get the look he wanted, but that Don Post Studios was contracted to create some additional copies that would hold up better during filming. I've even heard rumored that DPS has a log book with the names of John Carpenter and Debra Hill that dates to 1978. DPS employees have stated openly that they created masks for them at that time as well. To me, the paint job on the H1 mask bears this out.
So I think the most accurate way to re-create a perfect H1 mask is with a combination of thin black and purple washes, with some additional accents to make certain features pop. That's essentially what I've done on my own keeper H1 here:
I've always been opposed to the idea of other colors being applied to the mask, but this does raise a very interesting point. If the hero mask appears to have purplish tones, purple is very very common in theater and film make up for shadowing. I remember learning that young "always use purple for stage shadow, never use black".
ReplyDeleteWhile the movie may not have had a special effects artist, it certainly had a make up artist. The actors have talked about getting hair and make up between takes. Maybe the mask also got some stage prep? That's not unlikely at all in fact!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried reaching out to other crew members that aren't the obvious John, Jaimie, and Tommy Lee... Very interesting.
Hi, so having done a repaint of this mask, I believe I was wrong about the purple. I changed the basecoat to a darker, reddish-brown skin tone and reapplied the white and I found that the combination of the two colors looked slightly purplish in areas where the spray was thin--its just the red peeking through the cool white. So I was probably wrong!
DeleteYou can see my repaint here: http://jasonlivessince1980.blogspot.com/2018/10/h1-hero-repaint.html although the colors aren't quite like this in person. Thanks for commenting!
I gotta say, I love the blank I got from Martin thanks to your blog. From what I know, Don Post pre tinted the latex flesh then added the shadow and lip colors. In an audio commentary for a dvd version it was said that they sprayed white, then hit it with a mist of black. But for the part 2, I haven’t a clue.
ReplyDeleteGlad you got a DIY, its really a great mask! Only thing is I wish the right side of the jaw was a little fuller, but that's a flaw it inherited from its 1975 Kirk parent copy.
DeleteHaven't heard that it was misted black, but that makes sense. It's a common technique used by FX artists to make something look old and weathered. And in one of the only color photos from the set of H1 (where Michael is reaching for Laurie over the couch) the mask looks flat gray. I've also heard that John Carpenter said blue was added to keep it from getting blurred on film, but Dick Warlock said there's no blue.
The more I examine the H1 mask and the more subtleties and history I learn, the more fascinated I am by the whole thing.
the "weathering" is the streaks and tips used on the hair...it gets on everything and will make your fingers look like you've been through a coal mine.
ReplyDeleteI think the theory that an FX artist weathered the mask deliberately is incorrect. I think it's more likely that weathering was the result of the black temporary hair color used the darken the blonde Kirk hair rubbed off on the mask while filming. It also would explain why the hair color looks lighter in H2.
ReplyDelete