For the release of the film “The Last Bogatyr”, the editorial staff of Woman’s Day have collected the most unpredictable and terrible transformations of actors for the sake of roles.
“The last hero”: rotten teeth and nails-claws
It is difficult to find an actress similar to Baba Yaga, and an actor – Koshchei (and who would admit it?). The search for director Dmitry Dyachenko could have dragged on for years, if not for the make-up artists who added gray hair, wrinkles and an evil grin to Elena Yakovleva and painted scars for Konstantin Lavronenko …
“I wanted realism in both images,” director Dmitry Dyachenko shares with Woman’s Day. – I didn’t want the traditional Koshchei Georgy Millyar and the humorous one in the image of Gosha Kutsenko. Therefore, at some point, Lavronenko almost turned into a Mummy. But we thought that such a frightening image was also not suitable, as a result, we balanced on the brink of a domineering cruel person, but at the same time did not allow him to turn into a monster.
At some point, our Koschey turned into a Mummy
Both Lavronenko and Yakovleva were cast. Our best plastic make-up artist Pyotr Gorshenin worked on the images. In particular, for Yakovleva, applying makeup took five hours. Her lips were originally different, a false jaw with rotten lips and also a special make-up on her hands, since Baba Yaga’s nails, according to our idea, are also of different lengths, while Lavronenko was filmed in rubber gloves.
As a result, we achieved our main goal. Both of our negative heroes have charm. They should fascinate, not repel.
Yakovleva still had certain problems with her voice. After all, it was not so easy for the actress to speak with a false jaw, even when we slightly lightened the makeup. Therefore, a number of points had to be re-voiced. “
“Vysotsky. Thank you for being alive”
The excitement around this film, released in 2011, was so great that even the name of the actor who played the main role was not disclosed.
We thought that a specific surname would distract from the character. And the plastic make-up was so complicated that several people were suspected of acting at once.
“The difficulties started from the first day. The face of Sergei Bezrukov, approved for the role, is categorically different from the face of Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky, says the artist of plastic makeup Pyotr Gorshenin. – Each person has his own individual fit of the eyes, the length of the nose, the width of the mouth. It cannot be changed in any way. The faces of Bezrukov and Vysotsky are a very complex atlas. “
According to the artist, it took six months before the “mask” was approved.
“During this time, we redid it nine times,” says Gorshenin. – We removed the actor’s uniform, then we recreated the face from photographs taken from the family archive. At the same time, we immediately abandoned the posthumous cast, since the muscle tissues of the face settle. In the photographs taken during his lifetime, everything is real.
We made the first sculpture, it turned out inorganic: Vysotsky was perfect, but not at all suitable for Bezrukov’s face. We filmed samples with different light, from different angles, gathered and watched the material on the big screen and this was the only way to see profitable and useless areas. “
Vysotsky was perfect, but not at all suitable for Bezrukov’s face
But what is even more curious – some parts of the mask turned out to be less than a millimeter in thickness. And the shooting took place in an abnormally hot summer in Moscow, when the temperature in the pavilions reached 50 degrees and above. Sergei was wet through and through, and his face literally crawled off him … As a result, we came up with a small pimple – a blister, where all the sweat was going. “
The 12-episode biographical series about the clairvoyant Vanga, like all mystical projects, was surrounded by a number of mysteries and inexplicable coincidences.
In Bulgaria, in the homeland of Vanga, local directors were afraid to take on a film about a seer. This did not stop the director Sergei Barchukov, but soon he almost … died. Just before filming began, Sergei was late for a meeting and accidentally fell on the railroad tracks.
Inna Churikova, who was offered the lead role in the film, broke both arms. As a result, Elena Yakovleva played Vangu.
The plastic makeup of the actress was so heavy that it took 5 hours to apply it, and all the scenes of Yakovleva had to be played with closed eyes. After all, Vanga became blind at the age of 14.
“I understood that for this role I would have to wrinkle a lot, and I wanted to see my makeup before starting work. But the most curious thing was to play with my eyes closed. When you play, you deliberately look into your eyes to see the emotion in return. Nothing here. I always wanted to open my eyes and check whoever you are with, ”the actress shared on the set.
At the end of filming, Yakovleva’s skin suffered greatly. She needed more than one visit to the beautician, and they say that she even had to go under the knife of a plastic surgeon.
I understood that for this role I would have to “wrinkle” a lot, and wanted to see my makeup before starting work. But the most curious thing was to play with your eyes closed
The girl, who played the seer as a child, faced no less complicated makeup … It is known from her biography that the soothsayer was in the midst of a hurricane. 12-year-old Dasha Otroshko had to be literally attached to a construction crane, which circled her for several hours. When Wang was found after the disaster, her eyes were literally covered with sand. It took a day to draw all the scars and scars on Dasha’s face, and the young actress had to lie for almost three hours with sand in front of her eyes, this was the only way to achieve realism.
Another Russian TV series about a seer, only this time with Vladimir Mashkov in the title role.
Before the actor, the king’s advisor was played at least a dozen times. Therefore, the responsibility was especially great.
Vladimir Lvovich not only from cover to cover all open sources about Rasputin, walked “his paths”, tried to think like that. But he also remained in makeup after the filming shift. Moreover, the beard, designed for him by make-up artist Evgenia Malinkovskaya, even allowed him to wash in the shower.
“With Vladimir Mashkov, we have been looking for a suitable make-up for more than three months,” make-up artist Evgenia Malinkovskaya admitted to Woman’s Day. – We tried all sorts of beards, thicker or less often, experimented with hair, made overlays. They decided whether they would have their own beard or an artificial one. We stopped at the latter. Only for the final appearance of Rasputin in the film, we will increase them. At first, Mashkov’s make-up took two hours. I came up with a unique beard for him – my know-how, which I tried for the first time. This is not a pasted beard, but hair that we have implanted into the skin one by one. She’s like a real person, you could even drag him by her – she held on. “
By creating Viy, the producers hoped for a worthy response to Pirates of the Caribbean. And they wanted to make a truly Hollywood movie: something that will be appreciated not only in Russia, but also abroad.
As a result, the plot turned out to be something between Gogol’s story and the biography of a real character – Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan, a French engineer and military cartographer who studied the lands of Little Russia and the culture of those times.
In addition to the fact that a whole Cossack farm was built for natural filming, every little thing was recreated with historical accuracy: 21 courtyards, a maidan, a church, a tavern, a mill, watchtowers, it was important for the creators to create a whole other world.
The monsters in “Wii” are divided into three categories – make-up actors, animatronics – dolls that come to life with the help of mechanisms and stuntmen, and completely virtual three-dimensional monsters.
“My task was to reflect the inner world of the character in the monster into which he turns. It’s incredibly difficult! The viewer must understand why a person has become this particular creature. I hope we succeeded, ”said Petr Gorshenin.
My task was to reflect the inner world of the character in the monster he turns into!
“I play Father Paisius, and at first we followed the path of the Capuchin appearance, but then we decided to make it closer to our orthodox church minister,” says actor Andrei Smolyakov.
But Pannochka was put on a special vibrating device in the frame to give the impression that she was shaking with anger; they applied a dull make-up, as if she was turning green with anger, highlighted her eyes so that they shone from the inside with satanic fire … And the young actress Olga Zaitseva, who did not want to waste time while the light was being installed on the site, lying in a coffin, read notes and textbooks.
And although in the sensational film there were no super-monsters, as in “Wii”, and portrait resemblance was also not required, the action of the picture takes place 1000 years ago …
Therefore, the make-up artists had to work on literally everyone who appeared in the frame, including the extras.
It took about an hour and a half to make up one male character every day. More than actresses’ makeup. The reason is beards. They were glued by Tatyana and her colleagues using a unique Italian technology, which practically does not work in Russian cinema. This is a very laborious process: the beard is glued directly to the skin with individual hairs, and not assembled on a special material. Yak hair was used for beards.
“In addition, each hero was ‘textured’: teeth and nails were painted, the skin was ‘tanned’, making it rough and chapped, tattoos and scars were painted,” says make-up artist Tatyana Vavilova. “Kirill Pletnev, who played the role of Oleg, had plastic makeup done: artificial blood was pumped under the frontal pad, which made the dissection naturalistic.”