Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Stranger Things, Netflix
Shiala Mahmood
Stranger Things' Jamie Campbell Bower had to spend over six hours every day being transformed into the latest terrifying villain Vecna.
The 'dark wizard' who stalks and murders teens suffering with depression and trauma was created by the cutting edge prosthetic makeup company BGFX.
Company head Barrie Gower has previously won three Emmys for his work on Game of Thrones. The company produced the prosthetics for The Night King, the legendary leader of the white walkers.
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Gower was approached by Stranger Things' creators the Duffer Brothers who wanted to create a similar looking foe for the latest season of the hit show.
Gower said: "With season four, they were after a new, big iconic villain. They decided that they wanted their own version of the Night King, an iconic figure, and they thought ‘Well, why don’t we just contact the guys who made the Night King?'."
The BGFX team of 15 to 20 people started the design process by moulding a full body cast of Jamie Campbell Bower, before sculpting the prosthetics with modelling clay.
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The sculpting process took a month, after which, the sculpture was submerged overnight in a three metre square paddling pool.
Gower added: "We’ve been running our company for about 10 years now and we’ve done some quite extensive makeup, but I think that Vecna is definitely the most extensive sized prosthetic makeup we’ve ever done before. It’s the same sort of process as the Night King but much bigger in scale.”
Once filming began, a team of four, would begin applying the prosthetics to Bower at 2 or 3am everyday. The process was timed to encourage the team to complete the task as quickly as possible.
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On the first day, it took eight and a half hours to glue everything down but eventually the team got this down to six hour and 20 minutes.
With Vecna being a strenuous role for Bower, who does all his all stunts, the team took extra care to ensure the prosthetics would remain intact, using a medical adhesive to glue everything to Bower's skin.
The team avoided covering the armpits and other areas to give Bower full limb movement. The suit was also designed with an undercarriage that could be buttoned on and off so Bower could use the bathroom.
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Bower told Variety: “I had a few records that I was just constantly spinning on repeat as I’d been building the character I’d had on anyway, so there was that, sort of, subconsciousness that was coming through."
Bower would also sit in a room alone to take in his haunting transformation to help him get into character.
Stranger Things Season 4, Volume One is currently streaming on Netflix.