Dave Elsey In 2010, Dave Elsey was tasked with one of the most incredible, and at the same time daunting, scenarios a Monster Kid could imagine:
team with the legendary Rick Baker to bring one of horror’s most iconic creatures back to life. We all know that the pair earned themselves a nice set of Oscars for their work. But what was it like for two Monster Kids who grew up thousands of miles apart to work together in re-imagining a character that played such a massive role in shaping their lives and careers? FM sat down with Mr. Elsey to find out exactly that. This is his story. . .
Famous Monsters. Was there a moment for you where you decided that this could be more than just a hobby, that this could be your life, that this was what you wanted to do? Dave Elsey. Yeah. I think that happened really early on. Sort of like 8 or 9, something like that. I looked at that stuff and just thought, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” I couldn’t see anything else that I wanted to do more. The trouble is I didn’t know how to do it and unlike now—now theres school and information and the internet—it was really difficult to research this stuff, so the way I researched it was I literally went through magazines and things with a magnifying glass and tried to read what was on people’s shelves, you know the makeup guys, you’d see pictures of somebody in a workshop and I’d go on their shelves trying to figure out what how they did things. I remember spending maybe a week I think trying to whisk up liquid latex and talcum powder because I knew about foam latex—had no idea where to get it or how to make it—but I’d seen latex and talcum powder on a bench together. Somehow they’re connected, so I was there with an egg whisk trying to make foam latex and stuff and failing.
FM. That seems to be a consistent theme, for people like yourself who kind of set the benchmark for visual effects. There wasn’t formal training; it was really a trial and error process. Not just in technique, but in the combination of the materials. You’d just have to sit there and basically find a thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.
38 FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • JAN/FEB 2012
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