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If you work in the makeup or VFX industry and the opportunity to take on Dracula comes along, you’re not going to pass it up, with two-time Academy Award nominee Göran Lundström fulfilling that role on this weekend’s new horror The Last Voyage of the Demeter.
Adapting “The Captain’s Log” from Bram Stoker’s legendary novel into a feature film, the movie makes the most of its blank canvas to tell a new spin on the tale, with the design of Javier Botet’s vampire a key element of the production as he evolves from a withered husk to a fearsome beast.
We Got This Covered had the chance to speak to Lundström about his involvement in The Last Voyage of the Demeter, how you go about putting a new twist on a monster known the world over, which creature of legend he’d love to tackle above all others and much more, which you can check out below.
For someone in your line of work, presumably you don’t have to think about it too long or for too hard when the chance comes up to work on a Dracula movie?
Göran Lundström: Not really, because it’s kind of the reason I started doing this! It’s these kinds of movies, obviously. It’s just, I was kind of surprised, because I haven’t done a lot of creature movies. I’ve done a lot of character films, and a lot of character makeups. So my immediate thought was, “What can I bring to the table?” Because there’s a lot of people who only do monsters, and I don’t. I’d love to, but I’ve just ended up, you know, with these character makeups. And people want me to do that realistic makeups. So it’s always an interesting challenge.
I even question it with my crew. It’s like, “What can I do?,” and they were all like, “Just go with your gut, you know, try to figure something out that you like.” And that’s kind of what you have to do. You can’t second guess what other people want. You have to kind of go with what you feel is interesting. And maybe something you haven’t seen before. As much as you can go there, it’s really hard to go into territory we do. And something has never been seen before. That’s rare.
The project has been in the works in one form or another for over 20 years and the concept has largely remained the same, so were you able to come in with a completely blank slate and build this Dracula from the ground up, based on the requirements of the story and the needs of the filmmakers?
Andre, the director, had been on this much longer than I was. He’d already worked on concepts, there’s been other people involved as well before. Like I said, this project has been around for a while. So they already had an idea. But I was surprised it was such a loose idea that gave me. They had a picture of a small maquette, which is a small sculpture that I think had an atmosphere more than a design. It was kind of like a cool sketch of the creature. But it wasn’t finished enough to turn it into a full-size thing.
But I was trying to figure out what Andre liked about it. And I think it was more the atmosphere, what you feel when you look at that picture. And then at a certain point we have to start sculpting something to look at, you know, instead of getting stuck on this photo, so I started sculpting a full-size head. And then once we were doing that, it was much easier to pinpoint things and start changing, and then getting Andre and and the producer Brad [Fischer], because I was collaborating with him every day to start finding something we liked.
And in the beginning was more like a skeletal old man zombie thing. It wasn’t really defined as a vampire. And then a certain point, because in the script, we refer to all the stages, or four stages. We refer to them as Nosferatu, all of them. But we had one, two, three, four. And we knew one was going to be a werewolf. So that was kind of easy. But the other three were kind of undefined. And there are certain points, the last stage started becoming a bat, or more animalistic thing, and then I felt I should we shouldn’t keep something different for the other two stages we still have left.
So we started calling it man Nosferatu, and bat Nosferatu. And then I figure if we call them Nosferatu, I stick some Count Orlok in there, you know, something in there that kind of resembles… Because there wasn’t any idea really, what characteristic it’s supposed to be. We had some defined old man kind of look, but nothing more. So I figured what would Count Orlok look like if he was really, you know, shriveled and old and emaciated? And so I stuck a little bit of him in there. It’s not really like a Count Orlok makeup, there’s no brows and stuff.
And then, the point is just to get some sort of a vampire feel into it. So we had those two that differed quite a bit, then we had also a request that the bat creature should have smile, which was kind of odd. It’s not something I would come up with, maybe. And that supposedly came from Steven Spielberg, from what I heard from the producer. He told me that. So I don’t know. It’s hearsay. But that comes from some 60s TV show that I never remember the name of, where this guy had a permanent smile on his face.
And it was kind of eerie to have a face with a smile stuck on it, and I think that’s what they liked. So I did that. And then from that maquette, we had we had that the creature had no eyelids, it was basically like two eyeballs revealed. So Andre wanted that, if we could keep that. So we stuck that on all of the stages, we built eyes on top of Javier. So the actor’s own eyes, with no eyelids, basically two eyeballs that were more revealed, which gives him a really eerie look, because you identify differently when you have those staring eyes. And then I wanted to make sure what I can contribute was, if I look at the Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie with Gary Oldman, all the eyebrows, they’re really angry.
That’s been the thing, you know? And I wanted to stay away from that. We have that smile, but the smile and angry eyebrows becomes a little too much, I think. So I figured I’ll just do neutral eyebrows, like it’s looking at a skull almost, so it’s just a natural eyebrow. So you don’t have an expression, I think the expression is what a lot of times we created, we wanted like an instant feel. So we give them a very angry expression. So people can see in the split second, it’s an angry creature.
And so I figured I’ll just give him this blank look, so when you see his face, it’s not an expression, it’s just a blank. The smile can ruin that a little bit. But it kind of makes it look even stranger because they have a smile. And the eyes don’t tell you anything. And then you don’t have an expression here. If you’re smiling, you usually do this with the cheeks. So it was kind of a mix of things in there. That just makes it look a little bit different, I think, hopefully. And then we have all the wrinkles I wanted to put on it.
And that was something I saw in the maquette as well. That the skin was kind of falling off. So I figured I’ll just do this wrinkly skin all over to make him look really like he’s been dug out of a grave. So a lot of elements go into that, then in collaboration with with the directors, because the director and producer, they had their ideas, and then I just had to take them somewhere.
Was it a different experience for you having worked on productions where there can sometimes by dozens if not hundreds of prosthetic and/or digital characters to something like The Last Voyage of Demeter where there’s just one, but it’s the grandaddy of them all?
I mean, I prefer to focus on one because you can put more energy into it otherwise. It felt like it was more because we had four stages. And there’s also the werewolf that kind of came out of nowhere, because it’s in the book, the werewolf transformation. It’s not in the film in the end, because I think that scene was difficult to follow as an audience member, so they changed it to get out.
But I could get the sense that if I made a film like Hellboy, it would be all those different creatures and species. And that will be such an undertaking, because here we had one character. When I did the werewolf that was like, “Oh, crap.” And we started late as well. I came into production quite late. So I was designing while we were building.
So I think we were sculpting the body for the head without knowing what the head look like. It wasn’t like a big thing, to start building that. But it was kind of weird to have people sculpting or something while I was trying to design with the producer and director. Yeah, so I kind of lost the thread, sorry!
You’ve done Dracula and you’ve done the Wolfman in amongst various other ghouls and monsters, but is there any one creature or character above all others that you’d love to get your hands on?
Everyone wants to do a Frankenstein, but I think, “No, everyone is going to fail.” I think it’s just such a hard thing, because that makeup is the best. I mean, it’s the best makeup ever, because it’s a character makeup on a on a really interesting-looking actor. So I think it’s really difficult. I think if you want to do a Frankenstein, you have to find a really interesting place to build it on, and not do the same kind of makeup.
So I think it’s a difficult one. I’ve been lucky though because I kind of have two careers I’m doing. I’m a gun for hire when I don’t want to run my own jobs. I’ll go and work for some people… so I just came back working the new Alien movie for Legacy Effects. And it’s awesome just to travel, and go on set being on an Alien movie because I wouldn’t get an Alien movie, it’s very unlikely that they would give one to me. So just being part of it is awesome, same with Star Wars, just being honest. The set was amazing.
So I think I’ve been lucky to be on all of these films that I kind of know, I was on Wolfman as well. Now this Dracula movie. So I’ve been lucky. But yeah, I think Frankenstein would be the thing. But on the other hand, if you’re wishing for something, maybe it would be too much pressure if you get the dream project. I don’t know. It’s difficult, because you never have, you always feel like you’re gonna have, “Oh, if I’ve got to do this, I’m going to do all of these things.” But you never have the time, you get thrown into this. And then you go like, “Okay, you’re going to be done in two or three months, and it has to be done.”
And then you don’t have the time to think about that much. So it’s never as enjoyable in the way you’re imagining it. So if I have a dream project I want to do, it wouldn’t be set up the way I wanted to. But I do think Frankenstein will be the only one I can kind of think of now. I’ve been on a lot of sequels and remakes that I grew up with. Which is amazing, because you feel like, “Oh, I got to do that film I actually looked at, and it made me want to be a makeup artist.” Like, I did Coming 2 America as well, the sequel, and I was like, “Wait a minute, this is one of the reasons I started doing this job, and now I’m on the sequel!” So that film is really cool. So I’ve been I’ve been lucky, but Frankenstein will be my answer.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is now playing in theaters, and you can check out our review of the movie here, as well as our exclusive interview with producers Mike Medavoy and Brad Fischer.