Page 1 | 2 << Production Notes

We will deal with this in four sections - select a section from the menu below:

KNB E/fx - Make-up/mechanical
Alterian Studios - Make-up
Introvision Studios - miniatures and back/front projection

KNB were delighted to work with Raimi again and were fooled into thinking that the budget was collossal, "The script was huge," said Rob Kurtzman the K in KNB. "We didn't know how much money the guys had, and we made a bid that was four times what we ended up getting."

In order to deal with the films various make-up effects Raimi called upon KNB E/fx, Tony Gardner's Alterian Studios. KNB were responsible for the skeletal effects this included;

Ten mechanical skeletons: two cable-operated, eight rod-puppeted
Some of these puppets were operated on dolly tracks or worn as 'back-packs' by crew members walking in trenches. "The thing that Sam tried to do," explained Greg Nictotero, the N in KNB, "because we obviously could only make a limited number of puppets and suits, was mix them up in every shot." Nicotero continued, "It gives the impression that there is indeed an army when there were only ten puppets and 30 close-up suits."

Skeletal body suits for the numerous extras
There were four groups of body suits designed to cope with close-up and long range shots of the invading army of the dead:

- Breakable Deadite figures (nicknamed 'Crushites')
Used in the 'Deathcoaster' scene during the films climax
.- The Deadite pit monsters
Designed by Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger
- Full-size Winged Deadite
Two versions were built to accomodate Raimi's initial idea for the 'Sheila Kidnap scene', a mechanical puppet and a full body suit.

"Sam wanted something that could fly in on a crane and interact with the actors", said Nicotero. "We designed it so the actress could put her arms in the wings and flap them, and we attached fake arms upfront." Shooting subsequently fell behind schedule and had to be filmed using the Introvision process utilising plates shot on location. The puppet was abandoned and the suit was limited to medium shots filmed with interaction between the actress and Embeth Davidtz. In post -production the scene was suplimented with stop-motion animation shots of both the creature and Davidtz.

A witch, inc. full transformation effects for the deleted 'Temple of Ruins' scene
This effect was never utilised although the original design for the witch was used in an adapted scene where Ash realises he needs the Necronomicon to get back home. The witch was played by actress and former stuntwoman Pat Tallman. The 'Temple of ruins' scene will be discussed later on in this section.

Deadite horses (not used)
One of the ideas that had to be scrapped due to budgetary restrictions.

Raimi wanted fullt developed mechanical horses which would have proved costly anyway. KNB developed a cost-cutting alternative that would have proven effective had these scenes been filmed in a controlled evironment such as a studio. "We foam-fabricated an entire skeleton suit on a horse," explained Rob Kurtzman. "It looked really neat, but you needed to shoot it like an optical, against a black background." Raimi reverted to using real horses which gave him a real headache.

Skeltal Horse Suit

Skeletal Horse Art

Winged Deadite

Tony Gardner's Alterian Studios were called on to supplement the make-up effects works done by KNB and take care of the areas that KNB couldn't deal with. Therefore, Alterian dealt mainly with the make-up effects for Ash/Badash and Sheila/Badsheila."Splitting it up [the make-up work between KNB and Alterian] added a friendly competition, which was good for us and prevented them from burning out on the workload." mused Bruce Campbell.

Little Ashes
Gardner's most elaborate task was creating a legion of miniature Ashes that would come out of the shattered pieces of a mirror and attack the full size Ash. "When they called and told me that the script had tons of little Bruces running around, I was terrified - I thought it would be 'Army of Puppets', with a bunch of operators below the set." recalled Gardner.

During filming the following ocurred:

- eight stunt doubles were made up to resemble the main characteristics of Bruce Campbell - such as his chin, cheekbones and forehead
- these were then supplemented by a wide variety of small, mechanical puppets. These puppets were too small to contain complicated animatronics such as armatures, instead the torsos were supported by rods while witres were used to create movement. "We ran cables up through the body parts, so when Sam [Raimi] wanted one skewered to a chair, we threaded fine cables through the fork and out the handle to make the little guy kick." said Gardner.

During this sequence Campbell is tortured by the mini versions of himself which led to some interesting problems for Tony Gardner and his crew. Gardner expains what was needed for the scene where the little terrorist had to hold Campbell's nose and ofrce his mouth open:

"We took a dummy cast of Bruce, put it on a table, and worked out with some posable figures, for example, how these little people would be standing next to his head when they're holding his nose closed and forcing him to open his mouth. We were able to sculpt a body of a specific size whose hands would be at nose level for the shot. We actually pinched Bruce's nose shut, glued the hands to it and glued the puppets' feet to the floor. When Bruce moves around, it looks like they're holding his nose, but he's actually puppeteering them."

Evil Ash
Alterian Studios were also responsible for the 'birth' sequence of the Evil Ash character. Originally Raimi wanted to show a moving buldge beneath Campbell's skin that would move toward his neck; the effect was built but had to be scrapped due to time limitations.

The Evil Ash Birth sequence;
- An eye appears on Ash's neck, then a baby-sized head grows to full size. Three mechanical heads were built, with varying descriptions, supported by a shoulder harness. With one arm behind the harness and his body tilted to one side so that Campbell's shoulders would appear even. A second harness for the other shoulder allowed Campbell to play both the good and bad heads.
- Each harness had a positional arm that was always in contact with Campbell's visible arm so the movements could be supplied by the actor himself, as if both sides were fighting each other.
- Animation was then used when Ash sprouts additional legs and arms and begins crawling side by side his evil alter ego. Raimi hung stunt men side by side for close-ups of hands and feet scampering on the ground.

Evil Ash Make-up and Design
Gardner used the previous sequence to blast the Evil Ash's facial skin off with a shotgun blast to make the grotesque decomposition of the character more beliveable, "I used the gunshot as an excuse to blow away his skin, to sell the idea beforehand of his jawbone sticking out, so that when he comes up later, even more rotted away, it wouldn't be a huge leap." After Ash hacks up and buries his evil self he inadvertently resurrects him and the rest of the Army of the Dead when he mis-speaks the magic words while taking the Necronomicon from the graveyard. "The idea was that his [Evil Ash's] body didn't fit back together quite right," explained Gardner. "We tried to make it look surreal."

Alterian were thus responsible for the following:

- Sculpting elbow-lengh foam gloves
- developing dismemberment scars
- finger-tip extensions and translucent nails
- the ideas for costume design
- the above was developed into a spandex suit, by wardrobe, with slashes on the costume to match the scars

• Garnder was prevented fom applying the make-up on set due to personal business.
• Evil Ash was brought to life by make-up artist Bruce Fuller. Bill Sturgeon co-ordinated the whole thing and handled the puppets.

Gardner had this to say of Campbell, "He's really patient. He had some days when he had to be in the make-up chair all night and they'd shoot his first shot at five a.m. It's night - it's cold - and you've a sponge glued to your head. I don't think people give him the credit he deserves."

Evil Sheila Make-up and design
Sculpted by Roger Barelli and applied by Garret Immel. Gardner still designed the look of the evil version of Sheila. "We tried to make her look sexy and dead - quite a combination." Gardner opted to move away from the traditional Evil Dead look and adopt a 'Bride of Frankenstein ' appearance. "We teased her hair out as far as we could, because you first see her on horseback, and I wanted all this hair flying behind her, with an Elsa Lancaster look - very pale face, prominent bones."

This was the first large scale production that the Introvision process had been used for. It had been used in the past for OUTLAND, the Chuck Norris flick MEGAFORCE and the train scene in STAND BY ME to name three.

Introvision was used as a complete production facility by Raimi when budgetary restrictions meant that some location filming couldn't be done.

What is the Introvision process?
It's a dual screen front-projection process. This allows the actors to be interact with previously shot footage on a conditioned and controlled soundstage. This process is similar to the old 'Blue Screen' process but allows the blended scenes to be viewed instantaneously rather than having to be sent away and processed over a period of weeks (a process used for Evil Dead 2). Bruce Campbell explains, "...with the Introvision system , the next day at dailies you see whether it [the sequence] works or not. Otherwise, we'd be mixing sound effects to numbers. A month after shooting you're still not sure if a blue-screen shot is going to work - you have to send it back and have them recomposite, and nothing's free. With Introvision, basically you look through the camera on stage and say, 'Yeah, that's right.'"

This formula allows the blended action to look more realistic and less faultless than before, as Introvision effects supervisor Bill Mesa explains, "When we do these shots with live action, the projected plate has a matched move to the Introvision motion-controlled camera. So you get no matte bleeds or any sense of matting something together." Raimi directed most of the action sequences against background projected plates, such as the final battle sequence, the graveyard or the Little Ashes sequence. Although the process requires careful precision to align both the screens and their mattes and countermattes the pace of shooting wasn't hindered.

The back projection plates are usually filmed during the pre-production process.

The Set-up
Introvision had four stages, including a smaller one for details such as close-ups. While one setup was being photographed on a particular stage, another could be prepared on a second stage and the third could be used for an actual set. "We could keep rotating," said Sam Raimi. "Sometimes, we could knock off four Introvision shots a day, plus a full day of normal set shooting, so there was really no waiting around. And you get it back the next day with your dailies, already composited."

Introvision's Contributions

Little Ashes

- The scenes with the miniature-Ash's were acted out against back-projected plates by Bruce Campbell and the various stuntmen made up to look like him.
- An enlarged version of the mill-floor was built for the 'Birth of the Little Ashes' from the broken pieces of the mirror. The actors simple emerged from it.
- Bill Mesa supervised the contructed of only one setpiece, that of a fork that would impale a little Ash, "We had to shoot that backward," said Mesa. "We had Bruce dying backward, and a mechanical rig pulled the fork out of him."

Good Ash vs. Bad Ash
For the sequence where Ash has to walk around his Evil Twin, a scene deleted from the original US release, Campbell is seen to rotate around himself. The following process was adopted to film the scene:

- Bruce Campbell was firstly filmed with a live-action motion-control camera, tracking around him while he walked in a circle
- This footage was played back on the Introvision stage using the system that fits around the same track
- The original path was followed by the camera to allow Campbell onto the shot again, opposite his original footage allowing him to walk in front of himself

The Graveyard
This was one of the most complicated and extensive series of shot that were filmed. Introvision provided a full miniature set-up including skeletons that would be animated either by hand or computer. Introvision built a forced-perspective mini-set, blending FOUR different scales to the horizon with the largest 14-inch skeletons in the foreground; the set was 30ft x 40ft.

The phrase coined was 'Go-Animation', a reversal of the traditional stop-motion process whereby the miniture action was shot first and combined with the live action footage later.

Incantations: for the scene where Ash mis-reads the magical words and raises the army of the dead, gravestones are seen to fly like bullets from the ground. The entire graveyard was a miniature set, the tombstones were rigged with air hoses and shot from the ground at a particular cue. Timing was esstential since the air jets, lightning, flying debris and dust were all controlled manually without the use of motion control.

Dead Men Rising: for the scene where Evil Ash supervises the rising of his skeletal army, background plates of animation were shot showing various skeletons digging, walking or rising. Supervising the animation was Peter Kleinow (Robocop, Terminator 2).

As many as 50 moving skeletons were seen in the shot where the camera booms over a hill to reveal the army as the Evil Ash forces himself onto an unwilling Sheila:

1. Six of the skeltons were animated by hand
2. There were four main 12-inch foreground skeletons consisted of ball-and-socket metal armatures. These were animated by Kleinow
3. A 6-inch gravedigger, swordsmen and two sets of marching skeletons were animated by Les Paul Robley.
4. The remainder of the skeletons were controlled by the computer using wire cables connected to stepper motors

The shot last ten seconds in the movie but took 3 days to set-up, rig and light, and around two-and-a-half days to animate. The animators were able to reach the models by the use of 'trenches' cut in the set.

The final sword battles: these were achieved with first filming Bruce Campbell in VistaVision, offering double the negative size of the standard 35mm film, fighting nothing but air. The miniature skeletons were animated based on the choreographed fight sequences and added using the front-projection system. Sparks from the clashing of swords were achieved by attaching an interactive lightning flash on the puppet.

Storming the castle: for the scene where the animated skeletons interact with the live actors ramming down the castle door and then storming it. "Intermixed with those we wanted to add four or five skeletons running in with swords, " explained Introvision Effects Supervisor Bill Mesa. "We photographed a plate on location with [KNB's] Deadites running in. Then on stage, using our tiny Introvision system, because we were just photographing puppets and a piece of castle, we could put the stop-motion characters on the same bridge."