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Makeup artist James MacKinnon has been a part of the Star Trek family since the early ’90s. In recent years, he’s served as makeup department head on Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, and all three seasons of Star Trek: Picard. With the latter series now wrapped, we caught up with MacKinnon to talk about the challenges of creating new looks for the celebrated final season, and on being part of the Trek family for decades.
Nerdist: Definitely the most regular prosthetic makeup on a single character you got to do in Picard season 3 was on Worf (Michael Dorn). Obviously, Worf has white hair now, so that’s a visual change. But this was the first time Michael Dorn was in his iconic Klingon makeup in 20 years. He looked like the Worf we remember, but were there any subtle changes you made to his look that the average viewer might not notice? Beyond just the white hair?
James MacKinnon: I think we’re elevating what we did in the past, so still keeping to the core of his character. The sculpture is a little different. Our Klingon prosthetics are a different material. They were foam latex back then, and now they’re silicone, so there’s a weight difference. The paint job is different. Back in the foam days, it was opaque, so you had to paint all that detail, and now you kind of see through it.
We splatter this type of skin texture on there to have more realism, because that 8K camera can now see all the sculptures and all the paint. As an artist, you actually have to fine-tune where you don’t see my little paint splatters from an airbrush that looks realistic. That’s my job, to make sure that you look at him as Worf, not as Mike Dorn in makeup. But the sculpture is a little different, similar, but again, it’s different because the material is different and the flow of it is elevated, but still super close.
Your very first professional work was on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine back in the day, and then later the film First Contact. Even though you’d already worked on modern Trek shows like Discovery and the first seasons of Picard, with the original cast of The Next Generation back, did it feel like this season was like coming full circle for you?
MacKinnon: Oh yeah, but I was already seeing Jonathan Frakes in Toronto on Discovery, because he was directing a couple of episodes, so it was just great. They’re kind of my family now. It’s been so long. That relationship is there, and I can call them friends now, because we go to dinner, and I do little side projects with Jonathan for his TV show that he’s doing, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. But we have a little personal connection there, as well, which happened way back then. We were much, much younger, and they were a little bit older than me. Not by much, I’ve just aged well. (laughs) But it’s really nice to have friends that long and have a career expand with such an iconic TV show that is part of everybody’s life.
The makeup on the Borg Queen in Picard season three is the coolest and creepiest she’s ever looked. There was an HR Giger influence on her look going back as far as First Contact. But now it’s full-blown horrific. Was there ever any concern from the showrunners that she was maybe too horror-esque, or did they encourage you to take that far?
MacKinnon: Well, I think [Picard showrunner] Terry Matalas wanted it to be like that. Neville Page is our alien designer, so that starts with Terry and Neville, and that magic happens. After that, it goes to Vincent Van Dyke, where he has to figure out how to make that one-dimensional photograph sculptural, put it on her face, and how is that going to break down into pieces that I’m going to have to put on. There is subtle changes after that.
The process from the design, to the makeup, to the building, to the foam latex, to all the stuff; it all has to work for me on set as well. That’s the best combination of a team that this makes between me, Vincent, and Neville, because they know what they want, and who knows what happened underneath that swirly pool of goop that they fell in [in First Contact], because obviously, Data popped out and he was a little effed up, melted. He came out like that, so what is she going to look like? That’s been 20-some-odd years, so there’s a rotted zombie mess to it. That took five hours to do that makeup, too, which was fun. At 1:30 in the morning, we would start and at 7:00 in the morning she would go to set. Everybody’s sleeping while we’re working.
Speaking of the Borg, we saw a new incarnation of the Borg in the Picard series finale with the young Starfleet officers. Those all leaned into the zombie more and less into the robotic prosthetics. What kind of changes did you implement to make sure they still read to fans as Borg?
MacKinnon: Yeah. That was more of that nanobot type, that nanobot stuff that we did in a previous season. It was a little more showing where that is taking over their skin, so the veins are coming through. There’s a depth in there. There’s that possible roboty-type material too. It was a layering effect before they were to get to become true Borg, where their missing parts are put together. Right before they’re almost completely Borg instead of human. There was a little bit of a play of, how do we do that transition before they become the Borg? I agree with you, it’s a little rotty, veiny, and gross.
One place that had the most aliens in season 3 was the planet M’Talas Prime, where we met Ferengi crime lord Sneed. We hadn’t really seen Ferengi in a long time in Trek, at least not any with significant screen time. What was it like to do classic Ferengi makeup after so long, only now for a 4K world?
MacKinnon: It has been decades. It was amazing. Our Ferengi, Sneed, his makeup, and the actor underneath it were amazing. Obviously, we elevated that so you didn’t have the piece of carpet around the back of the head [like on The Next Generation] and that most likely was there because sculptures then were different. You didn’t have to have a complete sculpture back there, and you could have that hide all the seams and the edges. Now we got to actually see that, see the detail, what it would look back behind his head. It’s just an elevation. You still kept that core classic Ferengi look. But with those new materials, it can just be softer and more organic of a makeup now, yeah.
We saw Vulcans in this season of Picard too, who are very different from previous Vulcans. These were gangsters. How did you approach them, as opposed to the cousins, the Romulans? They’re almost the same, but not quite.
MacKinnon: Yeah. I mean, that’s a difference in the pointing of the eyebrows. The ears are shaped a little bit different and have a little bit of ridges. Kind of like the Romulans from the South [of the planet Romulus] had ridges. The Romulans from the North didn’t have forehead pieces. That’s a long story. That might’ve been more of a budgetary thing, anyway.
You actually got to have an on-screen role in the final episode of Picard as a Starfleet officer. Before that, you played a Borg drone in season one, and appeared in Discovery too. Was it fun to be on the other side of the camera, and did you get a bit of the acting bug at all?
MacKinnon: I do! I like to get a SAG day out of it so I can get some residuals [laughs]. No, but I like a little bit of acting. I’m not an actor at all, but I like to put my face on there. On Discovery, Airiam, the robot girl, I was the guy who unplugged her and turned her off. I got to create her, and then kill her, basically.
Now that Picard has ended, what was the highlight of all three seasons for you? And what was your favorite of the metric ton of different makeups you got to do over the course of the series?
MacKinnon: It was to walk around that corner to see that legacy cast on the ship from The Next Generation. Yes, half of our makeup budget and everybody’s makeup budget went to build that ship. Not that I’m happy about that, but it was worth penny-pinching a little bit. Unfortunately, we penny-pinch for this kind of thing. Just to see those cast members again, after I saw them a hundred years ago in that same situation. They’re a couple of days older, but not by much. They’re what, 27 now? Yeah, it’s fun. It’s a fun relationship to have and grow with, and be part of. I’m sad it’s over with.
Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection Blu-ray set arrives on November 7 from Paramount Home Entertainment. It contains seasons 1-7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 4 feature films, and seasons 1-3 of Star Trek: Picard.
The post STAR TREK: PICARD Makeup Master James MacKinnon on Creating Aliens for Season 3 appeared first on Nerdist.
Makeup artist James MacKinnon has been a part of the Star Trek family since the early ’90s. In recent years, he’s served as makeup department head on Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, and all three seasons of Star Trek: Picard. With the latter series now wrapped, we caught up with MacKinnon to talk about the challenges of creating new looks for the celebrated final season, and on being part of the Trek family for decades.
Nerdist: Definitely the most regular prosthetic makeup on a single character you got to do in Picard season 3 was on Worf (Michael Dorn). Obviously, Worf has white hair now, so that’s a visual change. But this was the first time Michael Dorn was in his iconic Klingon makeup in 20 years. He looked like the Worf we remember, but were there any subtle changes you made to his look that the average viewer might not notice? Beyond just the white hair?
James MacKinnon: I think we’re elevating what we did in the past, so still keeping to the core of his character. The sculpture is a little different. Our Klingon prosthetics are a different material. They were foam latex back then, and now they’re silicone, so there’s a weight difference. The paint job is different. Back in the foam days, it was opaque, so you had to paint all that detail, and now you kind of see through it.
We splatter this type of skin texture on there to have more realism, because that 8K camera can now see all the sculptures and all the paint. As an artist, you actually have to fine-tune where you don’t see my little paint splatters from an airbrush that looks realistic. That’s my job, to make sure that you look at him as Worf, not as Mike Dorn in makeup. But the sculpture is a little different, similar, but again, it’s different because the material is different and the flow of it is elevated, but still super close.
Your very first professional work was on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine back in the day, and then later the film First Contact. Even though you’d already worked on modern Trek shows like Discovery and the first seasons of Picard, with the original cast of The Next Generation back, did it feel like this season was like coming full circle for you?
MacKinnon: Oh yeah, but I was already seeing Jonathan Frakes in Toronto on Discovery, because he was directing a couple of episodes, so it was just great. They’re kind of my family now. It’s been so long. That relationship is there, and I can call them friends now, because we go to dinner, and I do little side projects with Jonathan for his TV show that he’s doing, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. But we have a little personal connection there, as well, which happened way back then. We were much, much younger, and they were a little bit older than me. Not by much, I’ve just aged well. (laughs) But it’s really nice to have friends that long and have a career expand with such an iconic TV show that is part of everybody’s life.
The makeup on the Borg Queen in Picard season three is the coolest and creepiest she’s ever looked. There was an HR Giger influence on her look going back as far as First Contact. But now it’s full-blown horrific. Was there ever any concern from the showrunners that she was maybe too horror-esque, or did they encourage you to take that far?
MacKinnon: Well, I think [Picard showrunner] Terry Matalas wanted it to be like that. Neville Page is our alien designer, so that starts with Terry and Neville, and that magic happens. After that, it goes to Vincent Van Dyke, where he has to figure out how to make that one-dimensional photograph sculptural, put it on her face, and how is that going to break down into pieces that I’m going to have to put on. There is subtle changes after that.
The process from the design, to the makeup, to the building, to the foam latex, to all the stuff; it all has to work for me on set as well. That’s the best combination of a team that this makes between me, Vincent, and Neville, because they know what they want, and who knows what happened underneath that swirly pool of goop that they fell in [in First Contact], because obviously, Data popped out and he was a little effed up, melted. He came out like that, so what is she going to look like? That’s been 20-some-odd years, so there’s a rotted zombie mess to it. That took five hours to do that makeup, too, which was fun. At 1:30 in the morning, we would start and at 7:00 in the morning she would go to set. Everybody’s sleeping while we’re working.
Speaking of the Borg, we saw a new incarnation of the Borg in the Picard series finale with the young Starfleet officers. Those all leaned into the zombie more and less into the robotic prosthetics. What kind of changes did you implement to make sure they still read to fans as Borg?
MacKinnon: Yeah. That was more of that nanobot type, that nanobot stuff that we did in a previous season. It was a little more showing where that is taking over their skin, so the veins are coming through. There’s a depth in there. There’s that possible roboty-type material too. It was a layering effect before they were to get to become true Borg, where their missing parts are put together. Right before they’re almost completely Borg instead of human. There was a little bit of a play of, how do we do that transition before they become the Borg? I agree with you, it’s a little rotty, veiny, and gross.
One place that had the most aliens in season 3 was the planet M’Talas Prime, where we met Ferengi crime lord Sneed. We hadn’t really seen Ferengi in a long time in Trek, at least not any with significant screen time. What was it like to do classic Ferengi makeup after so long, only now for a 4K world?
MacKinnon: It has been decades. It was amazing. Our Ferengi, Sneed, his makeup, and the actor underneath it were amazing. Obviously, we elevated that so you didn’t have the piece of carpet around the back of the head [like on The Next Generation] and that most likely was there because sculptures then were different. You didn’t have to have a complete sculpture back there, and you could have that hide all the seams and the edges. Now we got to actually see that, see the detail, what it would look back behind his head. It’s just an elevation. You still kept that core classic Ferengi look. But with those new materials, it can just be softer and more organic of a makeup now, yeah.
We saw Vulcans in this season of Picard too, who are very different from previous Vulcans. These were gangsters. How did you approach them, as opposed to the cousins, the Romulans? They’re almost the same, but not quite.
MacKinnon: Yeah. I mean, that’s a difference in the pointing of the eyebrows. The ears are shaped a little bit different and have a little bit of ridges. Kind of like the Romulans from the South [of the planet Romulus] had ridges. The Romulans from the North didn’t have forehead pieces. That’s a long story. That might’ve been more of a budgetary thing, anyway.
You actually got to have an on-screen role in the final episode of Picard as a Starfleet officer. Before that, you played a Borg drone in season one, and appeared in Discovery too. Was it fun to be on the other side of the camera, and did you get a bit of the acting bug at all?
MacKinnon: I do! I like to get a SAG day out of it so I can get some residuals [laughs]. No, but I like a little bit of acting. I’m not an actor at all, but I like to put my face on there. On Discovery, Airiam, the robot girl, I was the guy who unplugged her and turned her off. I got to create her, and then kill her, basically.
Now that Picard has ended, what was the highlight of all three seasons for you? And what was your favorite of the metric ton of different makeups you got to do over the course of the series?
MacKinnon: It was to walk around that corner to see that legacy cast on the ship from The Next Generation. Yes, half of our makeup budget and everybody’s makeup budget went to build that ship. Not that I’m happy about that, but it was worth penny-pinching a little bit. Unfortunately, we penny-pinch for this kind of thing. Just to see those cast members again, after I saw them a hundred years ago in that same situation. They’re a couple of days older, but not by much. They’re what, 27 now? Yeah, it’s fun. It’s a fun relationship to have and grow with, and be part of. I’m sad it’s over with.
Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection Blu-ray set arrives on November 7 from Paramount Home Entertainment. It contains seasons 1-7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 4 feature films, and seasons 1-3 of Star Trek: Picard.
The post STAR TREK: PICARD Makeup Master James MacKinnon on Creating Aliens for Season 3 appeared first on Nerdist.
In season three of Star Trek: Picard, production designer Dave Blass made the dreams of millions of fans come true. He achieved this when he meticulously recreated the bridge of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not only did he recreate the old Enterprise, but he introduced us to a new starship, the former U.S.S. Titan. With the Picard complete collection set to arrive on Blu-ray soon, we caught up with Blass to chat about the monumental task of delivering for the fans in Picard’s final season.
Nerdist: You joined Picard in the second season, which was filmed back-to-back with season three. What was your relationship with the franchise before that?
Dave Blass: Star Trek was the reason I got into filmmaking. So, famously I shared in my little talks at Comic-Con, I put up my photo of myself at age 16 in my Spock outfit. That was really, for me, the visual idea of “I want to go to Hollywood to do Star Trek.” So to follow that goal and then achieve the goal was something pretty amazing. And especially with Picard season three. To really stick the landing on putting a closure on The Next Generation storyline was pretty amazing.
The Blu-ray special features for the third season of Picard show the incredible reproduction of The Next Generation’s Enterprise-D bridge. You went out of your way to stick to details from back in the day—many that 99% of viewers wouldn’t notice. Was it important for you that it looked exactly like the The Next Generation era bridge?
Blass: 100%. I mean, when you’re doing something, especially if you’re building it from scratch, there’s no reason not to do it properly. And I think that what we tried to do was to inspire the team to our level of creating a museum-quality replica. Again, a lot of times it’s just using a term like “museum-quality replica.” And rather than say we’re recreating the set, it’s like, no, we’re building a museum-quality replica of the Enterprise-D. From TNG season seven. And then we would just paper the walls with these details.
By doing that, it inspired all the artisans to rise to that level of detail. They would say “Oh, can I match the wood grain exactly the way it was?” Because each one of them is an artist in their own right. So can we get them to elevate their craft and to say, “Okay, this is what we’re doing with the carpet, guys, can you do this?” The upholstery guys would say “Here’s what we need to do, and here’s finding this exact right leather and the exact right carpet.” Just going down the rabbit hole of trying to be where it isn’t just “Oh, it’s a red carpet, it’s fine.” It’s like, “No, it’s not fine. Fine’s not good enough. It’s got to be perfect.” And then once everyone got that, then it became exciting. Then they knew they were working on something special.
In the Blu-ray, we see how emotional it was for the actors to step foot on that bridge again after almost 30 years. Knowing what it would mean for those seven actors, did that add pressure to make sure it was as identical as possible to the TNG era Enterprise?
Blass: Yeah, a friend of mine was prop master on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and they did a season where they did a Seinfeld reunion. And for the show, they rebuilt the diner and Jerry’s apartment. He said that he was on set when they came walking in, and he said that they sat down in the booth and they started crying, because they realized how much that set and that show had changed all their lives. We knew it was going to be powerful for us in that way, and that was why we were so detail-oriented about all the different things. For example, there’s no scene in which Geordi (LeVar Burton) goes and sits in his chair in his station. So we could have easily skimmed and not built the chair that pulls out. But that’s the first thing that LeVar Burton went and did.
He’s like, “Oh look, the chair even pulls out!” It was so important to us just to be there on the day and to share in that moment. They thanked us for all the hard work, it was pretty amazing. I’ll tell you, standing on that bridge, especially having that unique experience? As the person in charge, to stand there on the empty bridge of the Enterprise alone? I don’t want to say it’s a religious thing, but it’s like going to the Parthenon and being like, “Wow, there’s history there.” And it was powerful. You felt it was something different.
We spend most of our time in Picard season three on board the Titan. Which was a redress of the Stargazer from season two. Which elements did you feel you needed to keep from the Stargazer? And which ones did you bring into the Titan that you felt made it unique?
Blass: The main thing was upgrading. We realized that the actors needed busy work. And if you look at the Stargazer, the captain and the command officers didn’t really have consoles to play with, and we added those in. Little computers for them to be playing with at any time. So that was the main difference in adding a bit more eye candy. Some more screens, and things that people can touch and play with. Unfortunately, we really had eight days from when it was the Stargazer to when it was the Titan. So we barely had time. We didn’t even have time to repaint the floors. There were still scratch marks from the finale of season two on the floors when we hit season three.
Another ship you designed for Picard season three was the enemy ship the Shrike. Spoilers, but eventually we learn that Captain Vadic and crew are changelings. Aliens that are part of Deep Space Nine lore. Did you go back and look at the Dominion ships at all when designing that ship?
Blass: We ignored it because there was an initial concern of going, “Okay, do we go Dominion?” And then as soon as you see the ship, you’d know. “Oh, they’re Changelings.” So, it was the idea that this ship was not specific to a race that they had acquired. And it’s also the idea that if you’re going to go out and do something sketchy, you don’t drive the company car to do it. It was the whole idea of they were out there doing this, they would find a ship that would be unique. One they could do whatever they wanted in, but be on the down low.
M’Talas Prime is the planet that we spend the most time on in Picard’s third season. Without a feature film budget, you designed a fully realized world. Can you talk about the influences that went into designing it?
Obviously, you can’t really do a dystopian world without talking about the original Blade Runner. And years ago, I was designing an episode of ER and I was shooting on the back lot of Warner Bros. And then I realized that was one of the main Blade Runner streets that was in the show. All of a sudden, I realize I’m decorating the Blade Runner street. But also it was like we were shooting in the Iraqi village from American Sniper. So it was a backlog studio set that was out in the desert. So it was finding this thing, taking the elements that we wanted to add. It’s at night, so the lights, the neon, the smoke, and then just give it an alien world type of feeling.
You designed the “Nu Borg” ship, or should we say the Jurati-Borg ship, in season two. And also the new but more classic-looking Borg ship from season three. These are two different Borg, so how did you approach designing them differently?
Blass: Yeah, the funny thing is when [Picard showrunner] Terry Matalas came to me for season three, he said, “Okay, so we want a Borg ship completely new, something I’ve never seen before.” I reply “Dude, you just said that to me like six months ago [for the end of season two] and I just gave it to you.” So we did that for season two, and I think that I feel that the Borg singularity ship that we did for that, it’s cool, it’s different. It looks like a Borg but not. But then when we came back, it was the whole idea of how do you do a Borg cube but don’t do a Borg cube? But also, there was the idea that we wanted it to be decaying, but then if you go back to season one, they had a decaying Borg cube in season one.
So it was the whole idea of going, “It’s got to look like a Borg ship. It can’t look like season two’s, it can’t look like season one’s.” And then we looked at all the different variations of Unimatrix Zero [in Voyager] and what else had been done and how do we do that? And we had dozens of different ideas. In the end, Terry’s like, “What if it’s a cube?” I’m like, “Good idea. Let’s just go with a cube.” But it’s like a super cube. And then he came up with the idea that this box is sending out antennas and signals. So the spikes on it just gave it a little bit more of a mean look. And that was something that Doug Drexler and John Eaves developed, and Igor Knezevic also worked on that. So a lot of people doing some great work on that.
Was there anything you really wanted to do in the third season that either time or money just didn’t let you do?
Blass: I would’ve loved to change the Titan around a little bit more. It’s like, thank you to the audience for not giving me a ton of shit on Twitter for the Titan looking exactly like the Stargazer bridge. I would’ve loved to, because also we learned stuff after seeing how it shot. And if I had painted the walls a little bit brighter, going with something different on the floors or something. But we didn’t have time. And again, we knew that we had to budgetarily focus on a lot of stuff. But [I/m] really, really pleased with how season three ended up.
Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection Blu-ray set arrives on November 7 from Paramount Home Entertainment. It contains seasons 1-7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 4 feature films, and seasons 1-3 of Star Trek: Picard.
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Eddie Murphy stars in this holiday comedy adventure about a man on a mission to win his neighborhood’s annual Christmas home decoration contest.
After Chris (Eddie Murphy) inadvertently makes a deal with a mischievous elf named Pepper (Jillian Bell) to better his chances of winning, she casts a magic spell that brings the 12 Days of Christmas to life, and wreaks havoc on the whole town. At the risk of ruining the holidays for his family, Chris, his wife Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross), and their three children must race against the clock to break Pepper’s spell, battle deviously magical characters, and save Christmas for everyone.
Candy Cane Lane premieres Dec 1st on Prime Video.