American Cinematographer - August 1983 - 95

ultimately had to crumble) and a grotesque mechanical likeness of
Catherine Deneuve

as

well.

"Because of the

problems in¬
volved, I had to go to the director and
couldn't be

reveal that

we

bitious

as

we

had

solved if

we

had

an

as

am¬

planned, that
maybe the problems could be re¬
and

extra six months

money. But we couldn't un¬
der the circumstances. Finding that I
more

had underestimated the amount of

work, I tried to get more help. The

producer was on an extremely tight
budget, and MGM was in bad finan¬
cial shape at that time. So I came up
with a ball park figure for extra sal¬
aries and materials. Sadly, I found my¬
self locked into a budget and
schedule, with no give.''
Bowie's makeup progression was a
piece of cake compared to the disin¬
tegrating mummies. As the end se¬
quence unfolds, Deneuve's former
lovers (including Bowie) crawl out of
their coffins, gather at the upstairs
landing, and watch Deneuve decom¬
pose in agony as she falls over a ban¬
nister. One by one, they begin to
crumble-heads fall off, bones shat¬

ter, while Deneuve becomes one of
their

own

number.

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At first, Smith planned on going
with articulated mechanical figures

for the bulk of the

montage, using ac¬
suits exclusively for
long shots. However, during choreog¬
raphic discussions with director

tors in mummy

Scott, it

decided to nix the me¬
chanical approach and use actors in
was

body suits exclusively, up to the point
disintegration. Smith modeled his

of

cadavers after the famous Guano-

juato mummies in northern Mexico,
which are braced upright against cav¬
ernous

walls. Of course, the obvious

question arises: How does one make
a performer look like an emaciated
mummy?
"We had special casting sessions
to find nice, skinny, healthy people,''
Smith explains. "No anorexics or
anything like that. It happened
through casting directors and word of
mouth. Only one or two of them were
actually performers.
"We worked out some very effec¬
tive full body suits that looked good
on camera. We did the simplest thing,
which was to cast the body of each
person lying down, from neck to an¬

TTTA^HT"Q^EZ
FILM & VIDEO WORKSHOPS 83
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CITY, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 18-24

MAGIC OF THE MOVIES:
John

SPECIAL EFFECTS

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ELECTRONIC CINEMATOGRAPHY & LIGHTING WITH THE
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Dean

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NOVEMBER 6-12
FILM DIRECTING

Top Hollywood Director to be Announced
CINEMATOGRAPHY & LIGHTING II
William Fraker A.S.C. & Laszlo Kovacs A.S.C.
ACTING FOR THE CAMERA II
Richard Donner & Norman Jewison

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Garrett Brown

NOVEMBER 11-13
INDEPENDENT FILMAKER'S SEMINAR

kle. Arms and

legs were cast sepa¬
rately, as were the hands and feet. We
then had leotards fitted to those peo¬

ple with a zipper up the back. We
would then build up the kneecaps and
AMERICAN

CINEMATOGRAPHER, AUGUST, 1983

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93
American Cinematographer - August 1983

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