Welcome to the first installment of Behind The Screen, an interview series highlighting the craftspeople who make films come to life. For this debut interview, ATM spoke with prosthetics and makeup artist Jamie Kelman about his work on Mercy and the craft of transformation.

On your website, you described yourself as a “monster kid.” Was there a specific film, monster, or character that created that spark for makeup and prosthetics?

I was three when the original Star Wars came out, and I was yearning for that fantastical world. As much as I loved the aliens in it, I was deathly afraid of all the horror movies coming out at that time. There was no CGI, and all these effects could only be achieved with makeup. Those artists doing that work were rock stars. I remember being at my grandparents’ house, and the commercials had coffins popping out of graves. It scared me so much I couldn’t sleep for weeks. Finally, I went over to the house of this girl I had the cutes for, and I had to brave up; we were all laughing at the bloody bits in Silent Night, Deadly Night. Her dad came running into the room in a Santa outfit, carrying an axe, just to try to scare us. I finally understood it’s about the fun and the craziness of it, not to dwell on the death factor.

We watched Nightmare on Elm Street 2 after that, and when he takes his hat off to peel back his skin and reveal brains, I realized – somebody made that! I became obsessed and wanted to figure out the effects that could only happen in dreams.

Moving into your college years, you had the opportunity to study under the legendary Dick Smith. How did your time with him shape your trajectory?

Dick Smith is such a wonderful and inspirational man who helped so many people; he did The Exorcist, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Altered States, Amadeus (Oscar Award winner), and many more. He knew this industry needed young energy to learn the craft and carry it forward, and he inspired two generations of special effects makeup artists. Dick Smith was a person who, even though he had all these incredible credits and an Oscar sitting on his shelf, you could reach him by phone, and he would pick up. You could send him your work, and he would give you constructive criticism. He was a tough love judge, not disrespecting you by telling you everything is great; he would call out what lacks logic, not giving everything a medal. I remember sitting in the lab in his house and just trying to commit everything he said to memory. Smith took a year off after winning the Academy Award to write a course, an encyclopedia of every effect as a teaching guide. He was a guru, a mentor, one of my first, and the people he trained are the best to ever do makeup.

It really is a shame that it’s not normal anymore to just go to your mentor’s house and spend time learning face-to-face. My whole industry is about doing something with your hands, and the digital age wants to take all of that away. There’s an energy that people respond to when you’re doing something with your hands. It’s fulfilling when you get to share your own creation with other people. Even if it’s not the slickest, cleanest, most believable thing in the world, it’s way more fun to watch than something shiny, perfect, and computer-made, because there’s no humanity behind it.

Speaking of AI and the new digital world, Mercy came out earlier this year, and it imagines a world in which AI completely takes over the justice system. You worked on the makeup of Rebecca Ferguson, and you’ve mentioned online that the challenge of this character was making her look “somewhat digital” as Maddox. What did you use to create her AI look without going full VFX? Were there any unexpected challenges creating the makeup and prosthetics for the rest of the film?

For Rebecca’s look, we thought in terms of pixels, so we used an iridescent mica flex airbrush paint that created little reflective specks that took away the look of human skin. Her look progressed subtly over the film from digital to slightly more humanized. We started with heavier makeup and took out the blood tone in her lips and slowly reintroduced those concepts to show that the AI was wrong at the end of the day.

The unexpected challenge was on our side character, Jaq (Kali Reis), who had these big cheek piercings that we had to cover. I placed these little prosthetics in the middle of her cheeks that covered the piercings for the entire film. All her shots for this movie were in close-ups to be displayed on phone screens, and the prosthetics had to be entirely invisible so you couldn’t see that her cheeks were fake. That was actually the hardest makeup to do because it had to hide in plain sight, with perfect color matching and edges that disappear.

I thought Mercy was a really cool movie, but it kind of came and went. It’s a movie to enjoy, not really aiming for Academy Awards. I always say to people: I like hamburgers. I respect a nice filet mignon, a fancy steak, but I also like hamburgers; it tastes good. It’s a pure entertainment value movie, which I think people want more than any of the fancy stuff.

Can you talk about how collaboration works between the different departments? Do you draw inspiration from wigs and costumes?

Orson Welles famously said, “A painter only needs a brush. But a filmmaker needs an army.” And it’s true. Makeup is very much determined by costumes. The costume designer has the first say on the silhouette of the character, and then it comes to the makeup and hair departments. Not to say that we don’t start on our own. But if they put a person in a red dress, you complement and accentuate that color palette. That way it ties together and makes a unified, head-to-toe character. Hair really makes or breaks makeup, especially in terms of the quality of the hair. When I was just starting, I would get a $10 synthetic wig that looked like plastic on top of an actor’s head. It destroyed the entire illusion of the look, even if the makeup looked cool. So, it all matters, and it’s very collaborative. Head hair is an ancient art, all the Marcel curls in film noir, and we will always do period movies. Mercy is slightly future-period, which is imagining what the world will be like in just a couple of years.

Did you have a favorite detail or memory about working on Mercy? This could be something you had a hand in, or shouting out another department?

When I moved to L.A. in the 90s, it was where Hollywood was, but we see jobs now starting to move to Canada and all around the world. There is now a problem in Los Angeles that they are not making enough movies to sustain the lifestyle and workforce. Mercy was a movie that we filmed all over Los Angeles, on Hollywood Boulevard, on the beach in Malibu, going to every beautiful place in the city that made it filmable in the first place.

Another moment in filming that felt very 21st century was when we were filming on what is called a “Volume Stage.” They take multiple monitors, placing them side-by-side so there is no edge of the frame, and they stretch a fabric across it like a gauze. There are multiple people off to the side with video-game engines that display the world on the screens. The whole room can be any volume of space, anywhere in the world. These machines also have tricks, like placing a window behind the actor to calculate the proper focal length a real camera would have, so it appears that they are really on location rather than a blue screen. It’s amazing, the technology.

We had a scene in Mercy where the cops of the future were on a hoverbike, mounted on a jibarm that can raise and lower and mimic that flying motion. The cameras were all on drones buzzing around her while filming this high-speed chase on the Volume Stage. I was like: OK, this is the future!

You know I have to ask since it’s coming up in just over a month, but you had the opportunity to work on The Odyssey, which arrives in theaters on July 17th. Is there anything you can tease about the upcoming film?

If you look closely at the trailer, there are some giant things that I look forward to seeing come to life in the movie. I will say that with the talent they had there, it was just surreal being in the makeup trailer and seeing all of these stars of their own movies. I’ve already heard controversy over the casting, and how the “real” version would be all Greek, white-ish, hairy people, and not pretty, diverse people. They are all so good at their craft, so this movie will be enjoyable because the people you are watching are the best to ever play the game at this point in time. This is as good a movie as is going to be made, and if you want to judge it before you see it, or maybe even not see it because of some preconceived idea from some disparaging people on the internet, just look at it and enjoy it. Be entertained. That’s what a movie is for. It’s not supposed to right the wrongs of society; it’s entertaining, and you have a pretty good chance of being entertained by The Odyssey.

To wrap up, you mentioned earlier that Dick Smith believed that the industry needed the younger generation. Do you have anything you would like to say to aspiring younger artists?

It can be a very fulfilling journey when you create something people would never have been able to see otherwise. It’s also a very difficult career, not for people who aren’t absolutely obsessed with it. I spend a lot of time traveling and being away from home, friends, and family. I’ve been all around the world for this job, which sounds glamorous, but when I’m in Bulgaria by myself for 3 months, it gets lonely. I quoted Dick Smith in my yearbook, and I knew it was true then, but now I realize how correct he was. To pursue this career, you have to have the persistence and the dedication of a ballerina or a pianist. If you are not working at it every day, it’s just not going to happen. You have to be that passionate and love it that much. You must understand what it is, why you do it, and how to do it. If you want to make this a career, know that it’s a whole different reality than what we see of the mega-stars.

Thank you, Jamie, for your time!

Look out for Jamie Kelman’s work in The Odyssey, coming to theaters July 17th. You can watch the trailer here.