My Zombie Life Pt.1

Went to my friend Greg Aronowitz's place The Barnyard to be an extra in a Zombie short that he was creating with my friend Kim Evey, It's called Zombie 360. I got there around 3:30pm for a 4pm call time. I sat around about a half hour with other extras when they brought over some "base" paint and asked if we could get started on painting ourselves.

So I started with some green and added a bit of yellow and purple and was about fifteen minutes into it when they asked us to stop as some of us were going to be chosen for prosthetic. I was fortunately one of them. Greg picked out a prosthetic that he thought would work for me and then I was asked to go wash my face as they needed it to be completely clean to put on the prosthetic. After washing my face I went and sat back down with the extras for about fifteen minutes but soon my name was called and I headed to one of the make up artists so he could glue the prosthetic onto my face.

Now I have been an extra many times but never have I had to wear a prosthetic on my face and I was excited for this opportunity. He first tested my skin to make sure I wasn't allergic to the latex or glue. Afterwards he placed the prosthetic over my face and made a few cuts here and there so it would fit better before getting out the glue and gluing the prosthetic down.

It's an interesting feeling having something glued down to your face. Of course as soon as it's on you want to itch but can't. But luckily the feeling passes. After he glued it on to my face we waited a few minutes to let it dry. I did find out that the glue that they used was super strong as they didn't want to have to re-apply during the actual shooting. The only way to really get this off it to use a chemical that will break down the glue.

Once it was dry he asked me to make faces and move my face around to see if any of the ends would raise up. There were a few spots so he applied more glue. He then placed "bondo" around the edges to make them seamless. I've used bondo before with my Hobbit ears. Anyways after that he was done, the prosthetic was on and I was ready for full make up.

Before moving on to full make up I went to wardrobe and handed over some jeans and a shirt for them to "zombified". They tore, ripped and dirtied up my clothes before giving them back to me. 

I headed into Greg's house where they were actually doing make up and waited. I waited for about three hours as there were only two make artists and then down to one working on Zombie make up. Greg came in from time to time to work on of the more high profile people in this film like Grant Imahara. Also the main cast members were coming in and getting their make up done. Pushing out make up back.

Eventually everyone was done and they got to the extras. As the make up started she really was having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of zombie I would be.. and for about 20 minutes she tried various looks when suddenly you could see the light bulb go off above her head and wham.. Zombie Kenny came to life. 45 minutes later I was done.. The end results were amazing. I love the look she gave to me.

While I was getting made up, America Young (stunt coordinator) came to me and said that I had been chosen to be one of the Zombies to take down the last human (Marissa Cuevas). Woohoo!!

Once they were done with my make up it was about 9pm and time for dinner. We were suppose to start shooting around 9pm but the Zombie make up was taking alot longer then expected.. there were over 55 zombies and about half were high profile, meaning they had to have really good make up. The other background zombies were self painted with some help from the make up artists.

As midnight approached they were still working on making up the zombies. I had been in my prosthetic since 5pm and full make up since 9pm. My face was starting to itch and I found out that the make up doesn't really come off by just touching it so I was able to kind of put pressure on the prosthetic which would kind of relive the itch under it.

The waiting continues as the clock strikes midnight...