02x11 - Monster's Ball

[bunniefuu]

ANNOUNCER: Greetings, "Escape the Night" viewers.

We hope you enjoyed the festivities of this season.

But we aren't done quite yet.

On behalf of Joey Graceffa,

we cordially invite you to...

The Monster's Ball.

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- I think Joey and I-- we both have a love of fantasy

and creatures and peoples from fantasy worlds.

And when we were conceiving this second season,

we wanted to bring more of them to the table

with more details, more intricacy,

and have the YouTubers interact with them

in a very direct fashion.

And we also wanted to create stories around them

that would make them live and breathe

and not just be somebody in a suit.

- With season one, we had definitely a few crazy monsters

But this season, like, it goes, like, above and beyond.

It's like, there's a new monster

pretty much every single episode.

Which was kind of the idea

of the whole season.

- When I first read the scripts

to season two, I was immediately thinking

we have a lot more monsters on our hand than last year.

Each of these characters, Adam had such a creative vision for.

They just went so much bigger than they were the first season.

And luckily, Adam had a lot of information for us.

- Christina and I have been working together

for a long time, and our passion together

is making monsters.

And each time we go to-- set out to make monsters,

we wanna make them bigger and crazier

and more interesting.

I think the monsters are one of the most fun aspects

of the show or the series.

And each episode was going to have

a monster that the YouTubers were gonna have to

battle in some way

to obtain these gems they need

to get back home.

So this season, they are kind of the fabric

of the story world.

[dark, synth music]

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When creating The Devourer,

I imagined this creature that had

almost like a mouth for a face.

And it was quite a frightening thing.

And as Christina and I were talking about designs

and she showed to me a design that had already been created

by a makeup artist that she knew

who was literally just in makeup school.

- She had created this character for really,

just kind of trade show and demo purposes.

The character had not really been used anywhere.

- When the design got presented to me, it blew me away.

And I was like, this is the kind of monster

I've been dying to make for this series.

And so I built a whole story around how this monster

would come to be, how it escaped

out of this dark dimension.

There was a sacrifice that was made

to bring this thing to life.

- It took us about five hours to put that whole makeup on

and four makeup artists to get him completely ready.

And actually, they were all prosthetic pieces.

So we had shoulder pieces,

a chest and a back piece and a head piece.

And he was scary.

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- Even though I knew what he looked like,

he was so terrifying.

Not only was the makeup super intense,

but the character was able to maneuver

a way that other characters haven't in the past.

- Thank God you're still alive. - We need--

- What the-- is she in the system?

[screaming]

- What is that? Ah!

- Go! Go! Go!

- Alex Ward was our Devourer, which I think

is our most complex monster this season.

And he's an amazing monster talent.

That is what he does.

And it's one of the things that you sometimes

don't think about the performer

who has to wear the suit

and make it come alive

by the way they move and the way they look

and the way they pace themselves

and the sounds they utter.

And in this case, with Alex, you know,

this was a prosthetic build.

It's not actually a suit,

it's pieces that are stitched to his body

and it's this headpiece

that he actually had to not only just wear,

he had to run and chase YouTubers in it.

But then also make it feel natural

and give this thing a movement

and a shape to it.

And it's really quite a craft.

- [indistinct growling]

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- I had this, like, vision in my mind

of a woman meets, like, spider lady.

And I just wanted the two to be combined.

I wanted her to be sexy and scary at the same time,

but make her eyes look like a spider.

Like an actual spider face,

But still kinda make her sexy and pretty.

- With Jorogumo, we did the full face prosthetic on her.

It was actually a forehead piece that just kinda covered up here.

And it had pieces here with these mandibles coming out.

We had red contact lenses and we had all these elements

that were going to be kind of created

with a little bit of practical effects,

a little bit of CGI.

I also loved where wardrobe

was going with the costume.

We were doing this really kind of dark,

mysterious, a little bit bondage

kind of feel to the wardrobe.

And we got to create this character

that just went into this level of sexy,

exotic and very, very terrifying.

[upbeat dance music]

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- So Jorogumo is half completed in makeup

and in physical performance and then the other half

is completed in CG.

So in prosthetic makeup, Christina built these--

what look like scar tissue on her left and right sides.

And then in CG, we actually add the legs coming out of those.

And that completes our spider woman.

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- [pained groaning]

- Seeing Jorogumo come down

from the spider web the first time

was so fricking cool, just to, like--

'Cause that was like a vision I had.

Like, I just wanted it to be, like,

an unexpected thing.

Like, everyone's just outside

and then all of a sudden, this woman comes down

from her spider web.

Everyone was freaking out.

They did not expect that at all.

They were all, like, super excited

and crazed and it was very unexpected.

- One of the first things Joey and I wanted to do

with Jorogumo was we wanted to make her

come down from the sky.

So we put our actress-- who was amazing, Coel--

who was up, you know, about 80 feet in the air

and then she was on a rig that would extend down from there.

And she was free-floating.

And once again, because it's live,

and because things are cueing real time.

She had to be sitting in mid-air

probably for 20 minutes, waiting for her moment.

Because the YouTubers got backlogged.

And then she gave this tremendous performance

of this spider-like descent

that was quite a terrifying appearance.

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- I wanted to have a villain this season.

I wanted to have there be a clear villain

from the beginning and that's where The Sorceress was born.

So I took a lot of inspiration from Maleficent.

I was just obsessed with how she had

this elegance about her,

but it was like a terrifying elegance.

So I definitely wanted to take some aspects

of her and her costume

and bring it over to "Escape the Night."

- We tried a lot of looks for her.

We tried to imagine, like, how her hair would be.

We wanted something that would be big and amazing,

but also needed to have this special crown set on it.

And there just needed to be a lot of functionality

with her look that also looked severe and intense.

The three of us, we kind of really tried to flesh out

this character so that she was dramatic

and really, really, amazing looking.

When it all came together, it just looked--

she looked great.

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- The Sorceress, for me, is our most important monster.

And albeit she is beautiful,

she needs to also be terrifying

and regal and commanding.

- [sobbing] I want to live! - So do they!

- And early on with that,

I knew it was gonna be a big mix

of her makeup design and her costume and hair

to bring this woman to life.

And I think this combination of the black

and the gold feathers, the deep cut

in her, like, her armor setup

and this makeup design crafted a woman

like nothing you'd never seen and thanks to Eva--

the actress playing the role, she didn't let that wear her,

she wore it and commanded this

couture version of a villain.

[dark, industrial music]

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- Well, I'm a big fan of wolves in general

so I definitely wanted to have werewolves.

Especially because it's like a classic type of, like, genre.

Like, having werewolves in a horror/sci-fi show

just seemed fitting and we didn't do it in season one,

so it only made sense for this season to have it.

- The second seal can only be discussed over dinner.

- Go. Go. - Go, go, go!

- Over dinner, over dinner. - Oh, God! Oh, God!

Go, go, go, go!

[werewolf howling]

[screaming]

- We were all super, like, terrified

of the werewolves just because

they were quick and they were coming at us

And we never knew, like, where they were positioned.

Because some points, like, we were just in the woods.

And we didn't know if they were gonna

come up from behind us.

So it was scary.

- So Autonomous FX created the werewolves for me.

They already had a mold of a character

that was actually perfect for this.

So we got creature suits made for our two actors,

which had prosthetics, again, on the face

and a lot of hair. So, really, the guys--

once they were zipped up in the suits,

we just had to put the appliance on their face

and then they just got really into character.

They were great.

- We cast two actors, both of who had

experience in monster work, which really pays off.

Because it's not just about being in a suit,

it's about moving in a way

that conveys the monster,

that gets people feeling

like you're really a wolf

and not just a guy in a suit.

And both these performers really brought a lot

of that unique physicality to the suits

and to the roles that really brought them to life.

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- I actually love steampunk everything

so I definitely wanted to have

a steampunk theme in this season.

Seeing her with her face was so fricking creepy

because I knew she was a real woman

and she had this fake face.

And it was just so creepy.

And she just stood still the whole scene.

So, amazing actress.

- I needed an actress who was beautiful and appealing

and somebody you would only dream of creating.

And Rachel Li--who played the role and brought it to life,

had to sit in this chair and function

while the YouTubers touched her and interacted with her.

But she couldn't react. It was a pretty amazing feat.

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- The Automaton Bride ended up being

one of my favorite characters in the end.

It was very simple. A lot of gears on the lace.

And I really just did a little bit of makeup on her.

And as we had her sitting down,

it just--I don't know, something transformed.

Like, everything just seemed to work fluidly with her.

It looked really great.

- And the thing about her is that

she needs all of these parts.

And in particular, she needs a heart.

Because to bring her to life, they need

a real human heart and that's one of

the YouTubers has to pay with their life

to bring her to life.

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- So I just had this idea for The Gingerbread Woman

for her to be, like, this big, happy, sweet woman

who in a split second can turn evil and nasty and crazy.

The actress was amazing and I'm super happy

with how that turned out.

[all exclaiming]

- Oh! Oh, do we have guests?

Well, it's a good thing I just whipped up

a nice batch of hot cocoa.

- I wanted to create a world that was full of candies

and treats and children.

And then it could also be terrifying

and that's what birthed The Gingerbread Woman.

This woman who would cook children in her oven

and then feed them to people in her pie.

Early on, when I and Joey were talking about the show,

he had a really distinct vision

of how she should look and behave and be.

And so once again, the casting process,

finding the right actress who can bring this role to life.

Who could embody this syrupy sweet

and then also this screaming, raving lunatic.

- It looks like my recipe for meat pies.

How would they have gotten that?

You dare betray me?!

I took you in when your parents put you out on the street.

- No, no, no, no! - Bah!

- Oh, no, no, no! [all screaming]

- Gingerbread Woman was a lot of fun to create, though.

The actress herself, she was a lot of fun to work with.

And once we kind of rosied up her cheeks

and just--I gave her a really, really

thick, gooey lipstick, so that she just

kind of looked sweet and like she was almost like

a baked good herself.

We put kind of a ginger colored wig on her

that brought her character to life.

She was a lot of fun.

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- Early on, Joey and I toyed with the idea

of doing a medusa as one of the villains.

But just the building of the head element

with the snakes, etcetera, soon became out of reach.

And so I said, hey Joey, what about this idea

of an Ice Witch?

Who we could make--obviously, a very couture Ice Witch.

But an Ice Witch that instead of turning men to stone,

would turn them to ice.

- I wanted her to be this beautiful, stunning

Ice Queen, fantasy-looking girl.

So I think she's one of the few that

looks sweet and very pretty at the same time.

- The Ice Witch was another character

that I think Joey wanted to take

to this dramatic level.

And once we started playing around with testing,

we got prettier and prettier with it.

And when it all came together,

she kind of turned into this work of art

and all the way from head to toe,

she was a bit of a work of art.

But at the end, I think it worked really well.

[shimmering tone]

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- I've always been super fascinated with harpies.

I've read some books about them

and they're in a lot of video games

I played growing up.

So I just loved the darkness that comes with

kind of a beautiful creature.

They're, like, these nasty, evil women

who are, like, part bird.

So I thought that would be perfect

for the fantasy episode.

- When we were designing the harpies,

I needed to take their faces and their heads

and I needed to give it feathers,

but I also needed to alter them

in a way that would make them feel scary

and not just like they had feathers

or they were a bird woman.

So Christina found this headpiece

that she had designed that could do just the thing.

And that she would put these feathers into it.

So they kind of lost their hair

and extended their forehead and built out their nose

in a way that made them no longer women, but harpies.

- The Harpies, for us, were a fly by the seat of your pants

kind of creation. It was a full team.

I had four people working on each Harpy

just to get them fully body painted

from head to toe.

We had all these beautiful feathers

that wardrobe found from their costuming

I believe Joey really-- he came up, I think

with the blue and the orange

and, like, he wanted these really vibrant colors.

So we kinda took those colors and ran with it.

- So the prosthetics for The Harpies were really cool.

Like, their boobs just, like, became like--

their--just-- their boobies were out.

But, like, no nips were shown.

And then their headpiece was so cool.

And they just kind of looked like--

not a traditional harpy, but, like, a cool harpy.

- I also wanted these Harpies to be threatening.

I wanted them to be aggressive.

And I wanted the YouTubers to feel that

and have that experience for them.

So I wanted them to fight our warrior

so we could see their aggressive and physicality.

I also wanted them to be the people

who k*lled one of our YouTubers.

And Sitara Hewitt, who played our blue harpy,

she did, really, an amazing job

also, too, of bringing this physicality to life

in the way she would use her arms.

And she would sort of, like, use her chest forward.

All these little nuanced things that she would do

that would kind of turn it from just being

a woman in makeup to a monster.

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- It was a collective team effort.

We were going non-stop.

I mean, we would get there early--

much earlier than the crew would come in,

start all these makeups.

And then, as we are finishing

with one episode, we're kinda

starting the next one.

It goes so non-stop that I honestly did not

get a chance to, like, relax

until the last episode.

It was like, everything was done

and we thought, "Oh, my gosh,

let's go watch the monitor." [laughs]

- One of the most exciting and rewarding things

about doing this show is coming to set each day

and meeting Christina and her team.

And they've been there for four or five hours,

earlier than anybody else.

No one knows when they ever slept.

Getting in the new monster into makeup

and getting them through the works.

And when you would come into that room

and see the progress or where they were at,

and being blown away by what had been created.

Because you've tested it, you've designed it,

but now it's gonna live and breathe

on this woman or this man and it's gonna

walk around on two feet.

And when that moment happens,

and it's more elegant and more frightening

and more interesting than you'd ever hoped,

it really takes your breath away.

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