Cursed (2005)

Wes Craven's Cursed had a notoriously troubled production. Wes Craven originally had wished for Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX Group to do the special makeup effects; KNB had already worked on several of the director's previous films. Bob Weinstein, owner of the film's production company Dimension Films, instead wanted Rick Baker's Cinovation Studios for its monster movie.

Nicotero recounted, 'They called us before they hired anybody (...) We were told that Dimension was interested in getting in bed with Rick Baker (...) They said 'We know you've done all of (Craven's) movies for the past ten years, but we want Rick.' I said I had no objection to that. Rick and I got together and talked, and decided that KNB would handle the makeup and gore effects, which would leave him free to concentrate on the werewolf design. So we made a deal on our own, and then we called the producers'.

Maquettes sculpted by Eddie Yang's for the Cinovation werewolf suit. 

Rick Baker was apprehensive on joining the production, 'The only thing that was right about that film was the title (...) It's a movie that I turned down, then got talked into doing. Finally I said, 'The only way I will do this is if you give me total artistic freedom. I don't have time to play the in-between game. Let me make a werewolf. Trust that I can do this and I will do it'. They said okay, and then they didn't do what they'd promised.'

In the film's early stages, Baker was intending to have the various werewolf transformations realized as practical effects; maquettes and prosthetics were sculpted for Judy Greer (who remained in the final cuit as the werewolf Joanie) and Skeet Ulrich (who left the production)'s transformations, with a half-transformed Joanie suit also sculpted with a fleshy face.

A lot of the production problems stemmed from Bob Weinstein's method of developing scripts as shooting began, something Craven had previously endured on Scream 2 onwards; 'Part of the hallmark of dealing with (Dimension Films)', Craven later recounted, 'is that you're always having to be desperately writing while you're shooting. I don't think that's the best way to make a film at all'.

Weinstein's careless attitude to script development and film shooting reached its nadir with Cursed, which also suffered from a very short shooting schedule. Nicotero stated; 'Rick literally had three and a half months to build all the werewolf stuff, and he's accustomed to having at least six on a project like this. So his time frame was definitely limited' (...) 'It takes a lot longer than people think to get something designed and approved (...) The studio and the producrs put all their eggs in the werewolf basket, and the reality was that there was a lot of people with their own ideas about what the werewolf should be and what they wanted to see'.

By this point, a werewolf suit had already been fabricated by Baker and put in front of the camera during the first cut; some images of the original cut and its suit have surfaced in recent years, such as these included on thi HelloSidney fansite article.

It was also at this stage that Sony Imageworks created a digital model of the werewolf, based on a scan of the maquette that Eddie Yang had sculpted when designing the suit. The digital werewolf was used for all the action sequences showing a full-body werewolf, as well as any shots of the legs. The need for a digital werewolf was partly to have wolf-like legs, as animation supervisor Spencer Cook explained;

'The digital component was to replicate Rick Bakers werewolf costume, to make a digital copy of it. We modified it to some extent, because in the digital shots, you see the full werewolf from head to toe, as opposed to the performer in the costume, which you see only in close-up or from the waist up. And that was mainly because of the design of the werewolf with the canine legs the back legs of a dog, with the foot elongated, so the werewolf is walking on the balls of its feet, the heel much higher and the tibia bone much shorter. We modified the lower half of the body somewhat so it looked more natural. And then, of course, we animated it walking and running in an appropriate way as well. Its a much different kind of walk than a person could do.'

The production ground to a halt in June 2003; Bob Weinstein was unhappy with the almost completed footage, and ordered a reshooting with an entirely new script. Baker left sometime before the shooting of the new script began in December that year. 'After a lot of chaos, the film was shut down. So I packed everything up and gave it to them. The film was started up again without me, because I wasn't available.'

Craven recounted about the switchover, 'It was a crazy shoot from beginning to end (...) Rick Baker designed the werewolf and built the early forms of it. But then, about the time the production shut down, Rick just stepped back and decided not to work for a while. At that point, KNB jumpd in and took over. All I can say is that any film based around a monster is going to be tricky, because monsters are hard to do.'

With Baker out of the picture, KNB took over the werewolf effects, sculpting a new suit over the Cinovation suit's understructure and animatronics as per Craven's wishes; 'Wes and the studio decided that they wanted the creature to have more musculature and less hair (...) The only thing we were unable to change was the face, because it had already been scanned digitally into the computers (for the CGI model). But we were able to redesign the upper and lower palate of the mouth, articulate the lips and hide some of the teeth so the mouth could close. Then Sony Imageworks redesigned the body and gave us thos images, and we were able to create a new body based on their design. At this point, the only thing left of Rick's original concept is the face.'

Nicotero even had to help with Derek Mears' performance inside the suit; 'We brought in the actor (Mears) who had been inside the werewolf suit and asked him to do the moves he had been doing on the set (...) After we saw what he had been doing, we suggested that he try certain things. We basicalled played with the creatures body language, and as it turned out, we were the first people on this film who had ever tried to guide his performance. After that, Wes and some of the studio people showed up and walked him through more movements'

KNB's werewolf suit - did not have sculpted legs (as those would be added in digitally - presumably the Cinovation suit also did not have legs) and so was shot from the waist up in all its scenes. KNB also supplied a softer latex Joanie werewolf head for some sequences where Joanie would bite victims, alongside the stunt heads and 'hero' animatronic head.

Nicotero, having had to contend with altering Rick Baker's original design and working closely with Sony Imageworks, was unhappy with KNB's minimal crediting compared to Baker; 'You could say that we did a lot more than we're being given credit for, (...) But what can you do? It was just one of those films that had a lot of obstacles to overcome.'

Nicotero was softer about the on-set experience, 'The best part of the experience was getting a chance to work so closely with Wes, (...) I was on set every day, and Wes turned to me quite a bit in terms of the werewolf shots. I always felt that using the practical wolf would give them latitude, enhanceing with digital work when necessary. It was a tremendous challenge, and in the long run, for me, it was a very rewarding film.'

Baker however, had nothing good to say about the experience, 'So they took my stuff and changed it for the version that came out (...) I don't really consider it one of my films. I'd requested not to have a credit on it - and then they gave me a big single-card opening credit'.

Sources:

• Fangoria #241
• Rick Baker: Metamorphosis - Volume 2: 1990-2019
• 'Cursed: The Curse of the Werewolf' 2005 article on Animation World Network