‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:’ A Look at the Amazing Makeup and Hair Crafts In the Epic Space Adventure

Awards Daily: Given the massive amount of makeup and prosthetics required for a Guardians film, why did you decide to take on this challenge using practical effects?

Alexei Dmitriew: Well first off, James [Gunn] loves practical makeup effects. He pushes for it. We are very lucky that he does because it gives us amazing opportunities. I also work very closely with Legacy Effects. They have amazing designers that work with James and his team to come up with the base looks for everything. They also manufacture all of the prosthetics. Once they’re done, they hand it to myself and my team and we figure out how to apply, paint, and maintain it all throughout the shoot.

Awards Daily: Given the sheer scale of the film, how did you navigate / schedule a typical day with makeup / prosthetic applications against the filming / on-set expectations? How did you make it as efficient as possible without delaying the filmmaking process?

Alexei Dmitriew: Running any show, especially a show this big, comes down to organization and having an amazing team that can show up on time and execute great makeup work every day. Cassie and I worked as one unit to help our amazing AD team schedule the day and keep the mornings running smooth. We have set times for specific make ups, and for the larger make ups, we defer to the teams doing it and ask how much time they need. We make sure that each artist has the time they need, but they have to keep it within certain parameters. As far as the expectations when we get to set, we all expect the highest quality and want to deliver that. Almost everything was tested out and prepped prior to the shooting day, so there were no surprises for anybody. We know what James wants to see and the quality of makeup that he expects, so we want to make sure that we deliver that for him. I had an amazing makeup team with me on the show; from a core team of about 17 people, up to 90 Makeup Artists at our largest times. Everybody brought their ”A” game and delivered amazing makeups day in and day out.

Awards Daily: What was your working partnership like with director James Gunn?

Alexei Dmitriew: James is an amazing artist. He’s a great leader. He gives us artistic freedom when it comes to how things are painted within the world that he’s created. I love working with him and his team. He can also be very specific on what he’s looking for, which is also incredibly helpful. It takes the guesswork out of our jobs and ensures that he gets exactly what he needs.

Awards Daily: How does Nebula’s look differ from previous incarnations? Did you see her social media post of appearing in full makeup during a marriage counseling session? That must have made you laugh.

Alexei Dmitriew: This time around, Nebula does have a different look. Her left eye is not mechanical anymore; a cool little touch that James wanted to see for this movie. It helps tell a backstory of Rocket and Nebula’s relationship and how close their bond is. James said that Rocket has helped her throughout the years, improving her cybernetics and removing the mechanical part on her eye. The design team at Legacy Effects came up with so many variations of that, and it was really cool to see it come to fruition. That particular makeup is very special to me because I had the honor of taking it over in Guardians 2. I did it throughout Infinity war and Endgame as well. Prior to this movie, I had applied it about 90 times, and I was able to do makeup 10 times on this movie to give myself an even hundred applications with her. She’s a trooper. I did see the social media post of her in her makeup, but I didn’t know about it until I saw the post. She’s very sneaky like that. Hahaha.

Awards Daily: Several characters have full body paint applied to them (Adam Warlock, Gamora, Nebula). How has that process improved to avoid damaging the actors’ skins?

Alexei Dmitriew: Every actors’ skin type is different, so through our prep process, we started to learn what everybody needs, and what they don’t need. We make sure we custom tailor everybody’s prep, removal, and every day skin regimen to fit each actor. That’s a great question because the skin prep and care is just as important as the makeup itself. If you’re tearing up someone’s skin day after day, they’re not going to last very long.

Awards Daily: Tell me about creating the ripped-face look of the High Evolutionary. When the final reveal happens at the end of the film, were there conversations about how far is too far?

Alexei Dmitriew: Those were definitely conversations surrounding that, but James was confident with it all the way through, so we followed his lead. The final product was a great mix of practical and CGI assistance. Obviously you can’t do a sunk in nose and eye sockets practically on your actor, so those elements were from our awesome VFX team. We painted those areas black as a placeholder for them. Legacy made a skin of Chuk’s [Chukwudi Iwuji] face that we draped over the prosthetic makeup. We used a mix of different kinds of gel bloods and slimes to get the effect we were looking for. Chuk gave an awesome performance and completely sold the appearance of the character.

Awards Daily: What were the most challenging looks to design?

Alexei Dmitriew: Legacy Effects did the designs for the film. My job as the Department head was to work with them to figure out the makeup process and lead the team to execute it on set. I think the most challenging makeups were the Humanimals. James and Legacy did an amazing job creating a really unique look for them; they were all thought out so well and had many unique characteristics. All of their makeup was engineered with the goal of ensuring comfortability for the actors throughout filming and making sure the makeup process went smooth – especially because we had so many of them to do every single day. Scott Stoddard and I did the Bat Mom’s makeup; the actress, Darla Delgado, wore a 9-piece prosthetic makeup that consisted of front and back of head, forehead, ears, chin, arm fins, and skull cap. The look was finished off with custom teeth, contact lenses, nails, and an amazing wig made by Legacy effects and styled and applied by Hair Department Head Cassie Russek. It took Scott about an hour and 45 minutes to apply and paint.

Awards Daily: How large was your team considering you had around 500 wigs that needed to be cleaned and cared for after filming activities?

Cassie Russek: We had a team of 11 full-time hairdressers, including our personal hairdressers. On our biggest days, we would have upwards of around 60 hairdressers. Our background supervisor, Raissa Patton, did an incredible job keeping track of the sheer mass of work that went into this film. On top of the nearly 500 wigs we used, we were also doing hairstyling work on anyone’s hair we could use! I commend my team of over 80 hairdressers because we all worked incredibly hard to make it happen!

Awards Daily: Tell me about your partnership with Alexei through the Hair and Makeup Process.

Cassie Russek: First let me say, Alexei is an amazing partner and I am so grateful for him. Alexei and I both have worked with Legacy Effects many times at the helm of the design and with Legacy, it’s always one big partnership. So, From day one, we decided that we were going to be a complete team. We would never make decisions without talking to each other first. We had many flow charts, character charts etc. – we did everything together and it made each day flow perfectly. Even during fittings, he and I were spitballing ideas to each other to ensure that every character had a set look – that way, we would be able to set our teams up for total success. Since we had up to 150 Hair and Makeup artists on our biggest days, a complete partnership within hair and makeup was vital. And because we all happen to love each other, every day was a lot of fun!

Awards Daily: The Humanimals are a completely new aspect to the Guardians universe. Tell me about designing and completing those looks.

Cassie Russek: Each unique Humanimal was pre-designed by Legacy Effects with James Gunn! We had the amazing opportunity to then design hairstyles around the prosthetics with gorgeous wigs made by the Legacy team, supervised by Connie Criswell. We wanted to make sure we had an interesting mix of hairstyles that translated human or animal, and since that part of the film was set in the dystopian 80s planet of Counter Earth, we gave everything an 80s flair! From perms to mullets it all existed on our rad Humanimals. Since the wigs were built around prosthetics, each one was its own piece of a puzzle. Prior to starting, we held classes to go over each look and how it would be executed perfectly. I have to highlight our Porcupine, who’s wig was built with tiny holes on a skull cap for each porcupine quill to fit into – they were glued in but were loose enough to ensure that when the Chihuahua hit him with the baseball bat, Quills would come flying out of his wig and we would reset them each take. Executing the details of that work was incredibly fun. That makeup was executed by Michael Ornelaz and Adam Walls, with Legacy Effects providing the design and Connie Criswell creating the character’s wig. Porcupine was truly special.

Awards Daily: Adam Warlock and the High Priestess both have challenging hair colors that match their skin tone. How did that alignment happen?

Cassie Russek: Exactly! We tested so many golds I can’t even tell you. Once we landed on the right gold for the body, we worked on a color that could be painted into the hair with an airbrush. We needed the perfect shade of blonde highlights to give the gold depth so it wasn’t just flat. Key Hair Stylist Stephanie Fenner highlighted Will Poulter’s hair with a hand-painting technique every 4 weeks; we made sure to keep his hair extremely healthy by using a lot of Olaplex and Unite (7 seconds detangler). On a day-to-day basis, we used a combo of hair products, plus our Gold Spray, and did touch ups in between takes with Manic Panic Dye Hard Gold gel. It was the perfect combo of golds. We did the same thing for Ayesha, creating a blonde wig for her that was incredibly messy to match her current life’s chaotic nature, and used the same gold spray as we used on Warlock. The gold spray was perfect, as it gave the hair a gold color without making it stiff, so it moved exactly like hair should!

Awards Daily: There’s a character working for Orgocorp who helps Quinn that wears a Sally Bowles-like wig. Why choose that look for the character?

Cassie Russek: Yes! Ura is a Krylorian played by Daniela Melchior. Costume designer Judianna Macovsky had a very clear vision of Orgocorp as a very 60s nuance type planet. Every character was very sleek, clean, and wore some type of Vidal Sassoon bob, including Ura. Her wig was built into two pieces. The top piece with the bang had a center part that we used to showcase her skin color into her scalp by custom dying a pink wig cap and having the makeup team paint the opposite end to make it pop underneath! The bottom piece was attached so that it could fully move with her neck to prevent it from looking “wiggy”. She is one of my favorite characters. We played a lot with different glue techniques based on what types of paint and makeup were used that day – we’d occasionally have them paint our hands and would take extra lace and glue to make sure we weren’t pulling paint and making it messy. It turned out PERFECT every time. Each alien race had a different type of glue depending on the paint and prosthetics. You’ll never see any lace showing on this film!

Awards Daily: What other hair styles proved exceptionally challenging for the film?

Cassie Russek: The Recorder Guards and Scientists, including our incredible High Evolutionary, Vim and Theel. When designing those looks, we came up with an idea: instead of having everyone just be bald, let’s do a very clean bald fade so that every actor still had hair to style and it cleared those super cool prosthetics. For High Evo, we wanted a haircut that stood out from other villains, as well as for Chuk to have hair that he could live with for 9 months! Once we settled on the look, we had barber Tommy “TJ” Dudley work with Chuk – he nailed the haircut so perfectly that it became the look and design for each recorder. We had so many incredible barbers on this film! Nico Santos and Miriam Shor (Theel and Vim) committed to the haircut as well, we thanked them everyday!