BACKGROUND

What is your role on this film?

Stephan:I'm an assistant Art Director and have worked on projects like From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mission: Impossible and now on V For Vendetta. One of my tasks on this project was to supervise the producing of the mask for this film. Because it's one of the key props we started to do that right from the beginning; it was quite a bit of progress to achieve what we got in the end.

How did you start working in film?

Stephan: I studied architecture but always wanted to work in film. At the end of study it just worked out that I could work on movies, international movies luckily.

What was your first film out of university?

Stephan: I started as a draftsman on From Hell. That was located in London like Vendetta is, but set 150 years earlier. So one time you build the past and the next time the future. That's what is so exciting about working on a movie.

How familiar are you with the V For Vendetta comic book?

Stephan: I didn't know of Alan Moore before I started on From Hell, but I really like his stories. His way of telling these stories is really interesting. That's probably a reason why lots of his comics are done into films now.

I really liked V For Vendetta, it's very subversive. Terrorism against a government is one thing. But what happens if the people are actually agreeing to it? What if the government cuts back the rights and freedom of people so much that they don't want to live like that? That's the thin line between revolution and terrorism. It depends from which side you're looking and that's what it makes the story very interesting nowadays..

When did you start working on V For Vendetta?

Stephan: I started a few days after Owen [Paterson, Production Designer], so right from the beginning.

MAKING THE MASK

What was your key role in the film?

Stephan: Next to the work on the Shadow Gallery and a couple of other sets, one of my major things was to supervise the whole process of making the mask for example. It was not possible for Owen and James [McTeigue, Director], to talk to the sculptor Bernd Wenzel directly, because he doesn't speak English, so I was there in the meetings right from the beginning. Later I did the coordination of producing the masks including the polyester process, the airbrushing, the special needs for special effects and the different gloss-versions for the camera.

The mask was started in the first week as we knew to achieve a good mask takes a really long time because a facial expression is quite a difficult thing to get right. The first thing was to make a clay face and to try to achieve something which looks a bit like a Venetian mask but not too realistic in its expression. Our main reference for that was the mask from the comic book V For Vendetta [illustrated by David Lloyd].

It was always a matter of trial and error. Bernd [Wenzel, Mask Sculptor] did a clay mask, then James, Owen and I looked at it, changed details, then Bernd did a new version, which was changed again, and so on. We tried to achieve a mask that hasn't a clear expression, which was the most difficult thing to achieve. We didn't want a smile that was a real smile, and we didn't want a mean look, but something in between like a smile you can also read as a dangerous smile. So we played around with the mouth and with the eyes and the opening, like how wide the eyes are open, and the eyebrows.

In the reception of the face we'd see every little difference in an expression, just how the eyes are and how the mouth is, just millimeter changes were making a completely new face. So that took quite a while of fiddling around with all different nuances. When the ground shape of the face was there, we started to add the crow's feet, the parts above the eyebrows, the mustache, and things like that. We tried to get closer and closer to the face Owen and James had conceptualized.

At this point is the work still all being done in clay?

Stephan: All in clay, like a grey clay model. The only color, if you can call it color, put on was the black eyebrows and mustache because that was the way it worked best to model and modify the face in clay.

In the end we tried to achieve a completely symmetrical face, which is not natural for a face. That was always a point, we didn't want to have a mask in the end that looked like a human. It shouldn't look at all like the actor's face, it shouldn't be recognizable as somebody's face, it should be a self-standing expression and mask.

After achieving that we got a cast of the actor's face and we adapted that to our clay model for our final result for the mask so that he would be comfortable to wear it for a couple weeks.

Was that done so the interior of the mask fitted well?

Stephan: Yes, it was for the interior, because the exterior of the mask shouldn't show who the actor is underneath it; it's V. In between we always made a kind of polyester cast from the clay model to see it looks like a mask and not only like a clay face or clay head. We tried making masks from leather, but polyester was the material we used in the end.

What was the process from clay to polyester?

Stephan: After you have the clay head you make a cast out of plaster, and you make a silicon mold from that. Then in this silicon mold you form the polyester mask, a very thin polyester mask, and then it gets a white filler coat on it to close all the little spots on there. After that you spray the color on it with an airbrush. That was a very big issue again, to get the right color and the right temperature for the face color and the cheek spots so that it's not too intense, not too yellow, and not too white. I worked very closely with the airbrush artist Susi Montoro. There was lots of trial and error to achieve what we have in the end.

You're essentially creating one of the main stars of the film.

Stephan: Yes, V wears the mask all the time because he's not showing his face - his real face - in the movie, so it was quite important to achieve a mask that is also enjoyable to look at for more than 90 minutes. That is quite a hard thing because it's static, it doesn't move, there's no lip movement or eye movement or anything, so it has to look good enough that people are still interested in looking.

Did you discuss how the lighting would affect the expression?

Stephan: Yes, we discussed that, and we had test shoots for it. We had different steps of gloss of the mask. We had a high gloss mask and a semi matte mask and a matte mask so the reflection of light would be different. It depends on whether it's a close up shot or a wide shot, and the light atmosphere around it. It's on the day that you see how the mask really looks in the light on the set, so it was a matter of getting that right on the day because we couldn't prepare a mask for every light situation.

Were there consistency issues across the masks, with different shadowing for instance?

Stephan: Yes, that became an issue after the camera test we had with the first polyester cast we did. When the mask was made we immediately did a camera and light test on it and then it was pretty clear that in some light situations we needed a gloss or a less gloss mask, so that's when we decided we had to do different variations.

Something that became obvious in watching the dailies from the camera tests was that we had too much reflection on the mask in some light situations. On the cheeks or the nose or something a shine was created, which is very bad for the picture, so we tried to avoid that by using a different lacquer on top. Technically you're a bit limited as there are not so many variations of matte you can get, so we had to stick to these three different versions.

How is the mask attached to the actor's head?

Stephan: It's very simple, it's just a band of fabric with Velcro on the back. We also have padding inside. We can't see the fixing of the mask in the film, so there's only one prop mask that we see as a mask in the film that has leather bands and leather from the inside.

What kind of consideration was put into the actor's vision and hearing him speak?

Stephan: Yes, that was a big issue as well. The ideal mask was one with the eyes a bit more closed and we opened them up again because of the viewing point of the actor, he couldn't see enough. I think it is very hard in the beginning to get comfortable with the mask. If you look through it, your horizontal range is quite good, but the vertical one is not. You have to practice not to move your head while you try to look down, that was the thing James didn't want, that the actor physically moves too much to actually see. Moving the head should be an act of playing or acting, not an act of seeing. So we widened the eyes a bit, and also the mouth because the sound was not too good. We had little holes for the nose, so it's not such a nasal sound, but I'm pretty sure they will probably do something with the sound in post production as well.

How many masks have you made?

Stephan: Lots. At the beginning we started with one mask because it took about a week and involved a lot of labor. We tried to get away with as few masks as possible, but because it's the key prop and so important for the film you always want to have back up masks. It takes too long to do a new one for the main actor in case one breaks, so we have a set of nine masks: three of each of the three different types of gloss three times. Then we have a lot of extra masks because there are mask scenes with lots of extras wearing the masks, and we also have prop masks and stunt masks… I think we have more than 40 masks in total.

What is different about a stunt mask?

Stephan: Nothing, really. They just get crashed and destroyed in the end. I mean, we had one scene where a mask goes through a mirror and we had to put lead in the mask to make it heavier so that it actually crashes through the mirror, but that was the only change to the mask. Then we had a prop mask, as I said earlier, where we had leather bands, and we also had leather inlay inside the mask to show it on camera, which we didn't have in the others. Those were the only ”special” masks, basically.

There is a scene with multiple Vs, are the masks for that being made in the same way?

Stephan: No. We have 500 extras wearing masks, but we couldn't afford to do the real masks for them, so we have simpler versions for the mask scenes. We photographed the mask in a 360 degree scan and got color reference and pre-printed that on a sheet of plastic and then vacuum formed these masks for the multiple mask scenes. So we've got 500 vacuum formed masks in the style of our hero mask. You get away with it because these shots are not close ups, so you have the imagination of this mask, and that's all you need.