It was all about the ears.
With very little rehearsal time, the practical-effects team
had to get them right. Perched atop the head of the child actor Christian
Convery, who plays the part-deer hero of Netflix’s fanciful new dystopian drama
“Sweet Tooth,” the ears, soft and furry, had to move just right. That meant
they had to move like a deer’s.
اضافة اعلان
This was a job for Grant Lehmann, puppeteer and ear
wrangler. Working with a pair of hollow, bendable latex ears and a
remote-control setup, Lehmann found a way to practice his job and create mischief
at the same time, especially whenever someone new came on the set.
“When someone was a bit green, and I knew it was the first
time I’d seen them, I’d just hold off and not do anything while they were
talking to Christian,” Lehmann said on a video chat from his home in Australia.
“Then I’d pick my moment to make the ears move and get that little jump-back
shock from them.”
It takes a small army to get any
TV series off the ground,
especially one with as many moving parts (and ears) as “Sweet Tooth.” Premiering
Friday on
Netflix, the show, based on Jeff Lemire’s much darker graphic novel,
takes a decidedly analog approach to creating a fantastical world of hybrid
creatures that would seem to demand digital solutions. Computer-generated
imagery was certainly used in the making of “Sweet Tooth,” but only when
necessary, often to wipe the screen clean of its hardworking puppeteers.
In a series of video chats, artists in front of and behind
the camera talked about what it took to bring “Sweet Tooth” to life.
A global pandemic
The show, like the comic, takes place in a post-apocalyptic
world ravaged by a virus known as the sick. For the creators and showrunners,
Beth Schwartz and Jim Mickle, the first big question was how to depict the
virus. What symptoms would it inflict upon its victims? How would they react?
How would they die?
“In the comic book, it’s more of a horror kind of pandemic,”
Mickle said from his office in Los Angeles. “It feels like ‘28 Days Later,’
where people get growths and have ooze and stuff.”
As they worked on the pilot, Mickle remembered thinking: “I
feel like we’ve seen that before. What haven’t we seen in a while? His answer:
“Just a bad flu. It should just be a bad flu.”
The real world would soon provide plenty of source material
for what a faithful portrayal of deadly flu-like pandemic might look like. But
the pilot was actually shot in May and June of 2019, long before the COVID-19
shutdown. Fortunately for the producers, they had thought deeply about what
such a scenario might look like and had done their homework, looking at
previous viruses such as bird flu and SARS. “All of our science tracked when
the real pandemic started,” Mickle said.
Based on their research, they imagined for the pilot what
specific elements — such as the hospital’s strict mask policies — might look
like, aspects that would match up with the eventual reality.
Victims of “the sick” exhibit symptoms that feel familiar
and require few special effects: deep rings appear around their eyes, and noses
that run profusely. The telltale sign is a quivering little finger.
Health and safety measures are familiar — to a point. Yes,
there are temperature checks and hand sanitizer stations. But the quarantine is
ruthless: One symptomatic man, in the middle of hosting a dinner party, is tied
to a chair with cellophane, and his house is set on fire.
Location, location
The producers had already shot the pilot in New Zealand;
then, in 2020, it was time to shoot the rest of the season. The location was
doubly fortuitous. First, as anyone who has seen the “Lord of the Rings”
trilogy can tell you, the island country has an almost otherworldly beauty —
its endless green hills and sheer cliffs naturally suggesting a fantasy world,
no need for the CGI landscapes common to, say, most superhero movies.
And on a practical level, New Zealand was barely scathed by
the real-life virus. While many productions around the world were shutting
down, “Sweet Tooth” was able to keep going (with
COVID-19 protocol in place).
It was like a beautiful bubble.
“When we found out that New Zealand was one of the countries
that had got their act together the quickest and we’d be able to shoot there,
that was a very great thing,” said Nonso Anozie, who plays the mountainous
former pro athlete Tommy Jepperd. “The way that they handled the regulations
and the health orders that they had to follow, I really felt like they did a
great job.”
A deer-boy
The embodiment of that hope is Gus, the 10-year-old deer boy
played by Convery. Raised in a cabin in the woods by his father (Will Forte),
Gus is among the hybrid children born around the same time “the sick” breaks
out. The hybrids are widely suspected of causing the virus and are hunted by a
militia that calls itself the Last Men. Older than most of the hybrids, and
blessed with the ability to speak, Gus is an oddity among the oddities.
“Gus is an innocent deer-boy, who is very hopeful and
positive,” Convery, 11, said from Vancouver in a group video chat with Anozie;
a bust of Gus’ head and antlers were visible behind him. “He’s never seen any
other human than his father because they lived in the woods together for 10
years.”
Gus’ reluctant protector is Tommy. A reformed Last Man,
Tommy, or Big Man, is reconfiguring his moral compass as he goes.
“In this post-apocalyptic world, Jepperd is almost a modern
cowboy, wandering from town to town in a desolate and horrifically beautiful
landscape,” Anozie said from London. “He reminds me of a character from ‘Old
Yeller’ or ‘Shane’ or something like that, but in a modern setting, in this
world where you have to lie, steal, kill and cheat — to do anything you can to
survive day-to-day.”
Anozie, who has worked with many child actors, said he had
an immediate chemistry with his co-star. This was largely because of Convery’s
maturity in front of the camera, he said.
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