‘Elvis’ prosthetic designer Jason Baird and Mark Coulier on the ‘nice touch’ of Austin Butler’s transformation into the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll

For elvisProsthetic designers Jason Baird and Mark Coulier thought the bulk of their work would be turning Tom Hanks into Colonel Tom Parker. They were surprised to find that the real challenge was the subtle changes for Austin Butler as Elvis throughout the film. Baz Luhrmann’s biopic looks back on the 20 years of legendary Elvis Presley’s (Austin Butler) unprecedented superstardom. n’ Roll, Hollywood movies and a stay in Las Vegas. As he grew older, Elvis’ prosthesis had to gradually change to create an almost imperceptible difference to simulate his natural aging.

DEADLINE: Can you explain to me how Austin Butler’s prosthetics change throughout the film?

MARK COULIER: It was really interesting because we originally thought of the makeup for Colonel Tom Parker on Tom Hanks. So it’s fat, a bullfrog neck and a bald head, and then there might be some Elvis related stuff too. Obviously the heavy makeup at the end, you know, the heavier makeup when he does the Unchained Melody at the end of the movie. What we didn’t realize at the time was that turning Austin Butler into Elvis would be more work in terms of prosthetics than Tom Parker. Austin Butler wears a chin piece from the beginning throughout the film, and then we added cheek pads and a jaw when he’s in Vegas. When he comes back and does the ’68 special and wears the black leather outfit and looks really super handsome, Baz wanted him to look more mature and chiseled and less boyish than Austin, you know? This allowed us to push his character more into Elvis territory and change his face. If you watch the movie, he kind of becomes more like Elvis as the movie progresses because we were able to add more things to him. That was the general way of things in Austin. And the other thing we did was put his ears back, we made a prosthesis that goes behind the ears to pull Austin’s ears in just because Elvis had these ears that lay flat against his head. And then Jason’s team took the application day by day and did all the big suits and all the preparation.

JASON BART: For Tom Hanks, his daily makeup took about three and a half hours. When it was really old it was like five or five and a half hours because the older look had a lot more pieces, it was all wrapped up. Austin’s cast members were Emma George and Anthony McMullen and they did a fantastic job with him. His makeup took about two hours and the hair on top, as the hairpieces were quite an intense process, took just over an hour to put on all of Elvis’ post-prosthetic hairpieces.

Austin’s progression as Elvis through the film, the intricacies that went into those prosthetics, through the microscopic, tiny flecks of his tan. The guys did a great job applying and coloring this makeup and also changing the color through its clear days. There is the handsome man Elvis when he is in the white suit just as he begins his Vegas tours, and he is beautifully tanned, fit and strong. And then he begins to age into his 70s and suffer or break down more. He starts taking more pills and of course doesn’t get out in the sun much and his face starts to get a little puffy and a little pale. These subtleties really contributed so much to the creation of Elvis and allowed him to change so much in those later years.

DEADLINE: Was there much to change with the Colonel?

COULIER: I think we did two sculpts, there was when you first saw Colonel in the film and then there was the aging phase. So the other variations were the wig, the gray of the wig and the color that Jason was talking about, that progressive aging process and also the hand poached eyebrows. As he grew older, gray hair grew in the eyebrows and the wig was replaced and the hairline receded even more. We didn’t need to sculpt five different face parts of Colonel Tom Parker because he looked pretty much the same at that time until the end.

BEARD: Tom Hanks’ color change spans three decades. So we followed Colonel Tom Parker’s aging process. They’re in Vegas, so they’re out in the sun, just following his birthmarks and his sunspots and all the skin damage from the sun. Also, in the early stages of testing, Baz wanted the bullfrog’s neck to be a little thicker and a little heavier. So Mark and his team made internal prosthetics that made the prosthetics thicker to give him that extra weight and age as he gets older.

Baz wanted to see some sort of hawk nose for the colonel character in early conversations and wanted that hawk look. So we curled some hair and wrapped it over the makeup by hand. While just Baz was trying to figure out what he wanted to see with the colonel, Mark and his team played around with different size noses, and when it was all settled we tweaked it a bit.

COULIER: It was kind of interesting because Tom Parker didn’t really have that hook nose, but Baz really wanted it for this character. This is when you try to get as close to Elvis as possible without losing your actor, so strike that delicate balance of keeping your actor and pushing him to Elvis. We’ve all seen where you go too far and it’s obviously makeup, and what you’re trying to do is something that’s imperceptible. They don’t want people to know that Austin Butler wears a lot of prosthetics. But people only have a vague idea of ​​what the colonel looks like. You have a global idea, so Baz has a little more leeway to change it. And he really wanted that hooked nose, so at one point in the test we were working with Jason and Baz was like, ‘Oh, you have nose spatulas? Can we just see a nose? And Jason had some grave wax in the store, so he made me an old fashioned grave wax nose on Tom Hanks, it’s gum and then cotton wool and then grave wax that sticks to the cotton, it’s really old fashioned, that’s one of the first things that I ever did in makeup school like 35 years ago And then Baz came in and started pressing it into position and putting big thumbprints in it, but it was great because Tom loved it and Baz loved being able to sculpt on Tom’s face, which was really funny.