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When it comes to influences in the movie industry you can be astounded to find that the least recognizable name (for the lay person) has had their hands in everything you’ve ever watched. Dayne tells us of that inspirational artist for him. “I met someone in 1985, right after I’d gotten out of school, at an agency who actually I credit with most all of my training and everything else. His name was Louis Lazzara [Blade, End of Days, Pay It Forward]. He and I worked together for about ten years, most of the time. We did Sea Quest and he’s the one that got me on Mr. Saturday Night. He took me on and I learned how to do appliances from him, prosthetics and a lot of my color." And in an industry where you are in the company of Academy Award winners like Rick Baker [Planet of the Apes, How the Grinch stole Christmas] and Greg Cannom [Hannibal, Idle Hands, Blade], Dayne praises Louis for his great work.
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"They’ve done some big stuff, and I’m going, ‘Really? Is that your final decision on the look?’"
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With last year’s Emmy nomination for the episode, The Ring on Angel, I told Dayne not to separate himself too far from these guys! “Well, I don’t put myself away from them,” he admits, “because I look at makeup artists that come to [Angel]. I know their ability and I know what they’ve done and they’ve done some big stuff. And I’m going, ‘Really? Is that your final decision on the look?’ ” he jokes. “Nah, I wouldn’t do that! But just inside I’m going, ‘I’m quite sure I’m kinda right up there with these people.’ I’m very confident when it comes to that. I just think those of us who do a lot of the appliances, special effects and beauty are on kind of a level. They just happen to be the ones that were there at the right time and they got their foot in and really launched themselves.” He’s quick to add, “I think Angel actually is launching me as far as helping from here on. I don’t think I’ll ever have a problem working anymore just because I’ve hired so many people that know me and know my work. Other people see the show and see the work and they think, ‘God, I wish I had these guys, but I can’t get them because they’re nine months on a show.’ So it puts us away from everyone else, but when it’s all said and done the ball will start rolling in another direction and I’ll go somewhere else.” Not too quickly for Angel fans though! “No, I’m fully committed to coming back every year. Some people in other departments are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so tired. Are you going back?’ and I’m going, ‘Yeah, I’m going back, it’s a great job! I love mine,’ ” he enthuses with a laugh.
Schwarzenegger ~ End of Days
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The quality of Dayne’s work has shown through at a couple of major industry events recently. One, at the Paley Television Festival when Angel’s Dear Boy was featured and at the 706 Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards. Seeing his work on a larger format allows you to witness first hand the production value. It prevails on the big screen and impressively shows the level of film quality they maintain. “Oh great, well thanks very much. It’s a big thing and [the Guild Awards] draw a lot of actors. But the actors should come,” he jokes, “we’re their makeup artists for goodness sake. We were nominated for Darla for Best Period Makeup for a Television Series. We were also nominated for the Shroud of Rahmon for Best Special Effects Makeup. They showed a clip on a bigger screen and I was like, ‘Ahh, it looks really good!’ ” He laughs about how impressed he was but the fact is they actually won for the episode Darla, and deservedly so.
On the Glamour side of the makeup application we took a look at Charisma Carpenter [Cordelia]. She has gone through a lot of changes, mostly with her hair this past season, but as her character matures the approach to her look may or may not be affected from a makeup stand point. “A little bit,” Dayne concedes. “David Deleon, who does Charisma’s makeup, he’s got more of a fashion side and he likes to kind of play around with her a little bit. They don’t let us go too crazy. They did in the last couple of episodes where she was a Princess. She had pretty heavy makeup on but it fit the character. They try not to let us go too over the top with her because [Cordelia’s] not supposed to be quite that glamorous, she is an actress but we kind of just follow the script. If it’s down played, if it’s up-mood – but we try and change it enough to keep it up-to-date for the glamour stuff.” An interesting observation caught that disappearing act of Charisma’s lower back tattoo for the Pylea arc episodes. Where in previous episodes you often saw her tattoo, the Princess was clearly without. Magick or makeup? Danye tells us how it was done. “Joss and David Greenwalt wanted the tattoo covered. Never did hear why exactly. We covered them with an acrylic based makeup called Pax. It was applied with an airbrush.” This makeup must be removed by Dayne because it doesn’t just wash off.
Brody Hutzler [Landok] and Andy Hallett [Lorne] on the set of Pylea
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Fabrication and Application. Switching to the Horror side, Dayne and his crew work hand-in-hand with the brilliant staff over at Optic Nerve Studios where John Vulich is the creative genius behind all the prosthetics. There’s a fine line where John Vulich leaves off and Dayne picks up with the makeup. He explains this complex process to us in simpler terms and where the two meet. “The way these things are created and where John comes in is,” he begins, “they do all the mini-meetings and think, ‘Well, we want this monster to have six horns and we want him to have long fangs . . .’ That’s all done before I ever see the monsters come to my set. He does all the fabrication and if it’s something large and he has to pre-color something he’ll do that in the shop. Then they’re delivered to me and if they’re working till three in the morning they just drop them off at my doorstep and I pick’em up in the morning and off I go to work with them.” Okay, right here I’m getting this very humorous visual of Dayne walking out of his house with the heads of demons under his arms as his next door neighbors peer out the window drinking their morning coffee! “But all the prefabrication is done there [Optic Nerve] all the way up to the foam building and then when it comes time for application then it comes to me. I take it from there and do all the blending and painting and everything when I get to the set.”
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“All those background people that were green and the others, as we call them, chicken-head demon things.”
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Now that Dayne has quite a history of doing Horror makeup you can’t imagine him coming to work and not hearing ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’ “It’s fun you know. It’s fun to see what they’ll create and what they do each time. It’s always something different which makes it a lot of fun. Unfortunately those last three episodes I had to farm out to other makeup artists,” he confesses, “because I was so busy with Andy [Hallett]. Andy takes up a lot of my time and by the time we get his hair done and his lenses in we’re in a full three hours with him. About 2 1/2 hours just to get the makeup on, all the green and his hands, his neck and everything else painted.” Talk about a challenge! “Yeah, and boy we had plenty of green for the last three. Those were big episodes, I don’t know if they came across on television that big but they were big for me and the makeup department. All those backgrounds and those 2:30am calls were like, wow!” He recounts for us the scenes when Lorne was in his home village in Pylea. “All those background people that were green and the others, as we call them, ‘chicken-head’ demon things. I was running a couple days there [with] 14 makeup artists to try and get all that work done at 2:30-3:00 in the morning. It was a lot of work but we are using Number 21, Through the Looking Glass as our Emmy submission,” he laughs recalling, “with Joss in the background dancing.”
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