More Michael Westmore Answers

The official Star Trek site has been updated with Part Two of their interview with Trek make-up supervisor Michael Westmore, for which readers could recently submit questions. Here are a few quotes from the interview, in which Westmore talks about the future of make-up, and the future of Star Trek:

Mark M.: With several years of prosthetic work for Star Trek under your belt now, how feasible do you think it would be to produce an 'all alien' show (i.e. a show based on the Klingon homeworld) in terms of money spent on make-up and the time making up each actor for every shoot? Also, how long before CG [computer graphics] replaces the majority of your work?

Michael Westmore: It would be feasible to have everybody be an alien. We just finished a two-parter with the Hirogen that had a very big budget. We had a lot of make-up artists on it. If there were a script with a lot of aliens and the studio liked it, they would put it into the works.

CG is doing very well and they are already using it, but it isn't absolutely perfect yet. There are still a few little glitches. I don't think the world will ever become totally CG because then you won't have anybody for the National Enquirer and there won't be any stories, no famous actors, no Oscars, nobody walking down the red carpet. As long as people are enamoured with movie stars and the glamour of Hollywood showbiz…CG will have its moments and there will be movies that are all CG. It's just a matter of time, but in the long run it will never replace actors.

AMTCAD: Do you plan on doing make-up for the upcoming Star Trek series?

Michael Westmore: I would like to, but we haven't been given any scripts and we haven't been given a start date. I literally don't know anything about it—I haven't talked to anybody. There are a lot of rumors about what it's going to be and what's happening, but there have been no meetings so far. But, yes, I would like to.

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