Star Trek XI Makeup Crew Acknowledge Co-Workers
2 min readThe three-person makeup crew for Star Trek XI were nominated for an Oscar for their work, but are quick to point out that it took more than just the three of them to create the species, old and new, which appeared in Star Trek XI.
During a Saturday afternoon symposium featuring the Oscar-nominated hair and makeup artists for 2010, one of the three Star Trek XI makeup artists, Mindy Hall, makeup department head, spoke for the group. “We’re thrilled there were forty-plus makeup artists, twelve of which are out here today, who stood beside us. They weren’t behind us. They were beside us, taking the designs and bringing them to life.”
“From the get go, all we wanted to do was work that was worthy of this,” said Barney Burman, special effects makeup artist. Burman also spoke about his work on Star Trek XI with TrekMovie.com, explaining how the duties were divvied up and sharing photos showing the work of the makeup artists. “I initially brought Joel [Harlow] on to be my key artist and to work as the supervisor on set for prosthetics, while I was designing and creating stuff back in the shop,” he said. “Once we started shooting I became so overwhelmed with stuff to do in the shop that I decided to have Joel take over the Romulans, close to where J.J. could see them every day, so we broke into two different camps. And Mindy [Hall] was always handling the straight makeup, so that were three different camps but we stayed in communication with each other and supported each other. We worked as close together as one unit, while being three units.”
What would Burman like to see in Star Trek XII? “I would love to see the Klingons unmasked,” he said. “To me it is kind of like with Batman Begins, and they made it anew. And in the sequel the knew they had to bring the Joker into it, because he is the most iconic Batman villain. So to me it is the same thing, if you are going to do the second Star Trek, hopefully we get to see the Klingons in the sequel.”
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