From Angels to Zombies
When Xena's producers need a visual effect to enhance a character, animal or monster, they usually turn to LA-based KNB Effects Group for a helping hand. On set for the sixth season Ring trilogy, KNB's Howard Berger temporarily diverts his attention from a giant Grindl to tell Xena Magazine set reporter Kate Barker all about the company's monster magic…
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 14
What do you do when you're producing a television series and one of your guest stars happens to be a giant Hydra? Well, if you're lucky enough to be working with Pacific Renaissance, you'll be blessed with the magic of KNB Effects Group... and they can create anything from angels to zombies.
Howard Berger visits New Zealand every few months, for two or three weeks at a time, overseeing larger effects and visiting KNB’s Auckland base. “We’re constantly making things,” he says. “We do everything from making up cast members as demons to making mechanical animals, all the way to making giant creatures. We oversee all the special make-up and creature effects in Xena and all the other Renaissance shows.”
The larger monsters and the like are constructed in KNB’s home base of Los Angeles and shipped off to the sets in New Zealand, but the on-site workshop still has a constant flow of work. “Melanie Tooker is our head of department in New Zealand,” Berger explains. “She’s currently putting together a better facility there that will enable us to produce more of the larger effects pieces.
“Make-up and effects is an obscure thing, especially in New Zealand, but Mel has found a bunch of people who are really interested in doing this. She's really been the driving force at the Auckland base; she stays there year-round and as far as KNB’s input is concerned, is basically running the show.”
Back in the early days of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Berger used to travel to New Zealand several times a year and stay “maybe eight weeks, working on a bunch of episodes.” These days, however, he has a busier schedule and a family he wants to be close to. “I’ll come out here for a short time and execute the effects with Mel,” he says. “Then she’ll take over and oversee the rest of the effects work that's going on.”
Berger's partners in the company are Bob Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero. The three of them formed KNB over 12 years ago, having been friends for several years before. “We’re like brothers,” say Berger. “All three of us have extremely different personalities, but we’re very close, and that’s the reason it works.
“Greg handles all the financial goings-on of the studio, and also the artistic overseeing,” he reveals. “I do more of the same and also the on-set stuff because I love doing make-up. Bob provides the direction; he goes out searching for other projects the company can work on.”
Berger’s first introduction to Xena producers Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi came with their involvement in the Evil Dead and Darkman films. From there, the professional relationship continued and KNB was brought in on the ground floor of Pacific Renaissance’s first Hercules television feature in 1993. “Back then,” remembers Berger, “we made fun of it all the time. When we were on set, we’d yell, ‘Hey, Hercul-cheese!' Then lo and behold, it became this phenomenon and people really, really liked it. We had no idea it was going to go this far.
“I was always wanting to come out from LA and do the Xena stuff and Greg never quite understood until he got to the set. He finally came out to do an episode and came back saying, ‘I had the best time!’ I said, ‘I told you - it’s a blast!’ And it is.”
Even before KNB, Howard Berger knew he wanted to work in the movies. His father was involved in sound post-production, and although this must have had some influence on his chosen career, for Berger it was the appeal of the monsters that drew him in. As a teenager, he was skilled at drawing and sculpting, which eventually led to his interest in effects make-up.
“My parents were very encouraging,” he recalls. “My mom and dad were really enthusiastic about me doing as much as possible, so I used to experiment on my sisters. I have a million stories of them being stuck in masks for days and days and not being able to get out of them because I didn’t know how to remove the make-up!”
After graduating from high school, at which he was heavily involved in drama production and make-up, Berger immediately started work in the effects industry. “I’ve been working there since I was 18 years old,” he says. “That makes me 407!”
So where do KNB’s creative ideas come from? According to Berger, it’s very much a group effort. “Often Rob Tapert will send us artwork out of comic books or things that have influenced him. We’ll make something that has a similar feel but is practical for Xena or whichever show we’re doing.
“We're currently doing something for Cleopatra 2525,” Berger reveals. “We’re building this sexy robot for a couple of episodes, and it’s based on something a Japanese artist did. Again, Rob just picked up the artwork and we redesigned the basic theme to make it practical to Cleo.
“Rob loves sci-fi, horror and fantasy. For instance, the skeletons in the Evil Dead films were all referred to as ‘Harryhousen skeletons' because they were like the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts and Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which Ray Harryhausen created. We’ve referenced that type of material when we’ve been working on Hercules and Xena, and that’s inspired us. So we’ve come up with all these really neat things. That's always really been a lot of fun.”
There’s a lot to be said for creative freedom, too. “In Hollywood, you don’t often need to be resourceful,” says Berger. “But just because you might have several million dollars for a budget, doesn’t mean you can do what you want. Here, you get to do a lot of creative things that you wouldn't get to do on a big budget Hollywood film, because you wouldn’t have to. Down here, I’ve had to go back to my roots of working on films like Evil Dead, and ask myself, 'How did we do it then? If we’d had to build a monster and we were in the middle of the desert and we didn’t have a monster, how would we have done it?’
“On these shows, the producers allow us to be creative and resourceful, mostly because we have to be. They've been really strong and driven in their visions as well, but I’ve learned through the years that if I can state a good case with regard to a certain creature or effect, then Rob will more often than not go with that idea.”
It hasn’t always been that easy though. Berger recounts an incident early on in the Hercules days when things didn’t quite go according to plan. “I remember when we were doing one of the television movies - I think it was Hercules in the Underworld - we had these big, cheesy Hydra puppets. In the movie, Hercules and lolaus come across this little girl and she turns into a Hydra. I said, ‘We should really shoot this at night,’ and Rob was saying, ‘No, we’ll shoot it outside [in the daylight]; it’ll be really great...’ So we built all these differently scaled puppets - from hand puppets right up to giant Hydras and they shot it all.
“I went to Renaissance in LA to watch the dailies with Rob and it was terrible! Rob put his arm around me and said, ‘Well, you were right; never shoot a monster during the day. We won’t do that again...’ That’s where we started learning what works and what doesn't work. Big monsters do not work in the daylight!”
Having worked for so long with the same company, there’s more than one highlight that Berger can recall. One such event was the episode where he finally got to work his make-up magic on Kevin Sorbo’s face. “I was here last year and Hercules was wrapping up, and we were working on an episode called Bedeviled,” he remembers. “I'd spent all these years making up everyone else in the Hercules/Xena universe, but I’d never gotten the chance to actually work with Kevin. And I finally got to do it on Bedeviled which was I think the first time Kevin had to act under special effects make-up. I had to do this big demon thing on him - it was really, really good fun - and he had a great time, too!”
Other stand-out episodes for Berger include the India-themed The Way and the effects-heavy season five debut Fallen Angel. “I was really proud of those episodes,” he says. “I was proud of the material - they were great scripts and very exciting and they were very ambitious. They’re two of the episodes I’m most proud of, and I really enjoyed working on them.”
Berger actually enjoys the entire working process, including of course, the finished product. “I do watch the show,” he admits, “and not just because I work on it. Well, it’s partially because I work on it,” he adds. “I love the people who are involved in it: the producers, the directors, the crew, the cast... Lucy and Renee are fantastic! But other than that, it’s just a really fun show. I have three kids - not that I let them watch it too much because there are some adult themes around it. But if there's an episode that I personally worked on, they get to see that.”
It seems Xena is as wonderful for those who create the magic as the audiences who get to see it.