Alison Stewart: You are listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue our conversations with Oscar nominees ahead of this Sunday's ceremony. The work of our next guest requires a lot of work before the director yells "action", but then you can see his work full throttle. In the film The Substance, from the unforgettable spinal birth scene to the creature at the end of the movie, all of it came to life because of special makeup effects designer Pierre Olivier Persin. He worked with a team to help achieve the body horror vision of writer and director Coralie Fargeat. He spent hours each day transforming Demi Moore into Elisabeth Sparkle, a movie star who begins aging rapidly after she takes an unusual black market drug. If you've seen the movie, you know how key the makeup is to telling this story.

The Substance is one of only seven horror films to ever be nominated for best Picture at the Oscars and Pierre Olivier Persin is nominated as well for best makeup and hair styling. He also took home the Bafta earlier this month. I began my conversation with Pierre Olivier by asking him how he got his start as a makeup artist.

Pierre Olivier Persin: When I was 14, 15 years old, I used to have late and plaster for Christmas and clay. I spent my teenage years making monsters in my bedroom out of my bedroom and trying to copy the great makeup from that time, like the American Werewolf in London or I don't know, Gremlin. The end of the '80s for me.

Alison Stewart: When was your big break when you knew this is going to be a career for me?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Oh, when I was teenager at the end of the '80s, I knew that I was going to be a special makeup effects artist and there was no doubt about that.

Alison Stewart: That is such a great thing to know when were a teenager. You knew this is what you wanted to do.

Pierre Olivier Persin: Yes. I don't know if it's a chance. That's a big chance. After that, it's lots of work, but that's a big chance. I agree.

Alison Stewart: When you first read the script for The Substance, what was your first reaction?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Well, there is a funny story because the executive producer called me and he said, "Okay, I have that script with lots of prosthetics. Would you like to read it?" I said, yes, sure. But they always say that and sometimes, you end up doing just only a couple of things. I said, yes, sure. Send it over. Then I read the script and I was like, oh, that's incredible. That's terrific. I have to do that movie.

I was the one crawling back at him saying, oh, I have to. Please, let me do the movie. That was my start on the show.

Alison Stewart: How were the visual descriptions written into the script?

Pierre Olivier Persin: For instance, for the Monstro, the monster at the end of the movie, it was clearly written that Elisabeth Sparkle's face was stuck on the back of the monster with that scream, terrible screaming face. That was written down but it wasn't written that she-- she wasn't described apart from that. It was a little bit of both worlds.

Alison Stewart: You told the LA Times that you sat with the director for three days, just going over all of the different looks. What was helpful about that process?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Well, you read the script, but that's only a start. Then you really need to understand what's inside the director's mind. Words are just only the beginning because sometimes you can have just a couple of words, but it's going to be an epic sequence or sometimes you think something very big in the movie, but the director will say, "It's going to last only a few seconds. Don't worry too much about that." That was really important.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because so many of the effects are practical effects. Why was it so important to you and the director that the effects be mostly practical?

Pierre Olivier Persin: That's a good question. When she was watching the movie, she wanted to touch what she was seeing on screen. I guess that was why we did that that way. That was the whole point, to have a very organic journey, in a way, while watching the movie. It's all about flesh and I don't know, turning into weird things. It's gooey and it's full of wrinkles and boobs and whatever. I guess Carly wanted that to the movie.

Alison Stewart: Let's start with the back birthing scene where we see Sue emerges from Elisabeth's back. That is Margaret Qualley character versus Demi Moore's character. Why is that the place you wanted to start? It was the first thing that you worked on, the back birthing scene.

Pierre Olivier Persin: Yes, that's correct and that was lots of fun. I don't know. What can I say? We used different makeup effects for that. We used silicon dummies. They were a bit like big realistic puppets. We had raised sets and with my team, we were below the set and we were perpetuating these dummies of the rippling effect and the back splitting open and all that.

That was one part of the effects, and then we had really big prosthetics that we applied on the actress for all the stitching and the big wound and all that. It was using different techniques depending on the shot.

Alison Stewart: For many of the shots, you created moles and scans of the actors in this film. What does that allow you to do in your work?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Yes, we used a little bit of everything. It's true we used digital sculpting and scan and 3D printing, but we also used very traditional techniques. We used to do, back in the days, we used to [unintelligible 00:07:07] full bodies. It's really difficult for the actor to stay for two hours while people are trying to live cast your body.

It can be a very difficult experience and very physical and you don't want to put anybody through that. With the scan, you can just-- what we used is photogrammetry, and it's a system. You just take 200 pictures at the same time.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow. That's really interesting.

Pierre Olivier Persin: That's fascinating. You don't torture anyone.

Alison Stewart: Well, sometimes you do have to torture them. They have to sit as the molding is applied to them. It could take an hour, it could take up to seven hours. What do you do with an actor for all of those hours where they have to sit there and they have to be still?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Yes, they do. When we apply all the prosthetics, when we glue the prosthetics, blend the edges, paint and color all the appliances, apply wigs and all that, it's quite time consuming. That's true. Yes, they have to sit still. The best is when they follow what you're doing. Sometimes they can fall asleep, but sometimes you want them to be awake because you want them to close their eyes, look up for me and whatever.

We do breaks, obviously, and you have to be very aware. If you can feel or sense that there is something wrong, you just have a break. Sometimes you're going to chat and sometimes you're going to feel that they want to stay in character. Anything. They don't want to speak so you just stick to your work.

Depending on the-- We are working on human beings, very sensitive human beings. You also need to be careful. Sometimes we are so focused because it's so technical, we tend to forget a little bit about that but you have to keep that in mind all the time.

Alison Stewart: My guest is makeup artist Pierre Olivier Persin. He's Oscar nominated for his work on The Substance. When Sue doesn't respect the balance of The Substance, Elisabeth's body begins to show rapid aging. At first it's a finger, and then it's more and more. What research did you do into how the body begins to look as it ages, especially that finger?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Well, for the finger, actually, it was-- I didn't research anything. It came naturally and we had to find a balance between realism and fantasy. We wanted the characters to be believable and the prosthetics to be believable, but also Coralie wanted to be free and to go crazy if needed.

That was a fine line between that. We researched the effect of aging on full bodies, on naked bodies, and we looked for hunchback. Real people and then you feed yourself with all that, but then you try to come up with your own design. Some movies, you're have to do very realistic things because-- but that movie, we have that little fantasy license.

Alison Stewart: We got a call from a listener with a really good question. It says, how do you apply it the same every day so there's no continuity issues ever?

Pierre Olivier Persin: That's a very good question. What we do is because-- You start with a live cast or scan of the face for instance, you sculpt the new character on top of the live cast. For instance, Demi Moore makeup, and then we take molds of the sculpture. From those molds, we are able to cast silicone appliances that we're going to apply every day on the actress.

If I have 40 days of shooting, I will be able to cast 40 sets of prosthetics from those molds and apply them so the appliances are going to look exactly the same because they all come from the same mold. Each day the makeup is going to look exactly the same.

Alison Stewart: There's a New Year's Eve sequence, and I'm not giving too much away, but body parts start coming off at one point. What went into creating that effect?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Which one are you referring to, sorry?

Alison Stewart: For example, when her ear falls off.

Pierre Olivier Persin: Sorry, Spoiler. It's my fault. I feel terribly guilty now. You just try to do your best to glue down the ear and cover it with an appliance. Yes, camera angle will help a lot.

Alison Stewart: In the final scene, as long as we're giving away spoilers, there's this giant monster we see, this [unintelligible 00:13:00] maybe something else. This big creature. It's got body parts and face parts and all kinds of parts. Was there actually an actor in a suit for that sequence?

Pierre Olivier Persin: Yes. We had Margaret Qualley inside the suit and for all the wider shots and all the-- well, the most complete-- No spoiler. Most complicated shot, we had a standable. So yes, it was a suit and a prosthetic makeup applied on her face.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting though. I knew it was Margaret Qualley in a suit, but you can see it in her eyes, and I thought that was really interesting.

Pierre Olivier Persin: Precisely. I had lots of discussions with Coralie when we were prepping the movie and I was like, okay, the suit is going to be difficult to wear. Maybe we should use the stand double all the time and Coralie was like, "I want to use Margaret for the close-ups because it's really a performance and the monster is really tragic. What's happening to the character is really tragic during the movie.

She wanted to see her eyes [unintelligible 00:14:20] She really wanted to see what the character was coming through.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Oscar nominated makeup artist Pierre Olivier Persin. He is nominated for his work on the horror movie, The Substance. Up next, we finish the hour by talking about bringing ancient Rome to Life in Gladiator 2 through costumes. Stay with us.