MUTANT MAKE-UP: CREATING THE MUTANT CLAN
One of the primary reasons for the great success of 2006's The Hills Have Eyes was the mind-blowing contribution of Academy Award-winning (Chronicles of Narnia) K.N.B. EFX Group, Inc. Consequently, there was never any question as to whether K.N.B. would design the special effects make-up for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. Co-Producer Cody Zwieg attests, "K.N.B. is the best. They do an incredible job of putting it all together, and giving the characters their personalities [through make-up]."
K.N.B. and Wes Craven have enjoyed a long and unique partnership together creating iconic movie monsters that are not soon forgotten. "We've worked with Wes and Marianne (Maddalena) for a dozen years," says Gregory Nicotero. "Our first project for them was The People Under The Stairs, we've done all of Wes' films since then. Wes has a good eye for the characters since he has lived with them for so long. Wes knows exactly what he wants so he can look at designs and go 'love that, don't like that' and that's it. We've worked with him for so long we've established a really great rapport. We've spent so much time together, I feel like I really know Wes. I know he trusts me and that means a lot to me coming from one of the premiere horror directors in Hollywood."
K.N.B., director Martin Weisz, and the production team spent weeks creating the horrifying look of the mutant clan. Weisz remembers, "We met with K.N.B. and they made some sketches of what they had in mind when they read the script. We had meetings with [producers] Marianne [Maddalena] and Peter [Locke] to see those first drawings and decided to push it harder. We also took a new direction with Chameleon, to make him even more of a half-person, half-rock in a gory way. We struggled a little bit with the Hades character because we¡¦d started with Chameleon, Stabber, Hansel; Hades was the last one and he's supposed to be the biggest one, and since the others were quite amazing already, we had to top that. I think they did an amazing job."
For the actual design of the mutants, K.N.B. first turned to 3-D Photoshop design equipment, tools that allow traditional sculptors to sculpt and paint their characters on a computer. In order to forge models of each mutant clan member. From these digital models, molds were made of each horrific face. Finally, the makeup team took casts of all the actor's bodies and heads so as to custom fit the resulting prosthetics and makeup.
For the shoot, K.N.B. entrusted the actual implementation of special effects make-up to artists Mark Killingsworth, Clare Mulroy and Ben Rittenhouse. In addition K.N.B selected Academy Award winning (Chronicles of Narnia) Tami Lane as key prosthetic make-up artist. "When K.N.B. approached me to do this job, I was really excited because I liked the first movie, I thought it evoked what violence should be," explains Lane. "You wanted to look away but you couldn't help but not look away. With the success of the first one I was very intrigued about doing the second one."
Craven had very clear ideas of how he wanted to evolve the appearance of the mutants from HILLS 1 to HILLS 2.
"I figured that this was the next generation. So they aren't [irradiated] in the same way, but they are genetically modified, and they still have this enormous chip on their shoulders about what the government did; they have adapted to the necessity of living underneath the sort of mega culture that is on the outside."
K.N.B.'s Gregory Nicotero talks about the difference between the mutants in the first film, and those in THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2: "We were really pleased with how the make-up turned out in the first one, so for this movie we had some big shoes to fill. In The Hills Have Eyes, the [mutants] were kind of clean. We wanted to go with a different look for HILLS 2, especially because of the nature of the mutants: they are underground dwellers, they live in caves, so they are always dirty. So for this film, [we had to make them] a lot dirtier, a lot bloodier. There is more wear and tear."
Tami Lane expands on the mutants revolting appearance "they don't really see the light of day too much. And so they deform and warp, with no sunlight, things can't grow or things get distorted. There's only a few of them so there's this incestual element, so that helps with the mutations."
K.N.B. performed extensive medical research in their design for the mutant Chameleon. "We had done a lot of research on a film we'd just done called Grindhouse and we had all this medical reference in terms of different skin lesions and tumors to make them look ulcerated," explains Nicotero. "So when we did Chameleon we used a lot of that research to recognize if some of those ulcerations could look calcified, so he actually looks like a rock."
Tami Lane explains how this look is incorporated into the film. "We wanted to have someone more evolved, someone like Chameleon's having this freakish rock like skin who can meld into the background, so you don't know he's there. All the sudden, you see something move but you aren't quite sure. It adds to the eeriness of the characters."

VISUAL EFFECTS
Working alongside K.N.B. innovative visual effects supervisor Jamison Goei (The Hills Have Eyes, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hansel and Gretl, Halloween: Resurrection) and his team of high-tech artists seamlessly crafted visual effects shots for the film. "We wanted to create integrated visual effects, so invisible that the viewer might not notice them as effects, yet they come away in awe," says director Martin Weisz.
In turn, Goei relished working alongside the director. "A lot of times I work with directors who have absolutely no idea of visual effects. [Weisz] comes from a postproduction background and he has actually had his own visual effects company at one time so he really understands visual effects. He knows what needs to happen. I've actually learned a couple of techniques from him that he's used in the commercial or video world that I've never had the opportunity to use. We have the same sensibility and have thrown around a lot of ideas and had a lot of fun coming up with creative solutions. I love being pushed and I love being challenged. It's nice to actually have someone who responds with what you say with an educated response in the visual effects world."

THE WORLD OF THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2
To bring the world of THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 to life on the screen, the producers knew they would have to find unique visual methods of telling this brutal tale. As the film is set in sun-bleached desert landscapes, as well as claustrophobic dimly-lit tunnels and mines, a cinematographer of unusual talent and versatility was needed in order to bring each vastly different location to life. Producer Marianne Maddalena found such a talent in Sam McCurdy upon viewing his work in the British horror film The Descent. "In the movie, his interior lighting of the caves is really beautiful and dark," says Maddalena. "There are a lot of glowing highlights and backlights around the actors. For a horror movie, that makes it really beautiful as well as having enough shadows and dark spaces to keep it eerie and spooky which keeps the tension up."
McCurdy welcomed the opportunity to return to shooting in claustrophobic caves and tunnels. He remembers: "There were significant differences between filming The Descent and THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. We are working in bigger sets on HILLS than we had on The Descent, so there is much more room for intricate camera setups, it's a bit more fantastical, a little more creative. With HILLS 2, we've allowed ourselves the artistic styling to take things one step further so when its dark, its really dark, so much of it was underground, but [you've] got shafts of light. [You've] got shadows; you can't see things, and you wonder what is coming out of the darkness. It's the fear factor, you never want to go underground, you never want to go into the basement, you should never, never go into dark places. We want to try and make it as claustrophobic as possible when you go underground, 'cause that is what people don't like."

PRODUCTION DESIGN
Because a large part of The Hills Have Eyes's success stemmed from its vast and gorgeous desert location, the production team decided to return to Morocco for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. Morocco, with its miles of endless desert and striking mountain vistas made for a beautiful and eerie stand-in for the New Mexican locale of the film.
The crew returned to the movie capital of Morocco, the city of Ouarzazate--which has become a Mecca for such esteemed filmmakers as David Lean, Ridley Scott, Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone. "Ouarzazate, it's a film town, its extraordinary," says Wes Craven. "Everybody in town is either an extra or is building sets, or costumes, so they all get drawn in, they are all connected with it in some way. We again used the de Laurentiis studio a few miles outside of town."
As much of the film takes place in the hills of the desert, a production designer with a thorough knowledge of the area seemed imperative. Producer Marianne Maddalena reveals, "We found Keith Wilson because he had done a lot of movies in Ouarzazate, [Morocco]. Then we went to his website, and we knew he was twisted enough for our movie. He definitely is out there with his imagination which is exactly what we needed. As you will see from the film, his sets are fantastic."
Wilson (Emmy Award-winner for Stalin), who had been busy designing family friendly films for the Hallmark Channel such as Mary, Mother of Jesus, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol longed to sink his teeth into something more edgy. 'I've always been a fan of horror films," reveals Wilson.
Key to Wilson's success has been the talented team he works with. "My art director Alistair Kay (Emmy Award for Stalin) is fabulous, we have worked together for twenty years," reveals Wilson. "He makes all my ideas work. I give him a design and he takes over. He is the link between me and the actual sets being built. He also tolerates all my bad behavior, my tantrums, he handles me very well."
Another key member of Wilson's crew is set decorator Luca Tranchino (Oscar winner for The Aviator). "I've done three films with him and he fits into our family very well," tells Wilson. "Luca knows a lot about history and is very particular about period and stylistic details. He has a good eye about a few key items that really set a period or style. He can interpret my drawings, he can take my lead and then grow on it. We work together every step of the way."
Trying to make Morocco look like New Mexico presented its own set of challenges. Although the film is set in the present, the mine sets must span from the turn of the century to the 1950s. Ten crates of props were shipped from America consisting of old television sets, sofas, shoes, etc. in order to achieve an authentic look. Cinematographer Sam McCurdy reveals, "The production design is beautiful. [It has] a real feel of old world fifties and sixties Americana and that sort of thing. You get a feeling that these mutants have been around for eons."
Because so much of the film takes place in various sections of the mine, much research went into it's design. Alistair Kay reveals, "[According to the screenplay], the mine was last a working mine pre-World War II, although some of the elements date back to the turn of the century. Then the military, The government came in and adapted the mine for their own use testing atomic bombs."
The production team scrutinized thousands of pictures of mines from all over the world and then collated the best ideas for their design. "We wanted the tunnels to look manmade, we wanted a hand hewn look, where you could see the indentations from the pickaxes," says Alistair. The production team achieved this by utilizing a revolutionary building material called Armadillo Foam core which was also used in the film The Descent. The walls of the mine are polyurethane foam, which are sprayed out of pressurized containers and virtually self-supporting. The rigid foam material can then be shaped and painted into any form desired. "You can create fantastic shapes," Alistair reveals. "You can give it depth, angles and structure. The battle tunnel has recesses you can hide behind and throw shadow through. That tunnel almost has a cathedral quality to it."
Technically, the most challenging sets were the upper and lower wet tunnels which had to support up to four tons of water on two levels. Large amounts of water had to be able to swiftly flood the tunnels as well as exit them. "We were limited in the space we had to utilize," tells Alistair. "We had to maximize the space we had. It all had to fit inside a thirty-by-sixty foot tank that was just ten feet deep. Fortunately, the tunnels turned out really well, really scary."

COSTUMES
A crucial aspect to the eerie look of THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 are the inspired costumes of Emmy Award winning (Deadwood) designer Janie Bryant. It takes a vivid imagination as well as technical skill to concoct appropriate creature attire that can actually hold up well to the demands of movie making. Luckily, Bryant and director Martin Weisz were in perfect agreement as to the direction to take the costumes in. Bryant explains, "The main element Martin and I talked about was making the mutants extremely dirty. I really wanted the audience to smell them and be horrified by how much dirt and sweat and grossness they possessed. I wanted the audience to say, 'Oh my god, I would die if I was ever around one of those things.' And so when our Army characters were carried away or hurt or killed by mutants, there would be a real response. The grosser the better, right?"
For research, Bryant collected images of oil workers, miners and butchers from books, magazines and the Internet and collected them all in an inspiration book, which she shared with Martin and K.N.B. "I got a lot of inspiration from coal miners because of all the references to miners in the script," reveals Bryant. All these mutants could have stolen clothes from miners from the forties and fifties. I was [also] inspired by oil workers because of all the highs and lows, lights and darks [on their work clothes]. I was inspired by occupations that are really dirty. Also, I was really inspired for the mutants to have a warrior style. For all the mutants, I really wanted to show a lot of skin. it ties in with special effects makeup, so we can see how grotesque they all are."
In Morocco, Bryant and her assistant Allison Leach kept a crew of seven seamstresses and tailors busy for months constructing the creepy--filthy looking costumes worn in the film. Once the costumes were built, then the laborious process of distressing them began. "The process of distressing is very labor intensive," says Bryant. "Sometimes it takes days and two or three people to break down a costume. We start the process by washing, maybe bleaching, then using wire brushes, sandpaper, to get all the holes in the appropriate places. I will say to my distressors, maybe he ripped his knee out because he was eating too many people that he killed on the side of the road. Then we add stains to the costume and also some sweat, we might use Vaseline to create that really wet look. We just experiment with all these chemicals and create a look that's really dirty and broken down."
For the National Guard costumes, Janie did extensive research into what the soldiers would actually wear for the desert climate. In fact, the actors are wearing what the National Guard soldiers use in Afghanistan and Iraq with the exception of the forty-pound Kevlar vests. Instead of the heavily weighted Kevlar, Bryant filled the vests with a featherweight foam base so the performers weren't unduly burdened with excessive poundage.
Bryant very much worked in tandem with the other departments in order to create a seamless blending of costumes, makeup and sets. "K.N.B. and I have worked closely together," says Bryant. "Before I came to Morocco, I went to see Howard [Berger] and showed him my inspiration book so we could all be on the same page creatively with the mutants. Its very much a collaboration between special effects makeup and costumes.
"The same is true as well for costumes and set design. Production Designer
Keith Wilson adds, "We talked all the time. She was totally creative with the mutant's costumes. We worked together to create one look between costume and sets."

WES CRAVEN REFLECTS ON THE HILLS LEGACY
With the incredible success that 1977's The Hills Have Eyes has enjoyed throughout the years, Craven is both pleased and humbled that the film's themes still captivate modern audiences as they did for previous generations. "I was saying to Peter [Locke, producer of the original HILLS film] earlier," reveals Craven, "I can't believe we're still alive and this film has legs. It's been thirty years and I think the film has just played and played. I think Peter and myself are both just astonished that we're still working and that the things that we did - that when they first came out were just sneered at by critics, have had this long life, and that generations and generations have found relevance in them."
Craven is especially gratified that new generations of mega-successful horror directors have found substance and inspiration in his body of work. "Alex [Aja, director of 2006's re-imagining of The Hills Have Eyes] told me that the reason he got into the film business was that he and Gregory [Levasseur], his co-producer and co-writer, saw the [1977 version of the] film when they were thirteen years old and thought it was so hot that they wanted to be filmmakers too, so that's a good feeling. It feels like we are keeping horror alive. Its just like the people in the caves - we're under this society, nobody's quite sure whether we're human or not but, you know, we've managed to produce a second generation and that's all that life requires."

MARTIN WEISZ (Director)
Acclaimed video and commercial director Martin Weisz won Best Director for his feature film debut with Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story at the prestigious 2006, Spain International Film Festival of Catalonia. The film, which stars Keri Russell and Thomas Kretschmann also won the Grand prize in silver for best European fantasy film at the Luxemburg International Film Festival. The film-based on a true story about a cannibalistic date between two men who meet on the Internet, has become something of a cause celeb due to its graphic subject matter and has been banned in Germany.
Best known as a maverick video director, Weisz has worked with such acts as Sisqo, Brandy, Meat Loaf, Puff Daddy, Nickelback, Marky Mark, Enigma and LL Cool J to name just a few.
Weisz won the MTV European Video Award for Best Dance Video for Members of Mayday. He's also been nominated for the MVPA Awards for best International Video for LL Cool J's video "Dear Malika" and at the MTV Europe Awards for best video for Korn's "Make Me Bad" video.
Recognized as a master storyteller, Weisz is able to create feature length exposition in a single minute populating his videos with images such as space travellers suspended in mid-air on urban streets and department stores filled with water. Extremely innovative with the camera, Weisz often insists on shooting his own videos. For Puff Daddy's video "Public Enemy #1" Weisz used thirty-thirty-five millimeter cameras set in a full-circle on a rig that booms and dollies in order to give Puff Daddy a suspended, three-dimensional, dance spin with a "Matrix" twist.
In high demand as a commercial director, Weisz has directed ground-breaking commercials for such corporations as Budweiser, McDonalds, Audi and Farmer's Insurance.

WES CRAVEN (Producer/Co-Writer)
Wes Craven's Scream Trilogy virtually redefined the horror genre for an entire generation of moviegoers. The three films went on to gross close to half a billion dollars worldwide and inspired a host of imitators. Similarly, A Nightmare on Elm Street and his creation of Freddy Kruger sent millions to their local cineplexes and created a franchise for New Line Cinema which spawned film sequels, a television series, comic books and toys that earned over a billion dollars for the company. Craven wrote and directed the 10th -anniversary outing, called Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which invented a new style of self-reverential horror that blossomed in the next decade.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Craven holds a Master's degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University. Craven left a secure job as a college professor to follow his passion for the cinema. On a shoestring budget, he wrote, directed and edited his first film The Last House on the Left, which generated enormous controversy and attention and helped launch the resurgence of fright films in the 70's that put horror back on the map. He then went on to write, direct and edit the critically acclaimed 1977 cult classic The Hills Have Eyes. In 2006 he produced Alexandre Aja's reinterpretation of The Hills Have Eyes to spectacular results.
Other noteworthy Craven titles include Red Eye with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, Shocker, The People Under the Stairs, The Serpent and the Rainbow and Swamp Thing.
In 1999, Craven directed Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart, for which she received an Academy Award Nomination.
For television, Craven helped create and produce the series "Nightmare Cafe" for NBC. He directed the telefilms "Night Visions," "A Stranger in the House," Invitation to Hell," "Chiller," and "Casebusters." He also directed seven episodes of the 1980's revival of "The Twilight Zone." In 2004 he executive produced "Project Greenlight" for HBO.
In 1999, Craven published his first novel, The Fountain Society, for Simon and Schuster Press.
In 2005, Craven, along with such notable filmmakers as Alexander Payne, the Coen Brothers, Walter Salles and Gus Van Sant, each wrote and directed a five-minute love story for the film Paris, Je t'aime segment "20 arrondissement," starring Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell.
With his uncanny eye for talent, Craven discovered such screen luminaries as Johnny Depp, Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone.

JONATHAN CRAVEN (Co-Writer, Co-Producer)
Jonathan Craven made his screen debut at age seven in his father's first film The Last House on the Left. Also a filmmaker, Craven directed the guilty pleasure "They Shoot Divas, Don't They?" starring Jennifer Beals, Traci Lords and Johnathan Schaech for VH1 Television. Craven co-wrote and produced HBO's The Outpost with Giovanni Ribisi which earned a nomination for best picture at the Fantasporto International Fantasy Film Festival. He also developed and was creative consultant on NBC's series "Nightmare Café" starring Robert Englund and "Heroes" villain Jack Coleman.
As a music video director in the 90's, he worked with such acts as Fred Durst's band Limp Bizkit, directing their first ever music video. Branching out in the music industry, he's also managed his three sister's sizzling hot-rock group The Chapin Sisters through the successful completion of their first studio album.
Having grown up visiting his father's sets, Jonathan has learned the movie business from the ground up, working in various capacities on films such as Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep and Angela Bassett and The Minus Man with Owen Wilson, Sheryl Crow and Brian Cox. Craven graduated from Northwestern University and is a prolific writer, having published articles in Rolling Stone, LA Weekly, Bikini, RayGun and Blackbook.

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