DiCinema

From the start, Donald Mowat and director Denis Villeneuve knew that realizing the character of Baron Harkonnen was going to be a mighty task. As the Baron is the antagonist of the story and ruler of the House of Harkonnen. Villeneuve started the conversation by describing his inspiration of 'pale alopecia' for the design. His initial ideas sparked Mowat's interest. Mowat pushed for the look to be achieved with practical makeup and prosthetics. His ideas meshed well with Villeneuve's vision. "I was thinking Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau. Something eccentric and over the top. He [Villeneuve] really responded to it" after the initial concept and design discussions with Villeneuve, Mowat knew exactly who to bring on to collaborate with on The Baron. "I went to my old friends, Love Larson and Eva Von Bahr, because we met on a film with Stelln Skarsgard in Sweden some years ago." When discussing the Baron's size, Mowat and Larson felt at first that less might be more. But the filmmakers kept coming back to them, asking for the character to be bigger. They eventually realized they would need to make some kind of a fat suit. The next question became, 'is this going to be a costume fat suit or a makeup fat suit?' they consulted the costume designers. Mowat said, "our costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan felt he [Baron Harkonnen] would probably have his clothes off. So we knew this was going to be more in the makeup department's wheelhouse. I thought let's look at having Love and his shop sculpt and build the suit in Sweden. Then we can monitor and give a progress report each week while we're prepping and shooting the film." Mowat gave Love Larson, Eva Von Bahr and their team 16 weeks to prep. "It was an enormous undertaking- the sculpting, detailing, and one makeup test." On shooting days, five people applied the prosthetics and suit. Application time was about 4 hours when Stellan Skarsgard was wearing clothes and 6 hours when the character was naked. "There are seven silicone pieces for the face in addition to the bald cap and brow covers. Everything is integrated and their work is sensational," Mowat explained. Stellan Skarsgard loved every part of the process, and Mowat spoke highly of his enthusiasm "Stellan's really into makeup. He's been in lots of incredible films with great makeup artists, hair stylists, and designers. He's got a great eye, and he is very enthusiastic. He's the kind of guy that when I set up the life casting for one day, I said 'you know it's going to be 7 or 8 hours.' Stellan wouldn't want to break for lunch. We know other people who every 20 minutes need to be on the phone or have personal time. He's very committed and extremely enthusiastic." Some more complicated scenes involved Skarsgard being submerged in a bathtub of black muddy liquid which was meant to be a 'healing mud bath' according to Villeneuve. Mowat discovered that the oiliness of the mud bath substance on set was releasing the prosthetics. "It became a little bit more complicated with the suits buoyancy as well. Larson and Bahr's team spent a whole Saturday and Sunday reconfiguring things to keep him under the oil. And that's the only time we used the stunt double instead of Stellan for safety because he does get pulled "

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