Join FX Artist Todd Masters Live During SYFY’s “Day Of The Dead” Premiere

November 21, 2021

Written by Kelli Marchman McNeely

Kelli Marchman McNeely is the owner of HorrorFuel.com. She is an Executive Producer of "13 Slays Till Christmas" which is out on Digital and DVD and now streaming on Tubi. She has several other films in the works. Kelli is an animal lover and a true horror addict since the age of 9 when she saw Friday the 13th. Email: horrorfuelinfo@gmail.com

 

The creative forces behind the new upcoming SYFY series “Day if the Dead” turned to Emmy Award-winning makeup FX artist Todd Masters and his company MASTERSFX to create all of the zombie makeup for their new zombie series which Masters will also executive produce.

 

 

We started meeting and designing our makeup FX work for this project while we were still under Covid and government lockdown,” Masters said. “Literally, the moment we were allowed to re-open our shop, we did, and we hit the ground really rocking and rolling. We had a small army of our amazing artists start immediately throwing themselves into this huge project… there were zombies everywhere! At that time, due to the ongoing Covid situation, we still had no idea how we were going to safely work with the cast and other crew. We ended up devising several new techniques, like making monster dentures digitally, and, in some cases, integrating touchless scanning as opposed to face casting, to make actors’ head and facial impressions.”

 

I must say, I was a bit leery of the idea of doing dozens of prosthetics – that can only be applied to actors in close-contact – during Covid,” Masters explains. “But our team was professional and flawless. We handled crowds of zombie make-ups, all without incident of any kind.”

 

Nearly every day of our work on this six-month odyssey was filled with multiple dead things,” Masters recalls. “There were numerous zombie prosthetics, rotten teeth, decayed torsos, hands and arms, along with dozens of FX, like hatches into heads, bullet wounds, cuts, gashes, etc. We also had armies of background zombies wearing slip-on masks, as well.”

 

Steve was the perfect ingredient for ‘Day of the Dead’ – of course, for his experienced eye with the FX stuff, but also his ability to get great stuff in the can, quickly,” Masters says. “We were shooting everywhere and everything, to fill the screen with satisfying zombie gore. Steve even shot his own two-man-unit in the MFX parking lot, one bloody, rainy Sunday!”

 

 

 

 

Set to premiere on October 15 at 10 pm on SYFY and on CTV Sci-Fi in Canada, a normal day for the small town of Manihawken, Pennsylvania, takes a horrifying turn when the dead begin to rise – walking, chewing, and tearing through anything in their wake.

 

On October 15 starting at 9:30 pm Eastern Time/6:30 pm Pacific Time, join Todd Masters, MFX artist Steve Kostanski, and fellow “Day of the Dead” executive producers Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas for an INSTAGRAM LIVE discussion on the making of “Day of the Dead” before the series premiere on SYFY. To WATCH this INSTAGRAM LIVE broadcast, fans can follow Todd’s official Instagram account.

 

Then, during the premiere of the show itself at 10 pm Eastern/7 pm Pacific on SYFY, Masters, Kostanski, Elinoff, and Thomas will LIVE-TWEET during the course of the airing of that premiere episode to discuss how they developed the new series and created the amazing new zombies. To join the conversation, fans can tweet along using #DayoftheDead and follow Masters/Kostanski/Elinoff/Thomas at these Twitter handles: @ToddMasters (and) @JedElinoff  (and) @ninjawhenever (and) for Steve Kostanski via Instagram:  @kill_kostanski.

 

 

 

Inspired by George A. Romero‘s 1985 classic, the ten-episode series follows six strangers trying to survive the first 24 hours of the zombie apocalypse.

 

Steven Kostanski (The Void, Psycho Goreman) will direct four episodes of the first season. The series is written by showrunners and executive producers Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas. It is produced by Jeff Holland and Drew Brown for Cartel and HiTide Studios’ Jeff Holland, Stan Spry, and Drew Brown are also producing. Steven Kostanski will also serve as executive producer.

 

Don’t miss the premiere of “Day of the Dead” on SYFY on “October 15, 2021. 

 

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