Interview: David Martí from Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year and to celebrate is heading back to UK cinemas this Halloween in a remastered form so you can immerse yourself in all its majestic fantasy-all over again. To commemorate the occasion, Love Horror’s Gavin Brown caught up with Pan’s Labyrinth make-up and special effects supervisor David Martí to hear all about his work on the film, in which he won an Academy Award for best makeup alongside work partner Montse Ribé and a detailed insight into working with director Guillermo del Toro and the carryon of the iconic Pan and Pale Man characters.

Pan’s Labyrinth is being remastered and re-released in cinemas this Halloween. You worked on the film doing practical and special effects makeup, what are your main memories of working on the film?

It was as good and bad, because we had too much work to do, a lot of changes.  Guillermo is one of these directors that is so creative that he needs to work and change, work and change. At the first part of pre-production, we were always saying yes to everything, and there was a moment that we saw that we were running out of money. There is something that is not Guilmero’s fault; it’s our fault. We were keen to do a fantasy movie, and not looking at the numbers because we are not business people. We realised that we cannot do more changes. We cannot actually get to the end of the movie in a good situation economically, We had Sergio Sandoval at the time as an illustrator artist, and we sat down and we are like, okay, what can we give to Guillermo that he is happy with? Because the Pale Man, at the beginning, was like a wood man, so it was a completely different idea. From that,  Guillermo said, I don’t want this. I want something else, and we went from that to what we did but it was hard.

Did you work closely with Guillermo?

Oh yes. I mean, we were in different cities. He was based in Madrid, and Segovia, is where all the set decorations were built. The labyrinth, the maze itself, and the tree were built there, and we were in Barcelona, so a couple of times we had to meet together, but we do everything through the phone. At that time, it was not that that practical to do.  It was not that normal in 2005, so we had a lot of phone calls and emails. We kept feeding him pictures and drawings. It was very close, but not being in the same place.

How did you approach making Pan and the Pale Man come to life?

In the first script, Pan was like a little boy but had goat legs it was a very classic image the fawn but it was a little kid,  then he went to the adult one but it was the same thing, it was like a classic Pan, and then at some point he said, “Actually, let’s make it in gold.” Montse and me, we were both like, this is not gonna look good, and then he changed his mind again, and he said, “Okay, let’s do it like a very old guy that through the movie, will have different stages.” So, at the beginning, he is in that pit, in that very dark place, and there’s a lot of roots and stuff on that place. And together with Sergio,, we were like, let’s do something to make him look like he’s been in that place for such a long time. So what we did on the feet, we did roots. He has been there for such a long time that he’s got roots on his toes. When Guillermo saw that, he wanted the whole body to be like a tree and he approved that. With the Pale Man, it was a completely different thing because we have this journey of not knowing what he wanted exactly. At the end, he said, let’s make like he’s a very old man. He is in front of all this table full of food, but he doesn’t eat anything because he doesn’t like any of the amazing things that he has on the table. He just wants to eat children. That’s why you have the frescoes in the room that run on the ceiling, you can see the history of the Pale Man eating children and then because the parents stopped to bring him children, he got thinner and thinner, and then he’s very thin man with sagging skin that looks like Dalis clocks. 

At that point he still has eyes, and Guillermo said remove the eyes, so we removed the eyes, and we did all kind of tests with Doug Jones, and decided to use the makeup only for the moment when he is there waiting until Ofelia eats the grape, and when she eats the grape, then he wakes up, but Guillermo called me, and he’s like, “David, I have the solution for the Pale Man. It’s amazing!” At that time we were running out of money already but he wanted the Pale Man to open his mouth very widely, and there’s a skull of a horse coming out. But we would need makeup, an animatronic puppet, and maybe even a full puppet so the shooting is going to be a nightmare. If we have seven days of shooting, that will be twenty days of shooting that. He got really mad at me because he wanted to do that, and we said, No, we cannot do it. We don’t have the money, and we don’t have the time.

We ended up going to Madrid. I brought pictures and stuff to see what we could do. When we were in the office, I can already see some images and books and covers of books with the hand and the eye and all that stuff, all that mythology and spiritual things and stuff, but I never imagined what he was going to do. He was like, if you are the Pale Man and you are really thirsty for the blood of Ofelia, and you cannot see, close your eyes. And I was like, okay, I close my eyes. And then he’s like, “Okay, now look for me in the room,” and I thought, Okay, now he’s gonna smash me or something!.And he said , “Look for me, and then I did this, making the eyes with my hands. We did the first makeup test on Doug Jones. He came to Barcelona and we only had the hands and the head. So we did the makeup, and then we put the hands, and he was really uncomfortable because it was the whole day with all the make up, but we said Doug, this is amazing! He was  putting his hands there and closing his hands and open it, and we videotaped it, and sent it to Guillermo, who loved it, of course.

How did it feel watching the finished film with the creatures you created?

Pan’s Labyrinth, when we saw it, it looks like a really good movie. It was a different kind of fantasy, this is something unusual. You’re never sure because it’s your own creature. Let’s say the movie you have worked on, you have spent so much time and money and stuff, but we didn’t imagine that it can go that far. I remember a year after the movie was made and it was released, and we went to Los Angeles with Javier Soto, who makes the making of Guillermo’s movies, and Javier took us for a ride to a movie theater called Vista, it’s one of those old theaters, with all the lights and everything, when he opened the door of the theater, there was people everywhere in the floor, and the movie was Pan’d Labyrinth. We didn’t  expect that in the states, it could have this successful life, so we were amazed.

You and Montse won Oscars for your work on the movie. How did that feel and how was the experience of the Oscars ceremony?

Just the fact of being nominated, the academy send you an email saying, what have you done in the movie?” And then you reply, and then they reply back. There were very specific questions. We answered everything, and then they said, “Okay, you are in the list of the 28 movies, then we went to 21, and then we went to 7, you have to actually go to LA in front of all those makeup and hairstylist members, and talk about your movie. We were really nervous because Rick Baker was in that audience. With the ceremony, where we were shooting, you are never surrounded by stars, actors, DOPs, and all those people, so we we were completely out of the place, but we had a lot of fun! At the moment that they said our names, it’s like your heart is coming out of your body. You have to go up there, and at that time, you have Helen Mirren, DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, all  in the first row. I was crazy! It was actually like being on drugs without being on drugs!

Guillermo del Toro’s PAN‘S LABYRINTH 20th Anniversary re-release via STUDIOCANAL CLASSICS. In cinemas nationwide 30 October, including 3D & on 35mm!