I met Brendan Lonergan through a mutual friend of ours, Ania Gastol (the make-up artist on Monologue Triptych). It was a night out at a bar in London. There was a whole lot of people there, but Brendan was the one I got chatting to. A month later, I invited him along to the screening of Monologue Triptych. At the end of the screening, when the evening was winding down, I got a chance to talk to Brendan about the feature film. Brendan’s response was positive. He said it sounded cool. So I sent him a copy of the script and asked if he could do the special effects, especially the character design of the “monsters”.

Brendan Lonergan has been doing creature effects and makeup in films for nearly 20 years. His CV is impressive. He has worked on big features like Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart and Alien³ to name a few. Goto his page on IMDB to check out his list of credits, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1001322/. Just to add that he isn’t uncredited on those films, as they are listed on IMDB. Check the end credits of these films and you will see his name there. The spelling might be wrong on some of them, but that’s definitely him.

So today we met up again and talked about the costs and practicalities of doing the effects, especially applying the creature makeup to the actors. We won’t have make-up trucks to do the make-ups (unless some kind soul is willing to let us have one for free?), they will have to be done before going out to the location. Unless I find a location that have facilities nearby. A house, hall, something that we can use. I will have to keep that in mind when I go out looking for locations next month.

The cost of the makeup is going to be expensive. Brendan is going to do a budget breakdown for me, but off the top of his head he said it will cost about £5,000. That’s half the budget. Ouch! But if I want them to be good, it’s going to cost that much. It means that £10,000 is the minimum I can shoot it for. Means I will have to double my efforts to raise the money.