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| ABOVE: Teller poses with a showgirl zombie (Georgie Bernasek); BELOW: Ezekiel Zabrowski, Teller and Bernasek; Bernasek. |
| Photos courtesy of Frank Ippolito |
Posted: Thursday March 05, 2009
Heather Wisner
Make-up artists, magician shoot Las Vegas zombie shorts
This article was originally published in Issue 77 of Make-Up Artist magazine. The behind-the-scenes photos below did not appear in the issue.
Teller, the quiet half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, finally speaks in the zombie-themed short films & Teller and & Teller 2. “She’s a lot like other people I’ve known,” he says, eyeing a zombie showgirl as she tries to gnaw on his foot. “She wants a piece of me.”
The three-minute films, which describe how Teller survives a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, are the products of a birthday-inspired zombie collaboration between Teller and Chiodo Bros. shop supervisor Frank Ippolito. The first time the pair met, Teller had hired Ippolito to create zombies for a friend’s birthday party to surprise the guests; this time, it was Teller’s own birthday that launched the project. (continued below)
“I was at Teller’s for his birthday—we watched the movie Diary of the Dead,” Ippolito said. “We found out there was a film competition on MySpace where the winner gets on a special-edition DVD of Diary of the Dead.” Ippolito and his friend Zeke Zabrowski, who builds magic tricks for Penn & Teller, hit upon an idea for the contest the next morning and executed that idea in a 36-hour marathon.
“I drove back to L.A., got a whole bunch of make-up, and drove back to Las Vegas,” Ippolito said. “There’s a certain kind of adrenaline that happens when you have an idea. We were so pumped when we came up with it, we hit the ground running.”
 Ippolito designed all the make-up on the first film: It took him and assistant Erin Sullivan six hours to create five zombies, including one with a chest piece made entirely from a Pros-Aide transfer (a leftover from a previous project). They shot the film in the desert, with editing and post-production done at Chiodo Bros. It won the MySpace contest and began making the film festival rounds.
The second & Teller was prompted by fan mail for the first, according to Ippolito. “We prepped for about a week on the second film and shot it in two days in the middle of the Nevada desert,” he said. “I designed the showgirl zombie make-up and wardrobe. We got a lot of assistance from two showgirl costume builders for the parts that made up the tattered costume. That make-up took about three hours to do and I was assisted by Chris Alexander and Erin Sullivan. Once the bulk of the make-up was finished, I again ran around the desert with a camera and Teller, while Chris and Erin looked after the make-ups.” The showgirl was lifecast with special attention to detail, he added: “When you think of showgirls, you think of big breasts, so we thought she should have an implant hanging out.”
BELOW: (Left to right) Ippolito, Erin Sullivan, Bernasek, Chris Alexander and Ben Beyouth.
The films played the Eerie Horror Film Festival in Erie, Pennsylvania last October and has been accepted by the Cleveland International Film Festival, held March 19-29 in Ohio. Ippolito couldn’t say for sure what clinched & Teller’s success, but his extensive experience with his subjects didn’t hurt. “Lately, in the last couple years, I have done a ton of zombies,” he said. “Zombies seem to be the hot thing right now.”
For more zombie coverage, see Issue 77 of Make-Up Artist magazine.
To see clips of & Teller and & Teller 2, go to:
http://crackle.com/c/Create_Your_Story/_Teller/2238757
http://crackle.com/c/Horror_and_Action/_Teller_2/2364233
BELOW: (Left) Ippolito and Bernasek; an Ippolito zombie creation.
 
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