Edmonton special effects makeup artist shines in spooky season

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A beautiful but decaying bride stands in Caitlin Carmichael’s living room, her blue-tinged skin and exposed ribcage peeking out through an ornate wedding dress. It’s a relatively tame sight compared to the sinister creature with a hollow human face and skeletal spider-like body lurking in Carmichael’s basement.

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It’s Halloween all year round at Carmichael’s Edmonton home, but October is a highlight for the professional makeup artist when her indoor decorations become outdoor decorations.

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« My whole life revolves around Halloween, » jokes Carmichael, 36. « I’ve grown to a point where I have adult money I can spend on the spooky decor. It’s weird to say that having a homemade ribcage plant in my living room makes me makes me feel warm and comfortable.

From the basement of her home, she runs SpiralFX, a one-man business producing props and life-size replicas for enthusiastic buyers. The spectral Emily, the titular character of The Corpse Bride, and Caroline’s spindly Other Mother are just two of the many creations Carmichael created from scratch.

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« She looks like a dream, but she’s a technical nightmare, » Carmichael says of Emily, which involved a multitude of factors including dress stitching, body sculpting and painting. The end result is as breathtaking as it is time-consuming: from the beads of her bodice to the individual locks of hair, Carmichael’s attention to detail is astounding.

Carmichael graduated from the Vancouver Film School and later worked in the BC film and television industry. In addition to being part of a special effects team that won a Daytime Emmy for Aliens Stole My Body in 2020, she also has credits in Child’s Play in 2019, Sonic the Hedgehog in 2020, and TV shows such as The Flash and Siren.

Competition in the BC industry was fierce with film professionals with decades of experience under their belts, so Carmichael moved his family east over a year ago to work in the Alberta’s thriving film industry.

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« This is just the beginning of the possibilities for this province and for filmmaking, » Carmichael says of the industry, primarily based in Calgary, which needs professionals.

Carmichael grew up in a military family, moving across Canada before settling in Alberta as a teenager. Raised in the Mormon faith, anything scary or macabre was strictly forbidden.

“My mother was very uncomfortable with anything related to death. She would never even look at a tarot deck,” says Carmichael.

Halloween was the only time of year she could indulge her penchant for spookiness. Carmichael remembers his mother helping him make Halloween costumes, connecting on a level of creativity and pure childish joy.

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Despite the strict religious ethos, Carmichael’s parents were supportive of her career path, with her mother always being the first to share and brag about her daughter’s accomplishments, especially on Facebook. Her mother died in 2016 but was able to see her daughter graduate from film school.

« She didn’t see me going into the film industry, but I know 100% she would be beside herself, » Carmichael says of her mother.

Many of the accessories Carmichael creates are based on films that obsessed her as a child: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and especially Edward Scissorhands – themes of the search for inner beauty within social outcasts spoke to him as a teenager.

Often, she looks to her fans for inspiration for her next project. Suggestions made by her 1.3 million TikTok followers may spark an idea that Carmichael will pursue if she thinks it will bring something new to the character in a way that a human cosplayer hasn’t already. Her fans are particularly obsessed with the 2009 stop-motion film Caroline, and Carmichael indulged their fixation by making the Evil Other Mother and a limited run of life-size replicas of her talking cat character.

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Carmichael is chatty and charismatic in social media videos of her crafting process, including her public adventures with giant puppets of Jack Skellington and Sally, most recently at the local geek mecca, Edmonton Expo. Her husband often accompanies her, preferring to be an encouraging partner behind the scenes, allowing Carmichael to get the attention she craves.

« He’s the middle child in me, » she says.

Her two sons support her work, but don’t expect to see them decked out in Halloween costumes designed by their mother.

« Funny enough, Halloween is the one time of year I refuse to make costumes for them, » says Carmichael, who would rather make outlandish cosplay outfits for his boys to wear to fan conventions. « Halloween is when they can go to the store and pick out whatever costume they want…to be like normal kids. »

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In the scarce time she has between crafting and raising a family, Carmichael is working on a five-year plan to eventually open her own creature shop to supply Alberta’s fledgling film industry.

“An inclusive and safe creature shop for all artists so they can feel represented in the monster creature builder community,” says Carmichael. « The film industry is very much about toxic masculinity in the workplace. They’re catching up and they’re making some really good changes and I want to help facilitate and accelerate that change by thinking about the hiring process and being inclusive from scratch.

chuculak@postmedia.com

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