Bonus: Interview with Supernatural SFX Artist Benson Musaev

Over drinks, Berly and LA chat with SFX Artist Benson Musaev about his experience with prosthetics and work behind-the-scenes of Supernatural. In addition to contract work on TV/Film, Benson runs a mask-making business. Shop his creations at https://www.etsy.com/shop/theWarlockRonin. Thank you to Benson for this discussion.  Now, let's get tipsy!  CW/TW for violent and lewd commentary; listeners beware! 🔞

Summary: Benson Musaev, a special effects artist, discussed his journey into the industry, starting in 2001. He shared his experiences working on "Supernatural" from 2008 to 2014, highlighting the creation of practical effects like the "blood splooge" and the turducken sandwich. Musaev detailed the challenges of creating prosthetics, such as the Eve death scene and the six-foot penis prop for a dream sequence. He also mentioned his current work, including custom silicone masks and teaching digital makeup. The interview concluded with Musaev promoting his mask business and discussing the logistics of storing and disposing of prosthetics.

Transcript

Berly: 0:01

Ellie, welcome to denim wrapped nightmares, Tipsy Exchange Podcast where we explore the supernatural series, episode by episode,

LA: 0:10

over drinks, we'll discuss the lore the gore and what we adore about the Winchesters and their adventures.

Berly: 0:17

I'm Burleigh, and I'm a new fan of the series. I'm

LA: 0:20

LA, and I'm here along for the ride. Now let's get

Berly: 0:26

Tipsy. Hello, LA, hey,

LA: 0:27

Burley. Hey, Burley, hey,

Berly: 0:31

I feel like we're so technical and we're so appropriate and we're so like, savvy, right? Because we just somehow intrinsically knew it was technically called a splooge all along. Right? Pat on our

LA: 0:49

back. I mean, that's all you. That's really you, but thanks for putting that we in there.

Berly: 0:58

Why don't you tell our listeners why we happen to know that that's the technical term for it, after all.

LA: 1:06

Well, we had an interview with a Mr. Benson Moussavi, nope. Musaev, musaev Benson Musaev. He was fascinating and funny. He is a maker, sculptor and fabricator by trade. He has been doing special effects for TV and film since 2003 while with Toby Linda ethics, he worked on Supernatural from roughly 2008 to 2014 production meetings, builds and limited execution on set was most of his work on Supernatural today, he works as a contract artist for film and TV, runs a custom silicone mask business and teaches digital makeup and design at an institute in Vancouver.

Berly: 1:55

He was a hoot and a half. Yeah, I like him. Like him a lot. Here is our interview with Benson Musaev. How did you get into special effects? Well,

Benson Musaev: 2:10

I got into special effects around 2001 ish or 2002 actually, I dropped out of illustrating school. I came here from a small town with a couple of buddies. Were like, hey, let's do something with our lives. We've done high school now. I don't want to go to college. Let's go do something already. We came out here. I decided to do animation, and about eight months into that, I quit. As soon as we did our first interview of a real studio, I went, Holy shit, I'm learning how to I could swear, right?

Berly: 2:36

It's okay. Yeah, it's an explicit podcast. You can say whatever the fuck you want. Marvelous, fuck shit.

Benson Musaev: 2:40

Awesome. I love it. Thank you. Long story short, I was like, I'm not sitting on my ass for 18 hours a day drawing. I want to do something like that's where I kind of fully gave into the ADD and said, You know what? Do something all day that you're gonna love. I don't like wearing a uniform. I'm not gonna work at McDonald's, whatever. And I can't remember exactly what is I came across somebody who was developing a children's TV show. I think his name was George grove. He's not around anymore. Lovely puppeteer, amazing artist, once in Vancouver, and he kind of liked my energy, like I was saying before, it's with the big hands. It's all about just kind of wearing yourself on your sleeve. So he liked me whatever he saw. He invited me to a think tank in Gastown somewhere. There I made a lovely sculptor named Gideon hay who's a local and he's a phenomenal he's a legend around Vancouver, right? He's been here forever. He opened up a portfolio, and these Polaroids kind of dating myself a little bit. They're Polaroids of his work are in there. And I'm going, This is amazing. These are creature sculptures, beautiful characters. I'm going to do this for fun. He rolls his eyes, and he got no kid. I'm one of the highest paid sculptors in Vancouver. Look who you're talking to. I gush a little bit and I freak out immediately. Go to Michaels, get polymer clay. Start making characters, start sculpting things, realizing, holy shit, I can get paid to do this stuff, cold calling for about six months. Finally got a gig at a FX studio called SFX, fun, fun work. Got to hang out there and learn a lot only because of attitude. Got to stay on because the lead was a bit of a pardon my curmudgeon. You know what I mean? Yeah, but still, amazing, amazing artists. Not a lot of people could get along with them. I did, so it was marvelous. It wasn't nearly because of my work, because I wasn't that talented still, and not but I stuck to it and really had a good time and enjoyed the work. After that gig, I got into Toby's shop, which is Toby Linda led SFX, and that's when I got my supernatural run. And actually, I kind of cut my teeth on that show the first few years. You know, you have no idea what you're doing in this industry, right? Because there's no, really, no school for what we do. There's makeup school, really. But I'm not going to preface this by saying I'm not really a makeup artist, per se. I'm a lab tech, right? We make all the things, and if we go to set to put it on. I'm never the one really gluing it to your face. I'm the one pumping blood behind you where you know your face is melting off, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I got into Toby's and really cut my teeth on Supernatural. He was really kind. This is Toby Linda kind, letting me lead some things, just throwing me into the deep end. It's Supernatural, which was really nice. But. That production itself was so tightly knit and so wonderful that they maybe not welcome you with open arms, but at least gave me the chance to cut my teeth and just give me a chance to show what I could do and really contribute to the production. So all in all, beautiful experience. So I kind of got into it just haphazardly cold calling, doing something I love, following my heart essentially. Because still, as you can see, all the stuff around me, the ADD is prevalent. I gotta be doing something all the time. So if I'm going to be making stuff, running around, doing things, which is what my job is. I mean, for 20 something years I haven't worked really, all I do is play. You know what? I mean, never the same day twice. Even if I'm making the same kinds of molds, there are different kinds of things that I'm molding and different materials and different prerequisites from studios. So always new challenges. I take that on as like a like a NASCAR challenge, you know, limit me so I can create something new.

Berly: 5:50

I absolutely adore that. That is a lovely story. Thank

Benson Musaev: 5:54

you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's the more and more I share it, the more I realize it's a little bit unique. Because a lot of my friends like I teach now too. So a lot of the students I like to push that kind of education, you know, because sometimes you don't really know where you're going with this stuff, or know what to do and where to go. But the people that the students I really kind of cling on to are the ones I really kind of like to bolster the self learners, the ones that go, You know what? That's the kind of person you have to be a little bit to be in this industry. Sometimes nobody's going to hold your hand just go do it and see if you can,

Berly: 6:20

right? It sounds like having a mentor in that industry can make all the difference, though. So kudos to you for continuing that. I really

Benson Musaev: 6:26

appreciate you saying that, because that's that's kind of what I'm starting to realize now in my age, is that I've bought to pay homage to the people that came before and started doing my duty now and start supporting the people that really, really love this. You know what? I mean? Do it for money. I know it's a job. You got to do it for money, too. But the people that really love it are the ones that push this vocation, that push us to do better work, make it accountable. You know, it's not just some schmuck pushing blood through a tube. No, you got to be you got to enjoy it, because it comes across, right, right? You see one on, can I say your description of splooge? Of Blood, splooge? I love it. There are some effects terms that don't get thrown around on splooge is one that gets thrown around all the time. And I love that you said that you must have some effects background or

Unknown: 7:08

something. No, I'm just a pervert. No, oh no,

Benson Musaev: 7:12

you hit that splooge right. Off point, perfect. Lot of onomatopoeia. Oh, how

Berly: 7:16

fun. What we do? No, we're just, we're just two perverted old brides who the first time we saw it, were trying to think of a way to describe it accurately, and we were like, like, splooged on the wall. That's it. Yeah, that's it. And so we've actually been counting the blood splooges In our supernatural journey. No way. Yes, we've just finished season seven, and we're in the 50s.

Benson Musaev: 7:39

That's it. Oh, come on. I expected that splooge candidate that must have been some editing. Something on editing on the edit room floor. There's some callous splooges on the floor. We

Berly: 7:47

do drink while we record our episode as well. So it could be that we've missed a few. Fair enough. Fair enough. Were you in charge of the blood splooge? Can't we did find out in an interview with John Emmett Tracy, he said it was kind of like a cannon thing that, like, shot it out was that your department, and if so, do you happen to recall your favorite blood splooge? Oh,

Benson Musaev: 8:10

well, you know, like snowflakes, not all splooges are the same, but like, snowflakes are kind of hard to remember, because they all blur together. But mostly, my favorite splooge stories are the free splooge. You know, all the, after all the not aftermath, pre math that happens, I guess, to the splooge, and all the kind of engineering sometimes that happens. So we weren't wholly in charge of the splooge, because most of that was a special effects thing, unless it dealt with an actor directly, like if it was in the back of the head, let's say, or it was part of our makeup, and we were actually asked to supply a lot of the material for the splurge. So the Sploosh itself a cannon, right? You can imagine, just like a PVC tube pressurized on one end, and as soon as you let that psi go in, one quick ski douche boosh, it just goes on the wall. Now, we were asked to formulate different consistencies of splush, and that was honestly the best part, because we just first place you go the fridge, the fridge, you get all the best organic matter, bananas, yogurt, bread, oh, you let that soak in blood for like an hour or so, or even just warm it up a little bit beforehand. That stuff, when it when it flies, it hits, like little brain chunks and brain matter we got so excited about splooging all over supernatural is that we had a wall in the back of Toby's. We used to call it the splooge wall. He painted white every year. And we would just different types of cannons. We would section it to different types of the walls, just to have pictured reference to what our cannon, or splooge cannons, would look like. We, unfortunately, on set, did not get to do a lot of the actual solution. We just supplied them with the gunk, and they would jam it into the cannon and shoot it. But anytime you would see a specific, let's say, a rooster tail, or if it was brains or specific matter, that's us, usually the day before going through our lunch, or going through the grocery store next door and just buying the weirdest things and looking like the weirdest people you. Usually my favorite was, um, buying nylon stockings and condoms with the food and blood, because you'd get the best looks from the cashiers, right? Because we we come in looking like us, and we don't smell great all the time. So she's bringing up the food that you'd sneak in the condoms and blood and maybe some pantyhose, and she looks at you like, where's the duct tape and shovel for your trunk? You know what I mean? But we did a lot of cool cannons. I want to mention that a guy named Chris Clark, a fellow effects guy, absolutely amazing genius of a man, pioneered some of the cannons and made them portable, like we'd be able to charge schedule 40 PVC and ABS pipes and stuff like that, to certain so that way they wouldn't have to haul compressors out to nowhere, or have actors hooked up to lines like pneumatic air compressor lines like through their pant leg or something like that, just to have the thing blow up behind them. He actually engineered and made this gorgeous portable cannon, basically that you can just off site, load up brat pack in your splooge, and even have multiple cannons set up for multiple takes. Lot of supernatural was logistic stuff behind the scenes. How much? How can we get it done in the most efficient way possible, that and especially, like I was saying earlier, logistically, blood was a nightmare, because they'd have to shoot backwards, right? They'd have to shoot the clean stuff, first dirty up the whole set and then shoot because it would take hours of unnecessary time to clean the set to then shoot again right by the end of it, splooge was a lot of fun, but we ended up doing a lot of splooge I just love saying, I don't know what it is. We ended up doing a lot of splooges Insert shots, you know, like weeks later, after the episode wrapped, while they were editing and stuff like that, where they were re shooting other episodes, we'd go and do a splooge test, or a splooge shot, or splooge camera.

Berly: 11:40

That's so interesting, you know? La, she'll definitely call it out and be like, that one was chunky. That was a chunky one. We haven't gotten as specific to try and figure out what each of the individual pieces of matter are, but we have been starting to notice if it's chunkier or more liquid. And so good work.

Benson Musaev: 11:59

That's beautiful. There's a lot of methicille, a lot of like, psyllium. Yeah, you guys are engineers, Dexter stuff happening right here, reverse engineering. Are you trying to take my job? I'll be a little, a little hint. If it stays up for a few seconds and then drops, that's definitely banana. Banana does, oh, it's got this little mucusy layer on the front of it. Oh, it's cool. It's got the perfect yellow for fat, and it's the blood soaks into it doesn't soak into it all the way. So it insinuate, I don't there's art in this stuff, and that's the kind of stuff that we love. We would gawk and gawk and play with the wall bits, and it would only be shot for two seconds. But we don't care.

Berly: 12:35

That's the fun. There's weirdos like us out there who thoroughly appreciate your work, right?

Benson Musaev: 12:40

Thank you. I appreciate that's what DVDs and pausing were invented. Oh, my God, slow mo, look, I

Berly: 12:47

think that's a banana. We're going to start figuring it out from now on.

Benson Musaev: 12:53

Oh, you're going to see some other magnet tricks too. I think I remember, um, doing a finger sever on Matt Frewer, unfortunately, I used a magnet. Well, I used a magnet. That was part of the trick is I developed this thing where you can reset a finger cut so they can do it multiple times. Instead adding, you know, multiple fingers to cut off, you can just put the same one back on, clean it up, and it would look seamless. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through. They did a slower take to kind of look at the cutting and the magnet of the knife stuck to the to the real knife that they were using. So as he pulled it up as a finger stuck to the knife, we're going to work to think of something else. We ended up getting a plastic knife. It was easy peasy, but just a little thing. Sometimes you don't

Berly: 13:31

think, Oh, funny. Yeah, logistics, right? Logistics, all logistics. Oh, my Lord. So bringing it back to the very beginning of this whole process, when are special effects brought in on the script or on the episode? What is that general process like? From your notification to creation special

Benson Musaev: 13:51

effects? On our end, my special makeup effects is usually created after the script read, right? We'll go get the first meeting, or they'll just send scripts out to the production heads, production departments, Toby or I, or a few of the other marvelous leads that were were with us throughout the years, would just sit down and read, grab a cup of coffee and just note areas kind of keywords in the same way that they would like tag keywords now monster face, rip show it a bloody hand, or something would happen. We just kind of circle it. Then we basically, kind of refine what we think we needed to build. Then go to a second meeting where one of us, most likely not told me, like somebody like me would then go in with a plan, going, Hey, this is what we thought of. What do you guys think? And that's where I really got to see a lot of meat and potatoes on how TV shows are made. Vis effects was huge, and vis effects on Supernatural was a lot of cutting edge for their time, right? Great team that did that jazz, and they kind of ran a little bit of the show. So basically at that point we'd be like, hey, what can we do? You know, what could make up effects support, what is solely makeup effects? What can we work with his effects to create? But then it would just be more conversation, chat, chat, until we narrow down a plan and then budgets the usual, right? Can we pull up? What we do, start casting actors, start using what we had previous. We have a lot of the cast actors and repeating characters already cast. So we'd go create the prosthetics, create the effect, do some testing, do whatever we got to do, and then just call it to set. It seemed quite superfluous to me at first, but then I realized how these things will make us a lot of moving pieces, a big pipeline. So we just had to keep communicating, especially because visit effects was very good at picking up, not so much slack, but things that we couldn't do that were either out of our it's a TV show, right? They film every two weeks. We can't do some of these things in a few weeks, but here comes vis effects. So we were a little bit scared, but it kind of balanced out near the end. Then we got to good relationship between the two. Some shows are very different, right? Like I was saying earlier, supernatural, they were a team like you could tell those people were together a long time. They were finishing each other's sentences sometimes. And on one part, it was lovely working for them, because it was so well oiled. There was no if ands or buts, you know, you got your checks on time. The things were playing when they needed to be played. You know, everybody was fantastic, but it was hard to sometimes fit in because, you know, they had their own thing. And we're makeup effects. We fly in once in a while to do something goofy and then fly out of there. So it was kind of hard to fit in sometimes. But I didn't mind being a hired gun coming in, flying in to do whatever I did. Remember that every good episode. Like, anytime there's a big win for makeup effects, it would always be treated better the episode after, you know what I mean. So we kind of chased that. We made sure that we did a good job, because they'd give us more work. Essentially be like, oh shit, yeah. Remember that thing you guys did that was gross on so anytime we saw somebody go on set, we'd be like, Yeah, we're gonna get more effects next season or next next episode. They're gonna throw goodies at us. I know it. It's unfortunate that practical effects are synonymous with money. You know what I mean? Like they Oh, it's too expensive to do practice as well, but clearly not like I was, again, harkening back to earlier about injecting inspiration into good people through this industry. They're the ones that are going to make good stuff, not for money. And as soon as that spar is set, everybody else can't help but go there. You know what I mean? Avatar comes out, and James Cameron spends millions on mocap. It looks great, sure. But as soon as somebody can make something just as heartfelt, heartwarming with practical effects, and doesn't need that fancy stuff, proves to people that you can do it without it. And that's, I think, what we need more of people just proving to the younger audience and every audience going, Dude, you don't need to be esthetically mind blown. It's about heart. It's about story. Can you shoot this thing to make it look real and gory and whatever it is, make it feel

Berly: 17:26

I agree with all of that, except for Avatar being good. I the first Avatar. I enjoyed the first Avatar. It was okay. And LA, knows what I'm gonna say already, but when I walked out of that theater, I was just like, okay, so Fern Gully, right,

Benson Musaev: 17:39

right. My name is Betty. I got fucking kidding me, yeah, hell yeah.

Berly: 17:44

There's no songs, there's no baddie, there's no tone. Look lizard, but I mean, it was, it was, oh my god, right. It was Fern Gully. Like, okay. And whenever I heard they were doing all these other avatar movies, I was like, why? Where's my live action FernGully? Yes, yes, please. I tried to watch that second avatar, and I could not. I think I made it 10 minutes into it, and I was like, I feel like I'm watching somebody play a video game. I just No, I'm not interested. So I'll disagree with you there. I did not think it looked good. I didn't give a shit about what was happening in the plot. I am not an avatar supporter, so

Benson Musaev: 18:22

tell me how you really feel good to know state of all avatar comments from the interview. Now, I had a whole thing planned. I

Berly: 18:33

mean, you can talk about it like, I personally don't think it looks great. I'm like, it's boring. I just know No, no, and that's

Benson Musaev: 18:41

it. And that's it. It's that same thing. You're seeing the same thing all the time. And that's what I liked about supernatural, right? Is that we had the blend of the two, and nearly, like later seasons, we actually enmeshed both of them together, like we green screen parts of our makeup, so that way they could do CG inside, instead of having the whole hand CG. You know what I mean, silly things like that. But yeah, it was, it was great, cool family. And they just kind of like, yeah, you know, if it's gonna work, it's gonna work. And had some of the coolest directors that I've ever worked with, you know, not personally work with, because they don't really work with me, but been around the sets and the kind of environment they've cultivated. Some of the coolest people worked on that show

Berly: 19:18

you've kind of touched on this. But how much overlap is there between special effects, hair and makeup props? Can you provide an example of how you all collaborated for creating something on Supernatural

Benson Musaev: 19:32

like you see and now, like we've just touched on with avatar, they have that silly motion capture. They could track everything now and make it almost flawless? Well, we didn't have that with supernatural. We had to go through a lot of those hoops on set to try and make it look good. For instance, let's say, like, yeah, like a scar on the hand, where you would see a demon or some sort of skin underneath. What we would do is we would create the blended or the scarred skin and the open skin, where it would be a lot harder for vis effects, or a little bit more time. Consuming to do something that kind of blows up and then track it on their hand for every frame where we can just slap a quick Bondo, you know, other makeup effects nerds, and know what that means, which takes 15 minutes to apply, and they'd have that on set, just to up, just to touch up here and there barely anything. So logistically, absolutely made sense. But all the demon skin underneath pain and it took us, for us to do, because it would have to be animated, whatever. So yeah, long story short, we finally found a great way to work together. On a technician level. We really got along with some of the business tax people. So you know what? I mean, it was a lot of, yeah, you should do this. That dude, that'd be great. And then we'd get back to our shops, respectively. And the guy, you know what, we're canceling that most likely somebody on the up and up was not keen on whatever the the fruit was. But like I was saying earlier, the more and more we did great, the more and more people's eyes were kind of open up when, hey, they can actually do that. Oh, they can actually do that. Let's do that again. Let's do that again. Well, for next episode, let's think about you two working together. You know what I mean? I think it was um, Ivan. Ivan Hayden, maybe not remembering his last name, but Ivan definitely his first name. Marvelous man. He ran the visit effects while I was there, and he would grade, he come to our shop. We'd go to their place with chit chat and that kind of stuff. Was a little bit, I don't want to say, unheard of, but especially in Vancouver, where everybody's cutting throats for work or just trying to get the job done, we didn't have time to communicate with other departments. It was, you know, you got two weeks to get this effects done. Go, go, go. But no supernatural made it possible because of what we made out of it. And you're totally right. It still holds up. I was kind of prepping a little bit for this. And look back on a couple of seasons, watch season five, a few episodes and going. And you know what? This is fun. I'm enjoying the look, and none of it really feels dated to me, because it's apropos of the time. It feels good. It's not trying to be more than it was. So I think that's where the balance was. And I want to give a props or a little shout out to costuming and everybody that did wardrobe for supernatural, because they had to deal with RBS, a lot a lot of blood, a lot of crap everywhere, right? So yeah, most of the coordination with hair, makeup and everybody was just, how do we prep the skin to get that blood off? Or can we shoot you guys at the end? Because we don't want to clean up all that blood. More is that. Now, we were notorious. I get how sometimes we got a little, you know, we'd get to set, and people would roll our eyes, because we'd have huts and sprayers full of blood, and we're going, Oh, it's not those guys. It is us. I'm sorry. We're a necessary evil, right? You like the show, you like the gore. We're here.

Berly: 22:22

Are there any particular creations that come to mind when you think of your time on Supernatural honestly? The first

Benson Musaev: 22:28

one was the the Matt Frewer, pestilence, the finger. Oh, he was fantastic. And only because I really nerded out like I I've met a lot of you know, we work in film. We meet a lot of celebrities, a lot of crazy people, you know, a lot of marvelous people, like bigger than life people, but him, Oh, my Lord, what a gem of a human. Max, yeah, but lost my like, I didn't lose my mind. I was, they were so just pointing and laughing at me as I was heading to set, because I was kind of shaking a trailer alone with them, casting his finger. But it was, it was a blast. That was one of my favorites, just because I was saying, I kind of helped pioneer the resettable. That was a big pain in the took us, because everything, a lot of the stuff we did before that was one take, you know, we'd have to make a separate hand to chop it off. Soon as that shot, bring in a new hand, chop it off. Those things took forever to make. So when they asked, is there any way we can make a finger resettable like that sounds before, then it was kind of silly, sounding, right? It's kind of like saying before the internet. Of course, it was always the internet. No, there was a time before. So there was a time before, magnetic resettable fingers, and I just remember them going gaga. It was one of those ones where they took it to set. We tested it out. It worked great. We were so excited about it, but there's still those nerves, right? If they don't do it right on set, or what if there's different conditions, sometimes they change one little thing and your whole build has gone to shit. So I remember being really nervous testing it out. They sent it to set and getting a call immediately that it went perfectly and flawless, and they loved the fact that it was a resettable finger, and they want all the rest of them to be done the same way. So it's kind of a point of pride. And it was just nice being able to contribute, because I watched that episode over again, and they did it in two different angles, right? You can't really do that kind of stuff if you don't have more than one, and there's no way they could afford with the time and money to do more than one. So in a way, I got to kind of help contribute to the filming of it. Help contribute to the stylized of the gore. Got to help them show more gore

Berly: 24:18

with Matt Frewer. Was it y'all who did the snot? Oh yeah,

Benson Musaev: 24:22

that's Ultra slime, and a bunch of other Oh man, that stuff's fun, and it gets everywhere ever to clean that stuff forever, like I'm telling you, they did not like us on some of those days, because we were the splugi goop people. Were the grows people, right? And I tried to clean up, but sometimes even wear nice things to set just to offset that. No Didn't matter. As soon as the cannons came out and the syringes came out, it was over. Y'all did

LA: 24:49

a really good job of pestilence, because I was disgusted. Thank

Benson Musaev: 24:53

you. Thank you. Mostly, Mr. Frewer, absolutely marvelous performance. But yeah, there's never a bad time. On set when you hear more, and that's not Gore, whatever you want to call it, just more. Do more of it. Put more on like and sometimes you'd see people's eyes rolling on, God, just less blood, just a little bit more. But some of them, come on. Give me some more. I appreciate that. Thank you. Oh, and another one I was just remembering was, remember the episode name, but when people were eating each

Berly: 25:24

other, there were a couple of them. There was the Valentine's Day one, yes, that

Benson Musaev: 25:28

one, oh, that one was fun. That was a lot of body parts and things made out of gelatin. It's essentially, kind of tasted like marshmallows, and we built that into certain prosthetics so people could actually bite into the prosthetic and rip it off. So instead, I mean, usually you don't do that with prosthetics. You kind of glue and remove them afterwards, but hey, we got everybody's consent, and some of them just straight up rip them off. And it was, that was a lot of fun to make, because we have to test everything out. So I've got circulating somewhere amidst my friends, or videos of us eating each other in the shop and just blood everywhere. So those, those were a lot of fun, especially the food safe stuff, because it has to be done in a timely manner, and obviously you can't It's food safe. I have to make it that morning and take it right to set. So some of those things are treated with high priority, and always some of the more intricate gags, right? You'll have a couple of cameras, you'll have a couple of cool things that need to happen. It feels more like a play and like a little theater production, then you're filming something because it's a little nuanced. That

Berly: 26:24

was one of the more gnarly episode openers was that couple having their first date and then just literally eating each other. I think it had a splooge too. I think there was

Benson Musaev: 26:37

a splooge up on the bridge there. I remember, I think that was only a I was only a syringe. Splooge.

Berly: 26:44

Oh, a syringe. Splooge, syringe. Just up,

Benson Musaev: 26:48

yeah, just a manual. Gotcha, I'm going

Berly: 26:52

to ask you some questions specifically about season six and seven, but I'm not going to be able to resist asking you about an episode from season five, because it's one of my favorites. All right, so in season six, the thing that I think was probably prosthetics, probably your department, that came to my mind was the death of Eve. Oh yeah. It was so uncomfortable to watch. How did you make her essentially leak to death or sweat to death, like, what was that?

Benson Musaev: 27:25

That was that one was fun the Eve death. It was a lot of hidden tubes, hidden tubes everywhere they are, just meticulously placed. It was either latex tube that could form beautifully around certain corners in certain areas, or just pressed vinyl tube, very, very flat, and that was it. It was finding the right consistency of ooze that it would pump nicely and come out into certain parts and a lot of fluid dynamics. I know it sounds like a fancy boy, or like we're trying to make it sound more complicated than it is, but in a way, we had to kind of map out the pressure of the fluid, so that way it would all kind of come out in a uniform area, and not just all come out in one area, if that makes sense. So for instance, like preference, some holes to be larger on different areas, so that way the fluid would travel there first and then fill the tube and then come back up. So a lot of that was just really clever placement, good consistency and proper scientific, know, how about pressures and system? Because it's very easy for that stuff to start squirting out, or to, you know, come out in a weird way or something. So just a lot of trial and error and lot of tubes, you look closely, I'm sure you'll be able to see where all the some of the little openings now that I've told you what they are, yeah, go back and look at it, you're going to be able to see where the tubes are hidden. Now, that's kind of like the bane of what we do. Soon as I explain it to somebody, they go, ah, lame, boring. Who cares?

Berly: 28:48

No, that's actually fascinating to me.

Benson Musaev: 28:50

No, a lot of tubes, a lot of off camera stuff, you would not be like, I would love I mean, it's kind of no way to do it now, but for productions to almost have a camera that's like, 10 degrees off axis, just to show people what's actually happening, right? So that would be really in supernatural, you would absolutely adore some of the things, a lot of duct tape and Home Hardware sticks, or like silly sticks and like hot glue in behind things, just holding something up barely, but it looks beautiful. Looks strong, it looks like it's doing its job when the camera's pointing at it. So we did a lot of that kind of stuff, and supernatural with

Berly: 29:22

water. I was like, how did they keep it from not just like you said, all coming to from one place and just the it literally just looked like she was sweating, leaking to death, and I was just, it's

Benson Musaev: 29:35

mixed with a thickening agent called methicille. Now you can also use something called capital, which is a food additive, that's the stuff they put into like, to thicken food up. But we use all sorts of thickening agents that can help and it we can control it too, so it can become super watery, or just, you're just just enough that it kind of congeals and breaks, doesn't break the surface, tension on the skin when it rolls. You know, we have that. We can have that much articulation, and that's. What I love about the industry, like I was talking about the ADD, there's so much to learn. Like I could put blood through a tube, no problem. But when I know about surface tension, when I know about viscosity, when I know about all these things, I can make that simulate real life, so much more. Yeah, so yeah, a little bit of knowledge, Monica, my knowledge, goes a long way, and especially with stuff like that, like that kind of gig, learned a lot from that

Berly: 30:21

season seven, the prosthetic thing that comes to mind from that season there was the episode with the turducken sandwich. Oh, hell yeah. And it seems like you guys were heavily involved in that. Like, obviously the sandwich was you guys. And so I'd like to hear more about the sandwich. But the thing that just absolutely fucking disgusted me was the person who had turned to that monster because they ate the sandwich that is the most disgusting monster that we've seen so far in supernatural. It was hideous. So I would like to hear more about designing that, putting that together. It seemed like there was stuff over their eyes. Like, just, yep, it was gnarly, man, so, but what can you tell me about that episode?

Benson Musaev: 31:08

Well, it's funny. You mentioned that because the makeup itself was not the most interesting, nor the most time consuming or the most memory inducing part of that, it was the actual turducken sandwich. Oh, really, that thing was an actual pain in the ass, and that took us forever to figure out that makeup actually itself came together beautifully and flawlessly. That's something that I want to credit Toby Lindell, or the guy who's whose shop it was I was working at. He's good at that stuff, like that fucker part of my French can hammer that kind of stuff out. He started out doing X Files, right? This guy's a creature guy, so that makeup, and you're right, there was stuff over their eyes, which is a real pain in the ass for some actors. It was kind of like, almost like picking pong balls in half, right? But little bit of hole you could possibly see through. So yeah, that's a tough one. We have to apply that last to make sure that actor gets as much visual time as possible. And a lot of that was pieced together. A lot of it looks gross and gnarly, and I don't want to say it wasn't planned, but stuff like that, stuff like that, it kind of designs itself in a way. We get a beautiful sketch. Toby will have a little inspiration. He'll show that to the production, like, yeah, do something like this, and then we'll just go and create that's where the trust was, which was they really loved that about us. When we were doing any sort of creature stuff for supernatural they were like, Yeah, fuck you guys. That's cool. All the all the fangs we did, all those around Vancouver, we call those supernatural fangs, you know, pardon my snatch fangs. That's what we call them, right? When we do those style of fangs, every time you know a production is coming through, I want teeth to do this. Yeah? You mean the snatch, the supernatural things, yeah, no problem. So the makeup itself blast to do. I helped run some of the pieces, do some stuff, but I think Toby and a few amazing artists went to set to apply that thing. But the goddamn sandwich was a pain in the ass, because that thing kept it had to be organic, an actual thing like we didn't have the technology at the time. We weren't really a props company yet. We were given the job to do that because it had a makeup effects effect, and it had to gross ooze. Yeah, ooze, right? And that was another thing where as soon as we started pumping the ooze, I think, started to fall apart. So I had to find a way to congeal it and create, like, solidify the thing. And then we almost tried other methods of trying to create a full one, but we couldn't get anything that looked and felt exactly like it. And again, time crunches. We're not a props company. We're freaking out. We know how to make dead bodies, not fake sandwiches. Everybody just went, Yeah, makeup. No problem. We'll crush it. And focused on that goddamn turducken, and we couldn't get it right. It just couldn't do what we needed it to do. And there was just tons of glue, duct tape, and things you would not believe, holding that thing up just off camera. Yeah, that your duck and pretty much stole the goddamn show. That one sandwich is always the thing we could talk about for two weeks, pulling our hair out. So, yeah, thank you for bringing up that like a memory. God damn turducken.

Berly: 33:53

Well, it got a close up and it looked great.

Benson Musaev: 33:59

It looked great. The gray hairs that I got from that obnoxious I swear Toby went on vacation after that episode. I need to decompress done with this fucking turducken.

Berly: 34:08

So were you guys just under the table pumping it, or do you

Benson Musaev: 34:16

sweating buckets like I've I've done things hooked up to a list actors and playing syringes near the map. Don't give a shit. It's fun. I've rehearsed this multiple times. I had no idea how that turned was gonna go or what was even happening. I had no monitor because it's just a fucking sandwich. Give me a monitor for a fucking sandwich. I'm sweating buckets underneath us. They go, Fuck Please work. Please work. Don't explode. Don't explode. This kid's gonna fall apart on me. And I'm going, I'm done with the sandwich. Years and doing effects, and a sandwich does me in, oh my God,

Berly: 34:44

that's hilarious. It worked out. I totally thought the sandwich was going to be just easy peasy story, and then the monster was going to be, oh my God, it was so complicated. I'm cracking up that it's the opposite That is hilarious.

Benson Musaev: 34:59

As soon as. I read that in the little synopsis you sent me, I was like, Oh God, the makeup was bread and butter, meat and potatoes. Toby and the guys loved doing stuff like that. It was a blast.

Berly: 35:12

Rolling it back to season five, I wanted to ask you specifically about the episode hammer of the gods. It was my favorite. Oh yeah, from the first five seasons. I loved that. So do you have any stories you recall from working with hammer of the cots? Yeah,

Benson Musaev: 35:29

a few bits and pieces, like severed hands, you know, props and things I remember, the eyeballs in the soup in the whatever was boiling, were a pain in the ass, kind of like the turducken because they were the they were a buoyancy problem, because they wanted the eyeballs to kind of come up at a certain time. And they had this whole engineered thing where we had, like magnets on the bottom and trying to release things, and in the end, they just said, Fuck it. It's too much, because we spent, we spent days testing different materials for eyeballs and buoyancy and pushing them into water and hoping they come up at a certain time. But it was amazing the time you spend for the two or three seconds on film that they don't really care about those goddamn eyeballs, the severed head of the trade table, classic magicians trick. I think it was just a guy underneath the table, and they visit, fixed it out underneath, right? That was just a, we just, we just created a skirt for his neck. But the rest of it was actually underneath. So

Berly: 36:19

that was, that was the actual actor still, okay, I had no idea. I assumed y'all made a head. Okay, cool.

Benson Musaev: 36:24

Oh, a lot of times they don't like the Paris Hilton Head chop and all that stuff. A lot of that is the actual person, right? They don't want to making a severed head is all a pain in the ass and really expensive. They'll only do that for really key things, and especially if the actor's interacting with it like a prop, then they'll make they'll get us to do one, and sometimes it'll just even be the back of the head, you know, I mean, so you'll get the gore, but they don't want to spend it's really expensive and a real pain, and it took us to do a full separate head. Speaking

Berly: 36:50

of back of the head, Lucifer punches his hand through one of the characters, and we see his hand on the other side of the body. Oh, we were trying to figure out how y'all did that. Do you remember that

Benson Musaev: 37:01

harkens back to that original clip where we started this with Misha punching egg or or his the belly and through his chest, the belly. Yeah. So that actually funny story, I think that came at the tail end of final destination. Want to say five, maybe four or five. There was you familiar with those movies? Yes, yes, the final Yeah. Okay, so Toby Linda and the crew. They also did the effects for those movies. And I think in one of those movies, somebody, we engineered this really neat rig where somebody would, essentially would make a fake torso from here down of that person, and that the torso would be on a on a rig, essentially just kind of standing up right on a stand, essentially, so the person could walk up to their own chest and place their head inside the torso, and have their torso, I'm just gonna stand back a little bit kind of askew, but have the full torso here. So basically we'd make a fake chest for somebody that's kind of hollowed out, and they would walk up to it, just put their head on there, but still have the fake chest here, but still have room in between their actual chest and this fake chest. So all that person had to do was slightly turn to the side, or just push their body back a little bit and it would look like they were still standing there, right? So essentially, somebody could come up behind them and look like they were pushing their hand through. So we did this for final destination with a meat skewer. Somebody had skewered somebody through the middle of their chest. And we're like, how are we going to do that? So again, beautiful team of marvelously smart people, and a few beers during lunch, we figured it out. And that was, I think, can't remember exactly when, but a little bit before that episode. So when we were thinking of where we were, brought the challenge of, well, how do we make it look like there's a hand coming through there? A lot of it was vis effects talk, and a lot of it was all shit. We're gonna lose this to visit facts, until somebody said, Dude, the final destination rig, this exact same thing. Just use a hand, just push his hand through. So I think we almost, we got a cast in the sizing of Misha chest, but we use the exact same core, the underneath belly structure of the original rig for final destination, and did the same thing. So we just had him sit up next to this thing and had somebody around him. I don't remember who it was, who gave him a reach around, but somebody did. Might be a point of pride there somewhere.

Berly: 39:16

All right, very cool. I was trying to remember

Benson Musaev: 39:18

what the point of that was, something with the hammer the gods episode, I

Berly: 39:21

was asking about Lucifer punching his it's he punches his hand through somebody's chest, and his hand comes out on the other side. Is bloody. Very

Benson Musaev: 39:28

much a similar thing. In fact, that was kind of an insert thing that wasn't really even a human there. That was just a form and somebody's head there to make it look like it's a human. Anywhere you see something moving, you know, it's a human being, but anywhere you see a little bit stiffness or something. Still, I always that's a dead giveaway it's not real. You know what I mean? That's that's us doing our magic to kind of make the camera angle look like it's the same person. But it's absolutely not. We did a lot of trickery with supernatural like punching through when things happening, when you realize the person's nowhere near you, it's just maybe somebody's closer to the camera and their head. Further back, something silly like that reminds me too. Sometimes what we do is we'd hide a blood tube inside weapons. So that was our job as makeup effects, and we'd had to work with props. Sometimes they would give us a knife that was hollow on the inside, and we have to insert a tube and then get the right viscosity of blood and attach our accoutrement to that. So sometimes, yeah, we did get to work with props, especially in those kind of times, a lot of the, you know, where's the blood coming from? Why is, you know, neck something like, I connect sled or a slice. Sometimes it's actually inside, like, let's say, a demon nail, or inside a knife somewhere.

Berly: 40:32

Okay, I actually remember, there was a scene where Dean was held his arm out and did something, and I remember us going, Where, where'd that come from? And now, okay, that makes sense, yeah, because it

Benson Musaev: 40:43

is. It's amazing how real it just starts coming out of nowhere, and you're like, where's that blood? And that was the beauty of working on stuff like, like, supernatural is it was about fooling people with very little, you know, fooling people with just the right amount of something. That was one of the best parts about doing effects there.

Berly: 40:59

Yeah, we've had many of debates of was that practical or visual, and that Lucifer punching his hand through was one of the ones where we had a debate. And I was like, I'm I was pretty sure it was practical. So haha. La, thanks,

Benson Musaev: 41:12

bully. I'm keeping points over here,

Berly: 41:17

we have some people who follow us on Patreon, and they submitted some questions for you, if you still have some time, absolutely all the time the room. What's your favorite and least favorite type of prosthetic? Least favorite

Benson Musaev: 41:29

ones are usually things around the ears and nose only because of placement. It's a pain in the ass to do them. It's a pain in the ass. I don't usually apply them, but the applicators that do apply them are very specific about the quality and the way that they're done. So, I mean, it kind of comes back down to me having to do a very specific kind of job on these kinds of prosthetics, and they're always form fitting, like ears and nose or like not generic areas of human faces, they're very different, or can be very differently proportional, whereas a forehead piece, I can fit that on a lot of people you know, generally speaking, where ears, nose, around the mouth, pain in the ass. And especially for TV and film, when we apply something to somebody, they're doing it an hour before shooting, two hours before shooting, they don't get around to it. That actor's gone to lunch, that prosthetic is starting to come off like it's a pain in the ass to maintain around those areas. So just logistically speaking, they're a pain, because of the industry, because of what we work in. We can't just slap it on and film and take it off. Gotta put it on hours before, and then it could possibly get go past its its prime life. You know what I mean, once that prosthetic has gone past that amount of time, once it's had so much heat, so much sweat, so much whatever, it's going to start coming off, or the edges are going to start looking like looking like shit, which means more work for us, or us getting yelled at for looking like shit because it was applied five hours ago. You know what I mean. But just nothing we can do about it. I understand. There's nothing really productions can do about it. So some of those might at least say the ones that you have to chase, long story short, the any process that you have to chase around pain and it took us. And then, conversely, my favorite ones are the ones that are either quick or easy or the gory ones. Oh my god, the gory ones are the best ones, because you can not only hide so much in them, but to me, they're they art like I would look inside a bite wound and see a pattern. See faces. See not faces, but you know what I mean, see a story within the gore. I could see how that dog bit that, or how that werewolf, or how that demon attacked that, where it scraped, how it scraped, how deep it scraped, and especially prosthetics that involved pumping blood or pumping any liquid, like the Eve, when we were talking about those ones are super fun because they're half art, half engineering. And if I wasn't doing this, I'd absolutely be an engineer, unless an electrical engineer, just putting things together, solving puzzles. And those are some of the most fun puzzles, because we use anything from, you know, like I said, condoms and silly tubes to, like, little balloons and little micro fibers and little tiny filament things, just to get blood into certain areas and just and those prosthetics. You don't just put them in a mold and kick them out, kind of like Play Doh, those are engineered, like we could get one done a day, and those kind of things, you know, we're very intimidating to a lot of people, and nothing to say. They're not to me, but I enjoy that, like, that's where I kind of come alive. Oh shit. Benny, we only got one chance to do this. I'm going to do it. Let's have some fun. Got a little bit of a reputation at helping and just kind of fixing things, right? I'm a like to see a problem and go or see something like, Okay, where's the problem? How do I fix it? So it's not always great when everything's going great, but I'm kind of the guy you call when only shit, fuck do we knew about this? Well, Betty will figure out a way. Just give him a half a doobie and a beer. Let him think about it. Right? I got to flex that muscle a lot over the years, especially with supernatural and especially with things like all the cool blood stuff and all the oozing, all the practical stuff that they're really going to let us flex. So yeah, prosthetics, the best ones, anything with some Gore, anything with a little bit of color and a little bit of ooze, little bit of movement, what

Berly: 44:54

is the longest or most complicated prosthetic, prosthetic you've ever. Or done. I'm not necessarily

Benson Musaev: 45:02

not an applicator, so I myself have not applied, but I do remember, and I don't think it was on Supernatural. It was a full body burn, and I remember, well, yeah, we had done it pre fabricated, on onto a dummy, and onto, like, big pieces of them, so then we could basically wrap this whole human being in this burn. But it was all made out of gelatin, and it was disgusting. It was us with just handfuls and bags of gelatin that we had made in different colors. But then we'd be standing around with butane torches just melting it onto parts. And the second you'd burn the gelatin and not melt it, it would stink to high heaven. So the entire shop just reeked. I mean, we had expected it. And we'd, I hate to say, got used to it. Where that point you'd go out to lunch, right? You'd come back and go, Oh God, you'd open the door to the shop. You're like, What is this smell? And you realize, oh, we've been in that all morning. Oh, nasty. But that was, that was some of my, probably the longest one. But it was kind of a pre made fabrication. And again, I only said because I'm not really an applicator. I don't go to set to put them on, but I do get to construct them sometimes. So that one took forever because it was a full body and a lot of the zones, you know, like, let's say, a thigh or parts of the hand and stuff, would all be done in sections and in pieces and then fused together with little blenders in between. So it was not only just a lot of surface area, but a lot of mapping and a lot of, you know, coordination, you'd be surprised, like I was surprised at how much coordination goes into these things. I thought cool artist slapping stuff together, put it on set. No, there's so many pieces, so many parts of the pipeline, that one person not doing their job right or not coordinating the right we're not communicating. It all goes to shit. So some of those pieces, those giant, like 3040, piece prosthetic pieces that we're setting to set. We got two dozen pizza boxes. Looks like a giant pizza order coming to set, because every one of those pizza boxes labeled uniformed, every single one of them has the right order in which the prosthetics go and are applied. So that was those are some of the most detailed ones. It's never the ones you really expect. It's always the simple ones that are the most, sometimes the most complicated, because they take more finesse to pull off. You know, like that turduck And zombie. Don't get me wrong, it looked great. We could slap cool stuff onto the face, and if you saw a little edge, you'd never see it, because we just slapped some blood there. Whereas something smooth and nice takes forever, and it takes a lot of engineering to get done, right? That

Berly: 47:20

actually, that makes a lot of sense. What is the weirdest prosthetic you've ever done?

Benson Musaev: 47:25

Oh, my Lord. Well, we can talk about, I think was a six foot dick, penis palace. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. It was for a six feet. It was six foot. It was for a dream sequence for a show that never got made, and I can't not remember the name of it, or I was, I would absolutely tell you, you know, it'd be great to remember this kind of thing. And I still, it's funny mention this, and I glad I remember this. Now, I just did some work a couple of weeks ago for the prosthetic shop that did this. This was, like, 20 years ago. They still have the little maquette. A maquette is a little sculpture that we'd make of something as like, just a prototype, just to show you what the proportions of this would be. And it's this little figure that my friend Sean Nolte is called. It's about this big of a man, and his proportioned penis that he's holding is about that big compared to him. So then when we made the real life version, it ended up being this six foot hog that this guy's holding on that's coming out of his pants. And it was for some sort of dream sequence that he had taken some sort of erectile dysfunction medication gone wrong. But I remember getting the breakdown from the guy, and the entire time I'm rolling, I'm laughing, I'm going, There's no way, you guys, this is a joke, right? It's not to sound weird or nothing, but I kind of, like, super bad. I love drawing dicks. I don't love it. I like drawing this. It's fun. I even have my own little, like, special little character that I like to draw. And for the last 20 years, I put him inside little builds, and I draw him inside little production meetings and things, and be like, Oh, fuck. Benson was here. So that when I when they got this job, I thought they're just playing one over. I mean, they just want to give me a laugh and go, hey, what can Benson do with this? Nope, nope. I had to make a six foot dick. It was great, fantastic.

Unknown: 49:05

The stuff you

Benson Musaev: 49:07

never really get to do all sorts of really interesting, fun, goofy builds, but it's always the gross one. So the ones that get the most attention from people that come to mind.

Berly: 49:17

The last question was, what happens to the prosthetics after wrap. While

Benson Musaev: 49:22

the prosthetics have a shelf life, like most things, if they're not stored properly, they go well almost immediately. Some of the things are light sensitive. Some of the things that we make are made out of biodegradable stuff, like gelatin. Some of it out of silicone, which will never degrade. But silicone is a certain kind of prosthetic that uses a certain kind of encapsulator, or something that keeps a silicone, kind of like a gel, inside of a pocket. So once you've applied that edge of that silicone gel, and then you remove it, that edge is kind of fucked part, my friend. So most of these prosthetics that you see, the only ones that are surviving are they B pieces or the Hero Pieces that we didn't end up. Using that are in a shelf, hermetically sealed somewhere, or just in a pizza box somewhere on a shelf. But most of these prosthetics never survive. Things like, what was that it was earlier on in the supernatural years where Jared was strung up by some hooks. Can't remember exactly what was that was but, but those hooks, like all that stuff, that stuff still lives. Those are not necessarily prosthetics. Those are just pieces that we would attach, like all those things were never blended onto his body. They were harnessed on or strapped on. So those pieces live on almost indefinitely. Because, like I was saying, silicone doesn't really break down, and if we store it properly out of the sun, I still have things that I've made out of silicone that are still around 20 years later, just because I've kept them out of the sun, sealed them properly. But most of these things, trash or display cabinet, they're meant for one time use. We spend all that time making them look pretty for that 3040 seconds or that half an episode, and then they're gone.

Berly: 50:56

But they live on in the show. They live on in the show totally and

Benson Musaev: 50:59

in the memories

Unknown: 51:05

why

Berly: 51:07

me? All right, do you have any other projects you'd like to promote? I couldn't help but notice art the clown on your shelf

Benson Musaev: 51:16

in there. Oh, you'd have, oh, thank you absolutely. He's, actually, he's my newest mask, and he's hot, hot, hot. I just sold one to the Netherlands worldwide. He's sitting behind me right now on the shelf, which is one without teeth, and I offer one with teeth up on the shelf up there.

Berly: 51:35

Yeah, that's the one I spotted earlier. Just

Benson Musaev: 51:37

kind of focused on my whole mask business, the warlock Ronin having a great time. I'm trying to cater towards using my film expertise and try to cater towards performers more. A lot of these sales, a lot of the masks that I'm making are for people who do, like, for instance, the Grinch there, like tree lighting ceremonies, or do horror or like Halloween performances, or, you know, a lot of veterans, and do a lot of volunteer work and stuff. So a lot of them, they love these masks, because it's kind of hard to tell when they're static, but the fact that they're silicone and very rubbery, they move with my face and people enjoying the comfort.

Berly: 52:15

So can anybody go and buy a mask? And if so, where should they go? Absolutely,

Benson Musaev: 52:21

yeah. Just on all social media the warlock Ronan, and I'm also on Etsy. That's where I do a lot of my E commerce marketing right now. Okay, I'm just trying to reach out to a lot of different kind of people.

Berly: 52:31

Yeah, those masks looked phenomenal. Oh, you're very sweet. Thank you. I really

Benson Musaev: 52:35

appreciate and they're all handmade. This is what I love. I don't enjoy the big business of art sometimes. So I really enjoy the small I even barter sometimes and refuse payment. It's just nice to help artists, people that want to create for people instead of create for money.

Berly: 52:50

That's amazing. I appreciate that. Thank you,

LA: 52:55

man. I'm going to go find his website for his masks. I want to

Berly: 52:58

see him whenever he first came on the call, my eyes immediately went to that wall behind him, where there were all these masks. Yeah,

LA: 53:08

can you just go tell us about each one, each

Berly: 53:10

one show and tell? Yeah, I would have asked if we hadn't already gone 30 minutes over estimated time and the internet connectivity issue. Yeah, next time, next time I just, I still can't get over whenever he was like, so you'll call it a splooge. And how did you know that? You must be from the business? I was like, what

LA: 53:31

fish? That was good, though, that I had, I was not expecting that. I was not

Berly: 53:38

like, we didn't know else to describe it. That's too funny. I think he's probably right, though, I imagine we must have missed some splooges here and there. We're getting, we're getting desensitized to them that.

LA: 53:50

And I was gonna say you're kind of picky about which ones you want to do too sometimes, like sometimes it could be it couldn't

Berly: 53:55

be true. I think we've mainly counted based off of his description. We've probably only counted canon splooges, yeah, because he was talking about syringe splooges, I'm like, oh my god, like that. So that's going to be small. Yeah, that'd be a lot. So he's right. If we were doing literally every single splooge, whether it's canon or syringe, it's probably triple what we've done. But I feel like we've just focused on the Canon ones that are big and hearty. Well, we hope you all enjoyed this discussion as much as we did. We are currently trying to schedule our last interview for the gamble era, so follow denim wrapped nightmares on socials. We're on just about everything. To be quite frank, you could go to our lick tree if you want to get links directly, and until next time, cheers, cheers. Thank you for listening to denim wrapped nightmares. Follow

LA: 54:58

us on Twitter or Insta. RAM, leave a review and let us know how we can get involved in the fandom. This

Berly: 55:05

was fun, jerk. It always

LA: 55:07

is, bitch. You.