Cedar Rapids makeup artist immersed in gore galore

ATKINS — Zombies and monsters sit at the bar, watching Iowa State’s Oct. 23 nail-biter football game with Oklahoma State. Swamp things sit by themselves in a corner. A ghostly tween rattles her chain as she drags a severed head across the concrete floor.

It’s just another Saturday night at Scream Acres, the Halloween portion of Bloomsbury Farm, sporting an outdoor haunted maze and three indoor sites: 3D Sinister Silo carnival, Cell Block Z full of zombies, and The Slaughterhouse, where its prisoners meet gruesome fates.

This year’s hauntings end Saturday, but the chance to scare the yell out of paying victims keeps cast and crew members coming back for more, year after year.

Like Brent Edgett, 37, of Cedar Rapids, who makes sure everything’s set so the 50 to 70 cast members will look their worst to do their best each Friday and Saturday night in October.

Seven years into this gig, he arrives between 2 and 3 p.m. to set up the seven stations where with the flick of a wrist or an airbrush, makeup artists will transform ordinary humans into extraordinary creatures of the night.

“I make a plan and a layout, then once everyone shows up, I just make sure they’re ready to go, and we start painting,” he said.

The artists, including Edgett, have little time to work their magic on each actor before the 7 p.m. showtime, so airbrushes and prosthetic transfers — like zombie bites — take some of the intensity out of the labor. But it’s still pretty intense, even when those gathered occasionally bust a move to the rock soundtrack thumping in the background.

At a glance

See more of Brent Edgett’s makeup work through his Instagram account, @goregalor

“In the last few years I’ve gotten to know the airbrush pretty well,” Edgett said. “That has really come onboard just for time sake. We really only get half an hour or less to paint these actors, so when the airbrush came along, then stencil work, it definitely speeds up the process.”

He likes digging into the fine detail work, so actors are sent to him for everything from fancy witch markings to zombie gore. (Even his Instagram account is @goregalor).

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Character work

On a Saturday night just screaming for outdoor jump-scares, Raemi Satkamp, 42, of Cedar Rapids, sat in Edgett’s chair to have fine lines added to her black-and-white motif for her witch character, the Dark Gaia. After finishing her face and neck, Edgett smudged her knuckles, then airbrushed a topcoat of white over her hands.

When darkness enveloped the land, she would be ready to “entertain” people waiting in line for the haunts.

“I tell people I watched them sleep last night,” she said with glee. She also enjoys punctuating her scare by slamming down her staff — or roaming the park, hiding in the corn or blending in with the trees.

Next up was Lance Foight, 36, of Cedar Rapids, the lead zombie for Cell Block Z. His sheriff’s shirt already was splattered with blood. Now he was ready for his close-up in Edgett’s chair.

Edgett handed over a zombie bite 3D transfer he had painstakingly fashioned from a mold, and instructed Foight to hold it on his neck until it stuck on good and tight. After that, Edgett painted on several shades of blood red, then added spidery burst veins radiating up Foight’s neck and onto his face.

“I still use watercolors with a paint brush or makeup brushes, then go in for the fine detail to really make things pop,” Edgett said.

His arsenal includes water-based paint pots for brush work, alcohol-based liquid paint for airbrushing, prosthetic transfers, and various sizes and types of sponges for blending or stippling to create patterns.

After just a short time in Edgett’s chair, Foight was ready to execute jump-scares and chase, growl and scream at visitors — all of which gets his blood pumping.

“I’m a vicious warden who became a zombie — a very angry zombie,” he said, with his contact lenses glowing an eerie amber.

That’s all music to Edgett’s ears.

“I like putting a lot of realism into my characters,” he said. “I don’t know if you can see it out in the dark, but it makes me feel good to make them look as best they can, so that they can pull off their best performance out there, knowing they have the looks to back it up.”

Edgett’s artistry doesn’t end with the chair. He turns his wizardry inward to create his own character and join the others in the frightening fun. Most often, he portrays Michael Myers from the original 1978 “Halloween” slasher film.

“My height is an advantage and really sells it,” the 6-foot-4-inch artist/actor said.

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Background

His fascination with art began early.

“As a kid, I used to draw all the time, and it was always character art, heroes or caricatures of people,” he said. “I guess that turned into creating costumes, by creating a real-life version of something.”

Growing up, he dressed in all manner of trick-or-treat attire, including Jim Carrey’s outlandish character in “The Mask.” However, friends have said they remember Edgett dressing like Jason Voorhees from the “Friday the 13th” film franchise.

Then he hit that age where he was too old for trick-or-treating, so he “fell out of Halloween” until being invited to a party as an adult. A horror movie fan, he bought an inexpensive “Jason” outfit. When he realized he was scaring people, he decided he could make a much better costume “and really scare people.”

Then he picked up a paint brush, dabbled in some Halloween makeup kits, and ended up teaching himself the advanced artistry by watching YouTube tutorials.

“I have a knack for it,” he said, “so I just want to stick with it — do what you’re good at. This is definitely something that I thrive in.”

The scare gene hasn’t trickled down to his 15-year-old daughter. He said she “gets a little creeped out” by her father’s sideline.

By day, he works in landscaping. He’s also worked in restaurants and spent five years building houses. Those are his day jobs. It’s his night job that fuels his inner fire.

“My passion is doing this kind of work,” he said of his haunted manor.

With the uptick in zombie movies and the horror genre in general, his artistry isn’t confined to Halloween.

He’s been branching out into the movie makeup, props and costume realm, working on independent and fan films in Seattle. He’s been called back for more short shoots in that area, and would like to expand those horizons back home, too.

“I heard about those kind of things, and I’ve been trying to get my name out there forever,” he said of the local scene. “I’m not the one people ask for first. These things just kinda go right under my radar and I don’t hear of them ‘til last minute.

“Basically, if anything has happened in October for the last seven years, I just haven’t been available. Bloomsbury in Atkins has been really good to me, so I really like to help them out. Plus, it’s such passionate work, I don’t ever think to do anything else. I just think, ‘All right, this is haunt season, this is what I’m doing.’ ”

Halloween makeup tips from the expert

Now that Halloween is upon us, he said the easiest way to make yourself look creepy in a dark setting is to have a bright face with dark features, so they’ll stand out.

For costumes, he advises looking in your closet.

“Find old clothing that you don’t care about anymore, and cut them up, tear them up a little bit,” he said. “Just looking unkempt and (having) large features — that’s just something that makes people feel uneasy.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com