You probably don’t know their names or the name of their company, but there’s no doubt you’ve seen movies featuring the incredible work of Todd Tucker, Harvey Lowry, Greg Cannom, and the other creative artists at Drac Studios. The Academy Award-winning special effects company is responsible for changing Gary Oldman into Dracula, turning Robin Williams into a grandmotherly matron, aging Russell Crowe into a senior citizen, and changing the Wayans Brothers into hot white woman.

And their work will soon be seen in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as well as Watchmen, the big screen adaption of the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

In addition to turning out groundbreaking special effects makeup, animatronics, robotics, and creatures for a wide variety of films, the Drac Studios team has formed its own production company. The new company, Drac Productions, opens up opportunities for Tucker, Lowry and Cannom to develop their own films, with the first production under the new banner being Trailer Park of Terror which premiered to an overflowing audience at Slamdance.

Interview with Todd Tucker and Harvey Lowry

Why did you decide to move forward and expand the company into a production studio?

Harvey Lowry: “It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for many, many years, and Todd and I just finally got the initiative and decided to go for it.”

Todd Tucker: “Plus it also helped that the studio being what we are, being able to provide studio-level makeup effects and creatures and all that to the projects that we would produce and I would direct, gives us a little bit of clout outside the normal guy to make really, really good product with a minimal amount of money.”

So does that mean we won’t ever see a film from your studio that’s just a straight drama with no effects?

Todd Tucker: “You know, you might down the road but to be honest with you, we’re not really interested in that, oddly enough. I mean, right now we’ve got a whole slate of family films and fantasy films and horror films, and that’s kind of what we’re into. Luckily that’s what we’re into because then we can bring a lot to the board.”

Are these film projects people have approached you with over the years, and it’s just that now the timing is right?

Todd Tucker: “When we first opened the production company version of Drac we partnered up with a company called Bogner Entertainment and did a film called Trailer Park of Terror, a horror comedy. Harvey produced it, I second unit directed all the creature effects and we produced it in-house. We did the whole production for the most part out of our shop, and that kind of started the ball rolling. But that was a project that somebody brought to us.

Then we also did a project with the same company earlier this year, which is a family film called Soccer Mom and it’s kind of like a Mrs. Doubtfire-type movie. It’s the same thing. I second unit directed and Harvey produced it, so that was again another project that somebody brought to us. This summer [we] have like three projects - it’s going to be one of the three - that would be completely our first in-house project that no one else was involved. I would be fully directing it; Harvey would be executive producing it. It would be completely in-house and finally give us everything we need creatively and financially to do a really, really high budget-looking fantasy film on a relatively small budget.”

How did you two get into business together?

Harvey Lowry: “We started working for the same company about 15 years ago and just decided a few years ago to branch out on our own and formed our own company.”

Todd Tucker: “The great thing was is that our other partner who is Greg Cannom, who is like a legendary makeup effects artist that I used to read about when I was a kid, Greg is…we kind of fill three different shoes, which is Greg is the makeup effects artist, I came in when I first started here as an artist before I became a business guy and I did all the makeup effects and kind learned and built my own credibility, and then Harvey came in as the businessman producer. So there’s a really good balance between the three of us as the owners to fill the spots to not only be able to facilitate all the studio stuff, but then also the production side.”

You’re actually hands-on creating and developing different effects. How do you balance that with the business side of your work?

Todd Tucker: “Well, it’s two different things because you’ve got to sit there and creatively figure it out. What will happen is like a studio film will come to us and they’ll give us a script and we will creatively come up with the way to build it and the look and the artistic feeling of everything, but then it all comes down to, ‘What’s that going to cost?’ So that’s where like I will sit down with the artist and we’ll sit there and creatively come up with a blueprint of how to do the film and the look of what the stuff will be. And we’ll do the designs or sculptures to present to the producers and the director. Then Harvey will sit down and put the numbers next to the amount of labor, and kind of figure out the whole strategic breakdown financially. Then we submit the budget and then get the show and then the actors come in, we start doing headcap and go to town.”

You recently worked on Watchmen.

Todd Tucker: “Yeah, we just finished that.”

With that film in particular where you have source material that’s so beautifully drawn, do you stick to that source material?

Harvey Lowry: “Yes. Zack [Snyder], the director, stuck to the scripts, the original graphic novel, to the tee. Anytime we had any kind of design question or how is a scene going to be shot, his answer was always to refer to the graphic novel.”

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