Henry Townsend

Henry Townsend and his headless dummy

Townsend is a self-made special effects artist (a title that’s emblazoned across his artfully blood-splattered business cards). After living in Halifax for six years and taking part in numerous independent and commercial productions, he now finds himself working on Jason Eisener’s next feature Hobo With A Shotgun, the kind of film that is becoming more and more popular in the community in which Townsend makes his living.

 “There’s been a fast uprising of really big-funded special effects stuff,” said Townsend. “I’ve found in that last couple years there’s been a lot of that ‘hey, it would be really awesome to have someone decapitated in my movie’. There’s been a really big horror influence, which is pretty cool.”

Townsend got his start in the business almost by accident – six years ago, upon entering Nova Scotia Community College’s Screen Arts program, he had intentions of doing storyboard and set lighting. Instead, he was constantly put-upon to be the makeup guy, something he couldn’t see an immediate use for.

“But it started to grow on me,” says Townsend. “One project I worked on involved a morgue scene, and I had to make a guy look like a cadaver. The cadaver had to look as though he had died from taking anabolic steroids.

“So what I had to do was make it look like this guy had died from a heart attack. I had to do all kinds of research, and I actually ended up learning a lot from this one project. I learned that he would probably have had bad skin, so I had to give him this bad acne and all that.”

“So after that I thought, ‘you know, this is actually kind of cool’.”

Despite his growing reputation as a special effects artist in the independent film scene, Townsend stresses the importance of having different skills while on set, whether you’re a part of the cast or crew. Knowing a few different skills, he says, always comes in handy in a working atmosphere when the number of people on set tends toward the small side.

“I do lighting and grip, and sometimes I do set decorating - I’ve even done PA work for crowd control and the like. It’s not just one thing. That’s one thing about working on set – it’s best to wear a bunch of different hats.”

Photos by Steven Woodhead