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Interview with Judith Cory (Head of Hair Department) from The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (2003)

Archival interview with Judith Cory from the official Matrix website.

BACKGROUND

MATRIX: How long have you been involved with this project?

JUDITH: I started on the show in February of 2001, so about a year and a half. I was interviewed for the job and was lucky enough to get it. I don’t know exactly how that came about, but sometimes different people recommend or request you, and I went on my interview and am now lucky enough to be here.

MATRIX: With the amount of experience you have, do you still need to bring your portfolio to an interview?

JUDITH: To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t have a portfolio. My agent keeps telling me I need to have one, and I should get one together but I’ve just never done it. It has only been in the last few years that they’ve really been required or that people have used them, so no, I didn’t take a portfolio. You take along a list of movies that you’ve done; and maybe your past record speaks for you.

MATRIX: What is your past record?

JUDITH: I’ve worked in this business for longer than I probably want to say. I have been nominated for two Academy Awards, which was very exciting, for the movie Schindler’s List and Forrest Gump. They were pretty big projects. Schindler’s List kind of speaks for itself; there was a lot of research to get ready for the job, and it was a difficult movie to work on, but as I look back in my years of working in the film business, I think it’s probably the film that most affected me. It is the closest to my heart. Then sometimes you read a script and you think it sounds really fun, and that’s how I felt about Forrest Gump. That’s how I felt about THE MATRIX too, because yeah I was acquainted with THE MATRIX 1, which was an exciting film, so when the idea of working on THE MATRIX 2 & 3 came up it was something that I really wanted to do.

MATRIX: Were you originally a hair stylist in a salon?

JUDITH: I did work in a salon for a little bit, but I went to beauty school knowing what I wanted to do. I grew up my whole life working around the motion picture business because I had family in the business, and as a child I worked as an extra; it was always something that I wanted to do. When I started women didn’t have the choices they have today – it was quite restricted – you could be a script supervisor, or work in costume or hair. Since I had also grown up around hairstyling and hairstyling salons, it was the obvious one for me to go to.

I went to beauty school knowing that I certainly wanted to work in the film business, so the time in the salon was just marking time until I was able to get into it. Salon work is also an experience that everyone needs. I think now for the new hair stylists coming into the industry [in the USA] they require two years salon experience to even get into the union. It’s very important because you learn a lot that you don’t in school.

MATRIX: How has the film industry Hair Department changed over the years?

JUDITH: When I first started working there was still the studio system where every studio had a big Makeup and Hair Department, so we worked out of departments, which was quite different. You always had the support of a big department behind you with wig rooms and supplies; it was always right there for you. When the business swung into the independent field it became different because now we are our own departments and our own backup. I think it requires more work, and maybe it requires more abilities because you don’t have that person on the end of the phone you can call if you get into trouble – you have to take care of everything.

MATRIX: Are you required to be able to style as well as create wigs?

JUDITH: Yes, you certainly have to be able to cut and style and color and work with wigs. You have to be able to do it all, because when you’re out on a location especially you have to be able to perform all those duties when they come up at the last minute. When I first started we always had wig departments with people making wigs for us, and now that’s not particularly the case. On this show I’ve been very fortunate to have a couple of people working with me who have been able to make and repair wigs, because it has been something we’ve had to do a lot on this show. With one actor on this show we had one hundred and sixty doubles for that particular actor, so there was a lot of wig work.

AGENT SMITH’S WIGS

MATRIX: How was the number of wigs decided, and how did you go about sourcing hair for the wigs?

JUDITH: We actually started in the US with twelve stunt doubles for Agent Smith [Hugo Weaving], so we had twelve wigs made for those guys. Then when we came to Australia there was a scene where it was decided that they wanted one hundred dummies, sixty masks, and twenty-five doubles that were real live doubles, so we actually had some wigs made in China. We used one of the wigs that we had used in Oakland for the US shoot as a prototype, and sent it off to China to have one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy-five wigs made.

MATRIX: Were the wigs all made from real hair?

JUDITH: Yes, they are human hair wigs, and they are hair lace wigs, which means that the hair is hand tied on a lace front so it can be glued on someone’s skin. They’re all hand tied handmade wigs. The gentlemen who had to wear them had to shave their heads back at least to the ear because of the hairline on Agent Smith, so we did a lot of haircuts – we had a lot of men running around with half haircuts and shaved heads. We have a motto here in the Hair Department that says, hair grows – money doesn’t, so that’s what we had to tell the guys as they were being paid for us to cut their hair off.

MATRIX: What was the reaction when they were told about their unusual hairstyle for the show?

JUDITH: Most of them knew before they got to us. That was something that when they cast them and talked to them they told them that they were going to have to shave their heads, or part of their head. I think they were all still a little shocked though. They probably sold a lot of beanies in town for people here to wear to cover their heads.

MATRIX: How long does it take to weave a wig?

JUDITH: It probably takes about a week to sit and hand tie and make a wig for someone if you work long hours and all the time. So they had a lot of people working to get all those wigs made for us.

MATRIX: Was any hair punching done directly into the prosthetic heads or masks?

JUDITH: No, we actually used wigs that were glued on them. We thought about punching hair, which takes as long as making a wig because someone has to sit with a needle and individual hairs and punch it into the scalp, so that’s why we ended up going with the wigs. The wigs have been made on a very fine net or lace that you can glue onto the skin and it looks like it’s just growing out of the skin.

MATRIX: How did you go about finding the right color and texture of hair for the wigs?

JUDITH: Texture is the hardest one because it’s never the same texture. Color you can get pretty close to because they actually process the hair – they take hair and bleach it down and then dye it back to the color you need. When we send them a color swatch or a piece of hair to match they can pretty much do that by hair coloring and dying the hair that has been chosen. It’s almost impossible to match people’s texture though – especially with that many wigs. The wigs are all very close on color, but the texture is a little bit different because it was a little harder to match to. For the twelve weeks work we did in the States we had more time to match texture of hair, so the original stunt double wigs were a little closer on texture.

In the end all the Smiths that we did were standing in pouring rain, so our biggest problem was how to keep the hair from going absolutely flat in the pouring rain. I tested about eight or nine different products: we would try it on the wig, and then we’d set the wig in the shower for a couple of hours at the strongest power pressure that we could get in the shower, which was only a slight pressure compared to what they finally used. We finally found that the only product that would stand up under all that water was a product called Estapol, which is a floor varnish. Because we ended up doing all the hair with floor varnish, texture really didn’t matter at a point. When you put the floor varnish on the wig you have to make sure you’ve got the style you want because you’re not going to change it!

MATRIX: Was that a spray?

JUDITH: No, we actually brushed it on then laid the hair down as we worked with it. We would style it and work bit by bit to get the style that we wanted.

MATRIX: Do you recall how many weeks those Agent Smiths were on set for?

JUDITH: They were on set for several weeks, but we did touchup every night because the power of that rain was unbelievable. We had a crew that came in at night and went through all the masks and dummy heads and repaired them. The only way to really repair them was to put more Estapol on it, or to put some mineral spirits or something that softened it a little bit and then we could repair it. It would dry the rest of the night so that in the morning it was ready to go again with the rain.

MATRIX: Whatever made you think of floor varnish?

JUDITH: We had tried so many different things, and even shellac wouldn’t stand up, although on some of the stunt wigs we used shellac, and Estapol was the only thing that worked. It was just one of those things where everybody was standing around making suggestions and someone said, what about floor varnish? And we said let’s try it.

THE TWINS

MATRIX: Back at the beginning of February 2001, what was one of the first things you did as the head of the Hair Department?

JUDITH: Before we even left LA [for Alameda] we were working on getting a look for the Twins: the idea, their dreads and the colors. They had concept drawings, and the Costume Department had already started working on their costumes, so we had an idea what the colors of the costumes were going to be. They were the first major wigs or hairstyles or anything that we did for this show, which was pretty exciting. When we got it all pulled together, the first day they had their costumes on and they did the makeup and they got their hair on, they walked out and we could see it all worked. It’s so exciting when something gets all pulled together with the concept, and with the costume, the makeup, and the hair and it all falls together. I think they’re fabulous looking.

MATRIX: How closely do you work with the Costume Department to create a look?

JUDITH: Very closely. I think it’s a really important thing on any movie that the Hair and Costume and Makeup all work together to get a look, because without one or the other it doesn’t work; so the Costume Designer is usually one of the first people I talk to. They’ve generally been on the show before I have, and the costumes are already lined up, which gives you ideas about what someone should look like because of what their costume looks like. It tells you what kind of a person they are – you can tell a lot by someone’s clothes. Of course you talk to the Directors and find out their concepts as well, initially, and then you talk to the Costume Designer, and then you come up with ideas accordingly.

MATRIX: Is a dreadlock wig difficult to make?

JUDITH: It became a big thing. There’s a lady named Julia Walker who works with Whoopi Goldberg, and she’s a champion at making dreads, so she was one person who worked with us and helped teach us to do it. And then the wigmaker Victoria Wood has made a lot of different ethnic wigs – that’s what she’s most famous for – and she had wigs of different styles to show us, because there are so many styles of dreadlocks. I actually have a book called ‘Dreads’ that has probably one hundred different looks to dreadlocks. So when someone says to you we want the Twins to have dreadlocks, you have to ask what kind of dreadlocks they really want them to have.

It became an issue to work out the size, the length and the color… and then we decided on a color that wasn’t readily available. It was hair that we almost had to manufacture because the color wasn’t available. You couldn’t just go out and buy white nappy hair that would go into dreads the way we wanted it to go into dreads, so it was something that had to be manufactured pretty much for the show.

MATRIX: Do the Twins have multiple wigs?

JUDITH: We actually had two for each, Adrian and Neil [Rayment], and then we had stunt doubles for each of them that had a wig, and then we had doubles for the doubles. In other words, there were days on Second Unit where they would have to do a driving shot, and if the stunt doubles weren’t available to do it they’d bring in other stuntmen. So there are eight Twin wigs altogether.

MATRIX: How are they cared for when they’re off set?

JUDITH: When the Twins were standing around, everyone wanted to touch the dreadlocks… but they come apart, so we had to tell them not to let anybody touch their hair. You have to roll each dread and keep it rolled in tight, and as people start running their hands down the dreads they’d pull the dreads out. Every night we’d go through them, and re-roll the dreads to keep them tight and looking like they were supposed to look. There was a lot of upkeep for those wigs.

MATRIX: When the Twins’ look was solidified, were they dressed up and presented to the Directors?

JUDITH: Absolutely. We didn’t show them anything until everything was ready to show them. They didn’t see the wigs until the makeup was on, and we didn’t see the makeup and wigs together until we did everything together all in one day.

THE LOOK OF ZION

MATRIX: How is a script broken down from the Hair Department’s point of view?

JUDITH: In both movies – RELOADED & REVOLUTIONS – this was pretty easy because every character has two or three looks and they don’t vary much. I don’t know where it came about, but sometime very early on it was decided that the people in the Matrix just don’t get messed up – the programs especially. So we have people fighting on the Freeway and jumping from trucks and cars, and their hair doesn’t blow or get messed up. We have Trinity riding a motorcycle at ninety miles an hour and her hair doesn’t get messed up. So it became a big thing to work out how we were going to keep people’s hair from blowing around and moving. I think that was a choice of Larry and Andy’s.

Continuity-wise for us, for scenes in the Matrix we were pretty lucky because everyone stayed perfect, no one had to get messed up. Even in the rain Agent Smith doesn’t get messed up. Keanu [Reeves, Neo] does a bit, but not badly: the rain is pouring on him and his hair starts coming loose, but it’s never a matter of having to match back into it like on another film where you’d have to keep track of every little bit, because we always went back to the start.

In the Nebuchadnezzar or Zion it’s a little different because they don’t have that quality, so they are more messed up, but they’re more messed up to begin with. Those were the different looks: we had a Matrix look for everyone, and we had what we called a Neb or Zion look. The Neb look is maybe a little grungier than Zion, but basically they’re both pretty natural looks as opposed to the Matrix look, which is really slick.

MATRIX: Were you part of creating the Zion look?

JUDITH: Yes, we started creating it in Alameda where we started shooting the Zion Temple scenes. It’s interesting because after you read the script, or if you’ve seen the movies over and over like most of us have, you know that there are no hair dryers and curlers there in Zion, although they do have the ability to cut their hair because they have a lot of guys with really short hair.

We originally started trying to think of hairstyles that could be done without artificial means, and asking ourselves what people would do: would they plait their hair or braid their hair, how would they control their hair? That’s basically how we started, we just wanted a natural easy look. And I think we accomplished that. We have a lot of dreads; they seem to be very popular in Zion, and that would be a natural way for people to wear their hair at that point. We’re not really saying what year it is or what has been the time span; we all have different theories about that. Also, we started out with no facial hair, and then we decided as we got on to start having facial hair because some people just looked better, or their characters called for it.

MATRIX: Where are all the razors coming from; how are they shaving?

JUDITH: They have a lot of metal there, so I think that they’ve worked it out with metal; they’re pretty inventive. One thing we’ve been adding is ornaments in their hair, and they had to be things that they could have made or used. Anything we used in their hair had to come from underground, like rocks and stones, and little hairpins. We were really careful not to use things like feathers because there really are no birds, and there are no plants – although they do have mushrooms. We would ask ourselves where things would have come from, and think of different reasons why things are a particular way. We all create backstories to explain why we did something and what is going on.

MATRIX: How daunting was the prospect of 900 hairstyles in one morning for all the Zion extras?

JUDITH: We actually did what we call pre-fits. As the Wardrobe Department was fitting everyone (which took about a month) we saw every extra with their costume on to try and decide what we would do on the day with them. We made notes so anybody could do their style, or if there was some reason we needed to change something, at least that gave us the time to do that. We had quite an extensive pre-fit for the Zion Temple scenes, going through the people, then going through the pictures, and working out how they should look, then we passed those notes out on the day.

MATRIX: Do you remember how many stylists were in on the Zion Temple filming days?

JUDITH: I think we only had about fifteen hairstylists. It took quite a while – several hours – to get everyone ready.

MATRIX: One extra had long black hair that was dyed red at the ends and you sprayed that out; why?

JUDITH: We really tried not to have blonde streaks or artificial bright colors in anyone’s hair because we figure they really don’t have the means to do that in Zion. In the Matrix that kind of thing was okay, although in the Matrix you try and stay fairly neat and tailored. But in Zion it was just not possible to do, so anybody who had blonde or blue streaks we would color them out with either color hairspray or color mousses. In the pre-fits we warned people that they couldn’t have that kind of thing and asked them do something about it for us. It was the same with bleached blonde hair – we had very few blondes in the movie, and most of them are natural-looking blondes.

MATRIX: There weren’t any redheads either.

JUDITH: Nurse Maggie [Essie Davis] on the Mjolnir ship had strawberry-blonde hair, and I was really pleased about that. She actually had really blonde hair and we colored it down to that color to make it look a little more natural. She was a fun character.

MATRIX: Part of the Zion Temple scene was filmed in the USA and part in Australia; how did you address the continuity on that with it being shot months apart with different extras?

JUDITH: Luckily we had a lot of good continuity pictures that the people I had helping me here did a beautiful job of matching into what we had done before. Basically the look was established there, and the hairstylists in Australia had to carry on with that look. They’ve done a beautiful job of matching right in, and when you’re watching the film I don’t think you could ever say what was filmed at a different time or anything. It all blends together, and that’s one of the things you strive to do, and what continuity photos are for.

MATRIX: Do you take your own continuity photos, or use those from the Continuity Department?

JUDITH: I think every department takes their own continuity photos, and we also keep notes on every character as to what products we used, how long their hair is, and what was used to cut it. We keep those notes so we can pick up and redo our character right. Then there is the Script Supervisor who also keeps very good continuity notes – Victoria [Sullivan] does a tremendous job. It’s such a hard job – probably the hardest job on the movie is keeping track of everything. I have a hard enough time keeping track of the hair and she has to keep track of everything; I don’t know how she does it, particularly on a film this long.

That’s another thing – people who do a three month film get tired of wearing their hair the same, and here we have actors who have had to do this for a year-and-a-half, and they’re all really anxious to get their hair cut, or to change to a different color. So far we’ve hung in there and it’s all gone pretty well, I haven’t had too many instances where someone has gone away for a month and come back with a totally different look. The cast have all been very good.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

MATRIX: What kind of direction did you get for the overall look of the Hel Night Club scenes?

JUDITH: They pretty much let us go wild and do what we wanted with that. The Hel Club was fun because we had to be pretty tame the rest of the time, but we could go crazy with that and with the Hel Coat Check. We could really use our imaginations in those scenes. We basically went with the costumes, and the wilder the better.

MATRIX: How did you begin with Persephone?

JUDITH: She’s an interesting lady, Persephone, and of course we had a beautiful actress,Monica Bellucci. How could you go wrong with anything you did with her? At first there were some questions about whether her hair could touch her costumes because the rubber of the beige dress was powdered, so any place that there was product on her hair it would take the powder off. Then they took away the powder and made it shiny and slippery, so her hair was able to be down and lay on her shoulders.

With Persephone we had thought we would have to do everything as up-dos to keep her hair off the costume. There again we worked with the Costume Department to try and figure out something that works for both of you. I think she has such beautiful hair and I loved it down, although it was good up too, which is what we did with the red dress for the Hel Club.

MATRIX: Had you always planned to do knots for Niobe – Jada Pinkett Smith?

JUDITH: We liked the knots; they’re very ethnic and very slick. We figured from there we could go down with her for her other looks, so that was fun to make her so different out there in the Matrix. The knots were Jada’s idea, she asked what we thought of them, and the Brothers had also mentioned them, so that’s why we went with them.

MATRIX: Is it standard that an actor has input into their hairstyle?

JUDITH: I think they think about it – when you read the script you picture things in your mind. If you know who the actor or actress is playing the part when you’re reading it, then it helps you picture what you might do with it. It was interesting too that Andy and Larry had ideas as well. We knew we wanted something really slick for the Matrix for Niobe, and I had several pictures of things I had thought up and different ideas for her, and it just kind of evolved. Somebody early on had done concept drawings of what Niobe would look like, and one of the concept drawings I saw had Zulu knots in it. So as it came together we all decided that, that might be something to try.

MATRIX: Do you consciously try and make each character very different?

JUDITH: Yes, you try to do that. One of the hardest things I find about the hairstyles of the characters in this film was (and it was something I brought up right away), no matter what we did with different looks for either Zion or the Matrix, we had to do it with the same haircut. In the first MATRIX at the end they were able to shave Keanu’s head – it was planned that way – whereas on these two films we were going to bounce back and forth all the time between the Neb and the Matrix and the Zion, so we could never depart. It would have been nice to have had someone’s hair a little longer, or a little shorter, or something drastically different.

I mentioned wigs at the beginning of the production, and whether we wanted to get into wigs with any of the principals so we could have a totally different look, but it didn’t seem to be an option at the beginning of the film. So then for every character, whether it be Carrie-Anne [Moss, Trinity] or Keanu or whoever, both looks had to be done with the same haircut. That restricted us as to what we wanted to do with any character if they were going to go from one place to another.

MATRIX: Did that kind of restriction make you feel more creative or less creative?

JUDITH: Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t think either way would’ve actually been more or less creative, but it certainly did make us think. You had to ask yourself what we could do to make this work and that work at the same time. There are times when I thought that maybe Keanu’s hair was too neat because he’d just had a haircut for the Matrix the day before and now we were doing the Neb, but I think it works. I will reserve that until I see both films together, which I haven’t seen yet.

MATRIX: For characters who were established in the first film, what sort of considerations were carried on to the sequels?

JUDITH: Agent Smith of course remains Agent Smith. We even patterned all the new Agents, even though they’re upgrades, after Agent Smith, so that was pretty much set. With Carrie-Anne we wanted to have her hair a little longer in the Neb than it was in the first picture, so we did change her hairstyle slightly. It’s a little longer and more controlled. My idea – although I don’t know who agrees with me here – was that all of the characters are more controlled than they were in the first film. They’re a little beyond the point they were in in the first film, they’re more perfected and they understand their job more.

Neo’s cassock explains a much more perfect character, I guess. There’s a different feel to him; he’s more in control. And the same with Trinity; I think she’s more in control. Morpheus [Laurence Fishburne] remains Morpheus. We also have Harold [Perrineau, Link] who is new in this show. Harold came to us with his dreads and they’re beautiful and he looks fabulous in them, so how could you change that? But basically the idea was to make everyone work in both aspects – in the ships and Zion, or out in the Matrix – and I hope we have accomplished that.

MATRIX: Have their been any extreme changes in hair from the natural state to the character state?

JUDITH: Rachel Blackman who plays Charra came to us a few months ago with hair on her shoulders. They’ve been training her, and she has been working out, so we have been talking about her ‘do, and all of a sudden it was decided that her hair was going to be cut really short. I started cutting it short, and it got shorter and shorter, and every time we’d go to show Andy and Larry they would ask for it to be a little shorter. So this poor girl who had hair on her shoulders is now running around town with what we call a number 2 blade haircut. She’s totally faded up on the sides and she has quarter inch hair on top. It’s a really tough one for her to feel comfortable in… we’ve done a lot of people who wear hats around town. The hairstyle made quite a change in her character, and she’s a beautiful girl with a great face and great eyes, so it looks good on her, but it’s tough to make that big a change in yourself.

I go to Andy and Larry to ask exactly what they want because I don’t really know. There have only been a couple of characters where I’ve made the decision myself to do something really different; we generally talk it over. I have learned from other directors that a lot of times they’ll cast the people they want to see, so you don’t really want to change them, whereas at other times they cast somebody and have in their mind a totally different looking character from the person that has the job. The Trainman is an example of that: we have Bruce [Spence] with short hair, and they asked to see the Trainman with really long hair. I cut hair slowly because if you cut it all off it’s very hard to put back, so we go bit by bit by bit on most of the characters and work into the looks of the short haircuts.

MATRIX: When you first read the scripts did particular characters speak to you with their hairstyle?

JUDITH: No, this is not like a period film, or a film where you’re thinking I have to do this and this because I have to worry about something. But once I saw a costume then it kind of came to me. Sometimes I make up my mind what somebody should look like and it’s totally different from what anybody else thinks they should look like, or when you see the costume what I had in mind wouldn’t work with the costume.

MATRIX: How much time do you spend on set?

JUDITH: I spend a lot of time on set; I am a behind-the-camera hairstylist because I like to watch and be on set with my actors, so I’m very seldom in the department. It’s important to me to make sure everything works for the camera. Sometimes I cannot do an actor’s hair because I need to be on set, that’s why our stylists are able to do different characters, although you do try and match up the hairstylist and the actor or actress and find people that get along well together.

MATRIX: For stunts did you have to make particular allowances, such as in the Hel Coat Check when they were all upside down?

JUDITH: In the Hel Coat Check their hair did what it did. But with our Agents and people like that we have to keep it perfect: when they’re fighting, when they’re sweating and when they’re really hot, it has to stay. So you have to be there with them on set, and you are literally on top of them keeping everything looking right between every take.

MATRIX: Have you worked much with the Visual Effects Department?

JUDITH: We’ve given them wigs to work with, where they take the wig on the block and they sculpt from that, so we have worked together in that sense on that. And then they take lots of photographs of the actors in all different configurations and done molding from wigs and things that we have.

THE LAST WORD

MATRIX: What has been the most challenging part of the last year-and-a-half for you?

JUDITH: Being away from home. The movie is fun, and working on the film is great, so I think the hardest part is being away from home and away from your family. There is a large amount of people on the crew who have been away from their families for over a year now, so we’re all looking forward to going home. It has been a great experience though.

MATRIX: How many hair stylists did you have working with you?

JUDITH: I had three regular staff who were pretty much with me all the time in Alameda, because we had two units. I had someone on Second Unit, and I had someone working with me on First Unit. Then for big periods of time like when we did the Burly Brawl and some of the fights with all the doubles, I had four other hairdressers that worked with us besides the other three. So there were about seven people for a good part of the time in Alameda on the show.

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Here in Australia I’ve had four regular staff with me, and at different times we hire what they call casuals. Some of them have worked a lot on this show and then some of them have only worked a few days when we’ve had big, big calls.

MATRIX: What do you look for when you hire somebody?

JUDITH: We’ve been together a long time on this production, so I think you have to hire personalities. Aside from their abilities you have to hire people that you know are going to be able to get along with the actors and get along with the staff for that long a period. It’s a long time to work together, because in the motion picture business we’re geared to work three or four or five months and then we’re off and doing something different, so to be this long on one project is different for all of us.

Then you look for people who can do wig work, who can do haircutting and hair coloring and all the different things you have to do. A lot of shows send people out to have hair colored, but I prefer to do it in-house where we have control. Especially since it’s such a long period of time to keep the continuity and to keep the colors the same. It’s the same with haircuts – we may do haircuts every week because we only cut a little bit so that we never see a jump in length – so you need haircutters. We have a really well-rounded staff here in Australia, we’re pretty capable of doing everything.

MATRIX: How much are you looking forward to seeing everything on film?

JUDITH: I’m so excited about it; I can’t wait. They showed a bit at Christmas time [2001] for the crew, which was very exciting. I walked out of the theatre, it was hard to get my breath. It really gave the crew a boost too because you do kind of lose it on such a long show, and everybody gets lethargic. It’ll be exciting for everyone that has worked on it as well, because there are so many aspects we don’t see, like the visual effects. We have an idea what it’s about, but not really, so when it’s put together with all that you just go wow!

MATRIX: Thanks very much Judy.

Interview by REDPILL

July 2002

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