Transformed Into A War Horse
Actors will gain or lose weight for roles or alter their appearances by period costumes but how do you accurately portray a horse from the 1900’s that looked nothing like most equines do today. I’m Susan Allen when Open Range returns yes…horses in Hollywood do have make-up artists. The long awaited, Steven Spielberg film War Horses Opens December 25 with ten horses playing the lead. Apparently training them to hit their cues and handling the battle scenes wasn’t the biggest obstacle in making the audience feel as though they had been transformed to World War I battlefields, rather it was making the horses appear so. Horses used in movies today are larger and more basically more fit then those in the World War I era because the HSUS monitors movie horses ensuring those casted be healthy and hardy. So to create starving and broken down equines make-up artists worked their magic transforming today’s show horses into yesterdays war horses. by outlining the animals ribs with dark makeup, and brushing coats backwards with hair gell so that they would appear wooly and un kept . The head horse trainer Bobby Lovegren whose credits include SeaBiscuit, The Legand of Zorro and Racing Stripes was able to train the horses in less than three monthsto walk slowly with their heads down like they were sick or hurt. Movie Facts: Most horses used were British, none were harmed in the filming and most of the dead or injured horses depicted are computer generated . For the most difficult stunts in War Horse Lovegren’s used his own 11 year old Thoroughbred Finder
