Corpses, authentic crime-scene photographs and a six-foot tongue. Yup – just another day at the office for Grand Unified Theories’ founder Scott Hamilton. Hamilton, who makes his living by creating eye-catching props and special makeup designs for advertising, television, and film, has surrounded himself with surreal, yet all-too-real-looking cadavers, severed heads and puddles of blood in his work space. Not because he is to be feared, but because it is what he does.

Hamilton, whose eerily realistic forensic and rubber blood work will soon be showcased on upcoming episodes of Law & Order and Blue Murder, has also done his fair share of commercials and print advertising. Running the gut operation basically alone (although four others are on call for the busier times), Hamilton has done work for Sony and Labatt as well as a fair amount of internal and corporate advertising. He has prepared bodies and various body parts for use in training and safety videos for coroners, industrial safety and the military police, and print ads in medical journals.

‘That guy with his gut torn out is for the safe use of a grinding tool,’ he says, pointing to a gnarled corpse, ‘and what happens if you [screw] up.’

Hamilton is also credited with creating a quasi icon for candy lovers: the tongue featured in the Chupa Lollipop ads.

Originally constructed for a print campaign, the gut tongue was a six-foot structure, shielded in half-inch rubber. Chupa is a client of agency Harrod & Mirlin fcb, which contacted Hamilton, first to see if such a structure was possible.

‘One of their writers thought the idea of bringing a tongue to life was a riot – to have it vacuuming and watching tv was a really great idea,’ says Hamilton. ‘It went along, got fleshed out and turned into a series of boards and then at the design stage we talked about how they wanted a very real-looking tongue. That got dumbed down a bit to a cartoon tongue, because a real tongue is disgusting.’

The print ads were photographed by Russel Monk. Hamilton says he is grateful to Monk for having shown his tongue in the best possible light. He also found some ironic humor in the actual shoot day.

‘It was just wild to have all of these talented professionals working with a six-foot tongue,’ he says.

Based on the success of the print ads and the strength of the tongue, Harrod & Mirlin ordered a series of television spots.

‘We retrofitted the original tongue that you see in the print ads,’ says Hamilton. ‘It was gutted and recoated inside and out to make [it] hollow. One of my associates had to climb into it and actually be the tongue for the tv commercials, which is grueling.’

Grueling is one way to put it, but upon reflection, Hamilton offers that being in the tongue is more like ‘being stuck inside of a Gummie Bear.’

He says the ventilation is dreadful and it is extremely tough to breathe in the 80-pound suit. He called on his former assistant Gillian Farnsworth, a five-foot tall, but enduringly tough woman, to be the tongue.

‘This woman went through a nightmare,’ says Hamilton. ‘The only air flow we could allow in some shots was what came up through the bottom. She was astounding. Thank-you Gillian, for being the tongue.’

Two spots,’Bathroom’ and ‘Bedroom,’ were shot in one exhausting 15-hour day. Hamilton says he was very sensitive to the needs of Farnsworth, who could only take 10- and 15-minute breaks dispensed sparingly to keep to the fast-paced shooting schedule.

‘It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that it is a person in there,’ says Hamilton. ‘Once you start dressing someone up, they can start to be treated very much like a prop. We get very defensive about that and are very heavily into performers’ rights. They don’t necessarily get paid any more for being inside of these things. They do it because they love to do it.’

Hamilton also appears to love doing what he does. Well-trained for his particular job (an artist who worked in a morgue for four years), Hamilton realizes that special makeup and props are not the be-all and end-all of production design needs. Therefore, he has fostered alliances with other like-minded companies as a united front ready to serve filmmakers and advertisers from or coming to Toronto to shoot.

‘We are pretty snuggy with five different groups,’ admits Hamilton. ‘We all agree we are stronger together than we are apart. We want filmmakers to know they can get the right people here. We are companies that get along very well, that speak the same language, and can solve virtually any production concern.’•

-www.gutfx.com