Proudly sporting his company t-shirt, Johnathan Simoneaux walks into a hot, humid warehouse filled with various disturbing contraptions and creepy oddities.
Among everything, one particular monster stands out. It’s Audrey II, the vicious plant with fangs from Little Shop of Horrors.
“She’s special,” Kenny Decker said. “It’s how I got my start in effects.”
A real little shop of horrors exists in Baton Rouge. Resting in a modest warehouse on the outskirts of the city, Composite Effects strikes to meet the growing demand of silicon masks for movie sets, LARPers and even fetishists.
In high school, Composite Effects co-founder and artist Kenny Decker participated in the Talented Art Program. His Talented Art teacher, who also taught theatre, saw his passion for effects and put on Little Shop of Horrors as that year’s school play. She allowed Decker to coordinate and design set pieces, which included Audrey II.
Decker met co-founder and artist Wes Branton in an LSU studio art class. The two felt they were not learning enough and decided to teach themselves. From there, the pair conceived the idea of Composite Effects and established the business in 2006.
Continuing through the warehouse, marketing director Simoneaux explains that masks, like onions and ogres, have layers. The layers lie in the process — sophisticated machines and tubes that combine to look like something out of Frankenstein.
First, the Frankenstein-like machine casts the mask by filling silicon into large metal encasings that resemble jello molds.
Once dry, the masks are then de-cast from the encasing manually by an artist. The artist will then trim and patch any defects present after the removal.
Here, the mask begins to take its final shape.
In the next room, the artist applies scars, blood and other gruesome features in a salon environment.
Finally, the hair department steps in, and the mask receives the full treatment of teasing and sewing to ensure maximum hair volume, because no one is going to take a monster with split ends seriously.
Recent projects for Composite Effects include “2 Guns,” “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” and “The Final Destination.” The company also acquires the rights to create masks of Game of Thrones and Marvel’s comic book characters, which excites the employees who are self-described “huge geeks.”
Composite Effects casts itself as a pioneer in the industry with its patent pending technology known as DuraFlex. DuraFlex allows for the masks to endure the constant removal of the masks without sacrificing the flexibility or texture of the masks.
The company expects more growth in the future. What started as two students has since evolved into a company with more than 30 employees. Simoneaux said he hopes the company becomes a household name in effects and will continue to support the burgeoning film industry in Baton Rouge.
