Blood, guts and gore galore: Moulage crew brings horror to life

Photo By Spc. Anthony Zane | Spc. Jose Quinones, a mortuary affairs specialist with the 246th Quartermaster Company of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, uses an airbrush to apply fake blood to a mannequin for the Vibrant Response '14 exercise July 23. Quinones is part of the moulage crew that uses makeup and other special-effects materials to make injuries look real, to add to the realism of VR’14.  

MUSCATATUCK URBAN TRAINING CENTER, IN, UNITED STATES

07.23.2014

Story by Spc. Anthony Zane 

362nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

MUSCATATUCK, Ind. - A post-apocalyptic horror movie wouldn’t be complete without blood, guts and gore, zombies, disaster and buildings turned to rubble. And a field training exercise that focuses on a catastrophic domestic incident is not complete without the same level of gore by use of live participants complete with gushing wounds, broken bones and bloody limbs.

Soldiers from the 246th Army Reserve Quartermaster Company from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, are taking a temporary break from their official job description as mortuary affairs specialists and set up as a moulage crew during Vibrant Response ‘14, July 21 – Aug. 8.

Moulage is a special effects term to describe the creation of molds, which they use to simulate wounds and injuries. The mortuary affairs Soldiers are creating simulated wounds and injuries using makeup and other special effects materials to apply onto human participants and mannequins to enhance the realism of the VR’14 exercise.

“Our mission here is to enhance the training of the individual by creating and producing precise and detailed patient casualty scenarios with medical knowledge and trained artistic abilities,” said Sgt. Carlos Rodriguez, mortuary affairs specialist from the 246th QM Company, out of Aguadilla.

The Soldiers received two days of training to learn how to fabricate moulage.

“We started by learning how to create small wounds, such as scratches, abrasions, bruises, and minor lacerations,” said Rodriguez, a native of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, “and then we continued to learn more complicated injuries, such as puncture wounds, gunshot entry and exit wounds and compound fractures.”

Participants filed into the moulage prep room and were sent to the next available workstation, where they presented an instruction card issued to them by the exercise instructors to inform the moulage crew of the specific injuries they would sustain.

After the moulage medical injury simulation training, the Soldiers are motivated to actually implement that training by working on real people, said Rodriguez.

The moulage crew spent more than three hours preparing around 200 participants and 25 to 30 mannequins for the exercise.

“This is my first time doing moulage and special effects makeup, and it looks pretty real,” said Spc. Adrian Roman, a carpentry and masonry specialist from Moca, Puerto Rico. “Being able to change people’s appearance and make them look like they’re injured is interesting, because you get to use your imagination when creating the wounds.”

According to Roman, currently training to become a mortuary affairs specialist, the experiences the Soldiers in his unit have had provide a unique perspective to the moulage process.

“Most of the people here that are mortuary affairs have seen their fair share of corpses and wounds,” said Roman, “so when they have to create a laceration they can take from their experiences, knowing what real lacerations look like, and they start getting into it and create wounds and injuries that are as realistic as possible.”

Once the synthetic wounds are complete, participants move to the last stage of the makeup process where they receive a quick airbrush spray of fake blood.

“Seeing the people’s reactions to the process is pretty cool,” said Roman. “Some people come in and they don’t seem too interested in being made up, but when they see the finished work, you can see in their expressions that they appreciate what we’ve done, and that is satisfying for me.”

Once the role-players' makeup and simulated wounds are completed and their bodies are bruised and bloody, they are placed strategically throughout the training grounds for the VR’14 exercise.

The training grounds of Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (MUTC) are set up to look as if they were taken from something like a scene from "The Walking Dead" - complete with smoke and fire, crumbled buildings and crashed cars throughout - but nothing makes an exercise more realistic than the moulaged role-players acting the part of real-life people who have survived a catastrophic incident.

Thanks to the Soldiers from the 246th QM Company, that realism of horror is brought to life, helping those local, state and federal responders train in an environment that is as close to a real-life incident as they’ll find, next to the real thing.

• Date Taken: 07.23.2014
• Date Posted: 07.25.2014 13:45
• Story ID: 137317
• Location: MUSCATATUCK URBAN TRAINING CENTER, IN, US
• Hometown: MAYAGUEZ, PR
• Hometown: MOCA, PR