Romaire marks 25 years in his journey to special FX mastery
On Thanksgiving night, fireworks lit the sky above the Spirit of Morgan City shrimp boat. Santa stood in the bow, drawn by white alligators with crabs on their heads and with an eerie swamp scene in the stern.
This year was the eighth since Morgan City native Lee Romaire’s Christmas tableau became part of the city’s holiday celebration. it also marked the 25th anniversary of Romaire Studios Inc., the Los Angeles operation where he and his team do sculpting, makeup and animatronics work for movies, TV and, especially, for theme parks.
Romaire’s work can be seen in director Guillermo del Torro’s “Frankenstein” on Netflix.
Now 59, Romaire was born in Morgan City in 1966. At age 6, he visited the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. It wouldn’t be his last connection with Disney.
Romaire grew up among lovers of the outdoors, and that meant he was exposed to taxidermy. He went with his family to Harbor Seafood, which had many mounted trophies. ”Every time I went there I couldn’t stay in my seat,” he said in a phone interview.
An employee of his father taught Romaire how to mount a crawfish. In high school, he had his own small taxidermy business.
Romaire had also enjoy movies like “King Kong” – the 1930s and 1970s versions – and the work of Ray Harryhausen, who perfected stop-motion animation in films including “Jason and the Argonauts.”
But his adult life had more to do with business than movie fantasy. After graduating from Central Catholic, Romaire studied advertising and marketing at LSU and moved to New York for a year before coming back to New Orleans as a freelance copywriter and creative director.
He grew disillusioned with the work.
Then, picking up a magazine for makeup artists, he found an ad for a trade show in Los Angeles. Off he went.
There he met Dick Smith, who did makeup for Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” and Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”
Romaire took Smith’s course and finished in 18 months. Returning to Louisiana, he gave up his advertising clients and began work that included sculpting giant Mardi Gras props. He built a portfolio.
In 2000, he moved to Los Angeles and incorporated Romaire Studios Inc.
With Smith’s help, “I was introduced to the very top make-up studios in Hollywood. Within a month I had a job at Steve Johnson’s famous cutting edge XFX. …,” Romaire said in a biography. He worked on “The Tick,” “Rose Red” and “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys,” and “then on to Jim Henson’s creature shop (“Stuart Little 2,” “Snow Dogs,” “The Country Bears,” “Scooby Doo”) and Kevin Yagher’s “Windtalkers” and “Master of Disguise.”
While at Todd Master’s Master’s FX, Romaire won an Emmy Award for his sculpting on an episode of HBO’s “Six Feet Under.”
In 2003, he got his own business going with a physical location. But the work was slow.
Then he re-connected with Disney.
“Really early on, I got involved with Disney Imagineering, and through a friend, got asked to work on the new electric head program,” Romaire wrote. “Disney was just starting to use electronically activated figures, as opposed to hydraulics or pneumatics.
“Several different iterations of humans, and then the opportunity arose that they wanted me to sculpt the new Abraham Lincoln head for Disneyland. I asked if I could do the complete finish -- paint, hands hair, and my wish was granted. I was first sculptor outside of the Disney company to sculpt a President for them.
“From there, I realized that Disney needed the expertise that I learned from the movie business. Imagineering and Disney theme parks sprung from their movie business, but there was a newer, more realistic, higher quality level of work being done in the movie special FX world, and I helped bring that to the theme park world.”
Romaire also decided to go to a new level with his work.
“We make a bunch of talking Olaf heads for the Olaf costumes at Walt Disney world, and we learned that we had to not just design inventive mechanically, but It had to be engineered to last,” Romaire wrote. “So we created an engineering department.”
Universal turned to Romaire, and his work on “The Secret Life of Pets” won a THEA award for themed entertainment. His team created 22 characters for Universal Studios’ epic Universe and won four THEAs.
Other accomplishments:
--His studio has 20 core employees and another 50 freelancers.
--The studio has been awarded multiple patents for our work over the years.
--Romaire created a mechanical baby for Frank Ocean to walk down the red carpet at the Met Gala.
--The studio created the Tactisquatch mascot for Black Rifle coffee.
--The studio won a THEA award for work on the Star Wars Box Droids at Disneyland.
--Romaire created six character suits with animatric faces based on “Five Nights at Freddy’s” characters for famous Youtuber Socks for 1. These were created in a record eight weeks. The video as garnered 46 million views so far, probably surpassing the movie.
--The studio helped in refurbish the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland, the very first audio- animatronic show created by Walt Disney.
Meanwhile, people, sometimes people from other countries, stay interested in his Morgan City Christmas display. The while alligators show up in social media memes.
“People know about it,” Romaire said, “and they talk about it online.”