The team behind the hairstyles Effie talk about filming and more!

03/02/2014 22:02

Ann Bray thought it was a joke at first when "Catching Fire" hair department head Linda D. Flowers contacted her about working on the sequel to the 2012 sci-fi adventure blockbuster "Hunger Games."

"I said, 'Come on," Bray says. On a recent afternoon, she's seated near a row of Belvedere chairs inside Huntsville salon The Masters, which she opened in 1974.

"And they said, 'We're serious.' So I talked with them about it. They sent me a story board of what they wanted to do, and I think all but three things were photos they'd collected of mine throughout the magazines. It was really wild. That was really how it came about, through this one photo, because this rose went viral."

Ah yes, the rose.

An image of Bray's "golden rose" hair design, shot during a session with photographer Luis Alvarez, had caught Flowers' eye. Actress Elizabeth Banks can be seen wearing the post-modern style in her role as larger-than-life character Effie Trinket, in "Catching Fire."

The otherworldly hairdo is aptly named. While she fashioned a golden rose wig for "Catching Fire," the style captured in the Alvarez photo featured a model's actual hair. "It takes a long time," Bray says of that original 'do. "I can do the actual rose easily in an hour, but to do all the prep work on it you're talking a couple of weeks because the hair has to be processed a certain way. It has to be built a certain way."

On the set

Asked what it was like to work so closely with a star of Banks' wattage, Bray fondly recalls Banks hanging out during lunch, "standing in line with the crew and wearing  her little cut-off jeans with holes in them and her little tied-up shirt."

Then Banks sat down for lunch with Bray and Bray's daughter Shelby Zimmerman, who also worked on the "Catching Fire" hairstylist team.  "We had a good ol' time. She's very, very nice and outgoing," Bray says. Banks signed the pink-pages of an autograph book Bray brought to the set "Ann, stay happy. You rock. XOXO Elizabeth Banks Effie".

Bray keeps the autograph book in a clear case behind The Masters receptionist desk. The case also houses the "golden rose" wig used in the film. Those are pretty much the only keepsakes she has from working on "Catching Fire," the shooting of which Bray describes as "very secret' before recalling a scenario in which a Lionsgate helicopter was used to chase off a paparazzi helicopter hovering over leading lady Jennifer Lawrence.

Lawrence's inscription in Bray's souvenir book is a little more business-like, although her bubbly-shaped handwriting is very reminiscent of an average schoolgirl's yearbook scribble. Bray remembers Lawrence being "very wonderful, beautiful and sweet" on-set. "One day there was an older car that pulled up (on set), not a raggedy car but nothing you expect a car to be in, and it was Jennifer. So they could take her back and forth from the hotel without being seen."

While Bray did not work directly on Lawrence's hair, they would be in the same trailer with the "Catching Fire" star as her look was being prepped.

In addition to being Bray's daughter, Shelby Zimmerman is The Masters' current artistic director and an owner. (The salon is located in the Main Street South shopping center, 7500 Memorial Pkwy. S.W.) She fondly recalls her mom standing next to and talking with actor Donald Sutherland on the "Catching Fire" set, and not realizing who she was chatting with the movie's evil antagonist "President Snow."

 "The hair was really fun - to get a chance to do all this arty hair," Zimmerman says. Her hair is a fire-hued shade of red and she's holding a black plastic comb.  

"If someone had their hair done the day before, they kept a little picture and had it in a file and they brought the picture back to you and you're supposed redo whatever was done the day before, because it may be a different stylist. Some of those girls didn't like what they wore the day before and they tried to sneak in and do something really different, and they got busted a few times, some of the extras."

Zimmerman was also fascinated with the set design, calling the carpenters that worked on the film "awesome."

Hairdo prelude

Bray's work on "Catching Fire" actually began a few months before film began shooting. She was flown out to Los Angeles to instruct other hairstylists on the avant-garde looks for the film and also to lead advance preparation of hairpieces. Bray estimates the "Catching Fire" hairstylists used about 500 wigs and hairpieces on the movie, most of which was filmed in Atlanta, except for the jungle scenes which were shot in Hawaii.

Bray worked exclusively in Atlanta, where she could be on-set for a couple weeks and then home for a few days. During this interview she's wearing an all-black outfit and contemporary metallic jewelry. Her hair is stylish, short and blonde.

When filming began around fall 2012, there would be anywhere from 20 to 65 hairstylists on-set working on "Catching Fire." While the hairstylists would never work for more than eight hours straight, sometimes the day began at 2 a.m. - if that's the light the director and cinematographer were looking for. A bus would pick the stylists up and take them to locations such as Atlanta's historical district or a racetrack outside the city, where the "Catching Fire" chariot scenes were filmed.

While most of Bray's previous media work had been in print, she had also contributed to "a Broadway thing with Rita Moreno" and appeared on the "Today Show" – as well as going to the Playboy Mansion to style a Hugh Hefner paramour.

Your roots are showing

Bray first became interested in doing hair at the age of 6.

"Everyone else would go to the movies, I would go to this little bitty salon in Pulaski, Tennessee and watch them do magic," Bray says. "They finally got me a little chair. And every Saturday, I'd go and watch them do hair."

Zimmermann recalls giving her first haircut at age 14 to a boy that lived in their neighborhood. "I messed his hair up so bad he was crying when my mom got home and she had to fix it."

Asked about her biggest stylist influences, Bray cites her late husband Gary Bray ("He was quite a man and he was quite artistic"); Belgian stylists William De Ridder and Leo Passage; and the previously mentioned photographer Luis Alvarez.

It was Alvarez who talked Bray out of retirement. After Gary died about 10 years ago, she bought a place down in Cozumel, Mexico. The day-to-day operations of The Masters, where the waiting area contains a display of medals, trophies and awards befitting a hall of fame athlete, had been passed on to her children.

"He wouldn't let me retire," Bray says of Alvarez. "He said, 'You can't take all the talent and the experiences you've had and just lay on the beach. You need to pass those things on.'"

And Passage actually inspired the "golden rose" hairdo. "He loved and was inspired by nature, so when I wanted to do something in his memory I started doing research on roses ... all the layers. And so that's what I did for him."

Bray recently received a text from Flowers asking about her working on another genre film, although she hasn't been told the project's title yet. She's also considering an opportunity to train film hairstylists, and hoping to work on the final installments of "Hunger Games," "Mockingjay," parts one and two.

The mother and daughter team had to wait a few weeks to see "Catching Fire" after it opened in November, as Bray was getting over a bout with pneumonia. They'd both read the books to prep for their work on the film, although Bray admits she's never watched "Hunger Games," wary of battle scenes depicting "children killing each other."

But when she and Zimmerman finally caught a showing of "Catching Fire" at Monaco Pictures, Bray was blown away.

"When you're working on a movie, you see it in segments but you don't even see it in the right sequence. To see it all come together was phenomenal."~