Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Throughout the time the Stan Winston Studio was working on Small Soldiers, Stan Winston and his crew were designing characters for a proposed remake of Planet of the Apes. The film was still a long way from being greenlit, Stan invested his Studio’s time and resources into developing simian concepts for Planet of the Apes, a project he was most anxious to win. Some of those concepts made it all the way from designs on paper to fully built makeup and mechanical appliances. Stan Winston and his son, Matt, were more than willing subjects when it came time to test the ape makeups. Stan and Matt could talk, smile, frown or scream, using their own facial movements to articulate the prosthetics.

In this behind-the-scenes archive footage, you can see Matt Winston (one of our co-founders) having some fun while the members of Stan Winston Studio test one of the ape makeup on him.

When the Planet of the Apes remake was finally released in 2001, it featured ape makeups by Rick Baker’s Cinovation Studio.

Text excerpted from The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio by Jody Duncan

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