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Just two seasons into its run, The Pitt has fast become one of the most celebrated television shows of the 21st century, combining the hour-to-hour intensity of 24, the procedural probity of ER, and an IV drip of Scrubs to take the edge off the constant chaos and carnage in the emergency department at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
The series has won Emmys for Outstanding Drama, Lead Actor, and Supporting Actor and Actress, but The Pitt may be best known for its hyper-realistic portrayals of degloved flesh, dismemberment, electrocution, priapism, impalement, botched cosmetic injection, fecal disimpaction, cutaneous maggot infestation, and childbirth.
Even anatomical pros marvel at the show’s veritable snuff-film visuals.
“It’s kind of like shadowing in the ER for a day,” says Josh Johnson, Ph.D, director of the Doctor of Anatomical Sciences Program at the University of Idaho, on watching an episode. “Like, oh, my god—this is what you’re doing here? You’re literally cutting this person’s chest open and squeezing their heart for them.”
It’s a level of realism not previously seen on screen. Thanks to a unit of in-house and external effects and makeup practitioners who have advanced the craft light years with the help of new techniques and technologies that they are, in many cases, pioneering. We asked The Pitt’s pros as well as the heads of anatomy at two major medical schools to explain advances in the hospital horrors from which we are powerless to look away.
‘The Pitt’s Noah Wyle & Makeup Department Head Myriam Arougheti On The Practical Effects Behind S2
How the prosthetic sausage is made
The order of operations on The Pitt is unlike almost any other production, according to head of makeup Myriam Arougheti, who says patients are often cast before a story is even plotted.
1. The cases
It all starts with writer and executive producer Dr. Joe Sachs, who sends Arougheti all of the medical interventions that will appear in an episode so she can get them modeled.
“Depending on the procedure, it can vary between two and nine weeks to build,” Arougheti says. “This is why it’s so important for Dr. Joe to give me in advance as much as possible, because they have to cast these actors ASAP to get their body lifecast so we can start building.”
2. Casting (actor and body)
A lifecast is a three-dimensional mold of an actor’s body from which the effects houses create scrupulous, lifelike arms, legs, chests… collapsible faces—Dr. Joe hasn’t been able to stump ’em yet. Once the actor playing the patient is chosen, they’re immediately sent in for cloning.
3. Prosthetic prognosis
Meanwhile, Arougheti and her team strategize how the procedures will be recreated. Once they think they have a plan for portraying an American flag protruding from a thorax, a lung being hand-rotated in an open chest cavity, or something as simple as a severed trachea getting mended, they place their orders with one of several special effects houses.
4. Sculpting
Taking the scalpel from here, the craftsfolk at studios like LA’s Autonomous F/X hammer out the methods and materials that will make the most convincing organs, appendages, and anatomical functions.
“It’s a whole new trick you have to figure out that you’re like, ‘What we did last time isn’t going to work this time,’” says Autonomous F/X CEO Jason Collins, who has worked previously on medical dramas like House, M.D., Resident, and Grey’s Anatomy. “So we have to reinvent the wheel each time.”
5. Follow-up
Even with a vigorous ongoing back-and-forth between the teams, it would be expecting a lot to get the wheel right on the first try. So, once the builds are complete, Arougheti presents them to Dr. Joe for final approval in the rare case that something’s amiss.
“We’re in prep and I misunderstood one little element that the doctor told me,” Arougheti says of one such review. “And the way the sculpture was built, he was like, ‘Yeah, if the bone is like that, the patient’s dead,’ That’s why there’s constant communication between the effects houses, myself, and Dr. Joe.”
THE PITT’s Dr. Joe Sachs on the Importance of Prosthetic Bodies on TV
Dr. Joe Sachs on the importance of prosthetic bodies on TV.
The 5 active ingredients that make The Pitt so (too?!) realistic
For decades, wound simulation—or moulage—relied on heavy layers of spirit gum, cotton, collodion, and rigid modeling waxes. Much later came foam latex, but it all melted easily under hot studio lights and was shot for standard definition TVs that wouldn’t meet “standard” today.
But what modern technology disrupts, modern technology can un-rupt, so when high-definition imaging exposed the limitations of pre-millennial moulage, new practices and materials—some developed for entertainment, others for education—emerged to close the realism gap.
“We look at things more like magic tricks than as technological advances,” Collins says. “You’ve got your science and you’ve got your art [that] you have to combine together to fool the eye. Once we lose the art to the technology, I don’t know if we’re storytelling anymore.”
Silicone’s supremacy
It wasn’t that long ago that moulage meant raiding the produce aisle, at least academically.
“When I was a kid, we learned in diabetes class how to give insulin injections by doing it into the skin of an orange, because that approximately was the feeling of human skin,” says James Lipshaw, assistant director, instructional design and media center for medical simulation at Harvard Medical School. “That was simulation in 1996.”
Today, silicone lies, plies, stretches, and jiggles like real flesh thanks to breakthroughs in just the last few years:
- In the late aughts, chemists began mixing in plasticizers, or “deadeners,” oily liquids that weaken silicone’s elasticity. This made it less rubbery and bouncy, allowing for more accurate emulation of loose skin.
- Around a decade ago, fabricators began layering that deadened silicone on materials like liquidized PVC and paraffin to match composite human structures of skin over fat over muscle. Everything on the bone now looked and behaved more true to life.
- In just the last couple of years, researchers refined manufacturing techniques that engrave microscopic lines onto silicone to mimic collagen geometry, enhancing the texture and directional stretching of sim skin.
The result is “flesh” that gapes, lacerates, stitches, and amputates just like the real thing.
Hospital Props on THE PITT #shorts
Fake blood mats are more realistic and less messy than regular fake blood.
3D scanning & printing
Historically, artists sculpted prosthetics entirely by hand using oil-based clay. It was time consuming, one-of-one, and while convincing for its time, imprecise.
3D scanning and digital sculpting software in the last decade has revolutionized this workflow, allowing artists to accurately reproduce anatomy, tweak with impunity, and print multiple molds from digital files all in a fraction of the time.
“Looking at how things have changed since the days of House M.D., where all of those things were a guess on our part,” Collins posits, “let’s say it’s a gasket in a heart. Now we can 3D-print that, know that it’s going to fit exactly into our heart, and it’s 99.9% accurate to what would be produced in the real world… That technology is within the last five years.”
The lifecast they take of each “patient” immediately after they’re chosen for the role is the same process writ human. They’ll scan the actor, print an anatomical clone, and then sculpt on that to create custom appliances like a hematoma or heart nail.
Drone technology
Drones aren’t just for imperiling commercial aircraft anymore. Adopting technology that powered the boom in whirring quadcopters the last decade, special effects pros have developed tiny, unobtrusive animatronics to mimic complex phenomena like aliens, dinosaurs, and… childbirth.
“We can now pack a lot into one or two remote controls and actually be pushing the baby out via mechanics behind the monitor or three doors down,” Collins says. “And I don’t believe the drone technology really got going until about 10 years ago. It used to be big controls that people would be flying remote control helicopters or airplanes, now it’s all condensed down essentially to the size of an iPhone.”
Don’t tell Harvard’s Lipshaw.
“Back in the old days when we ran a clinical labor and delivery course, I used to be the person who had to lube up and then reload our rocket spring–propelled baby that would come out of the delivery model,” he recalls. “You have to grease it back up, put it back in its blood sac, and get it back inside of the mannequin.”
The relatively recent crossover between aerospace robotics (UAVs) and animatronics allows SFX operators to maintain a lag-free wireless connection without interrupting the actors or cluttering the set with spring-loaded babies.
Alexandra Metz reveals the insane prosthetics trick behind #thepitt 😱🩺
A house of MDs
The Pitt’s secret sauce is a cadre of clinicians versed in trauma care who approve every procedure, implement, and anatomical outcome before cameras roll.
“They’re assigned a certain amount of episodes, so anytime we do anything—any cut, any bruise, any stitching—they are there at all times,” Arougheti says. They’re unyielding, but rather than feeling burdened by that exactitude, the crew feel a collective commitment to authenticity.
“[The consultants] really are the mothers and fathers of that authenticity,” Collins says. “With The Pitt, it’s not like they’re going to slather a bunch of blood on it and say, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’ It’s going to be very, very down to a science.”
Time & money
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder value be damned, Arougheti and her team get what they need when they need it from their HBO Max benefactors. That includes the budget and sometimes the months necessary to perfect a sculpt or build.
“They really give us what we need as far as time and budget. Things are not rushed,” says Arougheti, who is Emmy-nominated for the second year in a row, and previously won for HBO’s Westworld. “It all starts in the sculpture and in the amount of detail—skin lines, pores, all that happens in the sculpture. And so when you have the time to do that, you can really create something magical.”
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