Father and son Gilberto and Daniel Salinas starred as zombies on AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead” last November. They have also worked together on the horror movie, “Blood Fest.”
Daniel Salinas is a junior radio-television-film major at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication.
Growing up, he watched a lot of movies with his family, which impacted his career path.
“I watched a lot of films with my family, mostly with my father [Gilberto Salinas],” he said. “He’s a big film buff and naturally it grew on me as well. As I got older, I gained a growing interest in wanting to create my own stories and bring them to life through film.”
Gilberto Salinas, chief strategist for Ecodevo Concepts, got interested in movies in a similar way.
“I have been interested in TV and film since I was a kid,” he said. “Being a film buff at an early age, just enjoying sitting down and watching the movies from beginning to end and just being curious as how the movies are made [really got me intrigued].”
Daniel has worked on projects such as “Jeff Ross Roasts the Border: Live from Brownsville, Texas” and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.”
“Jeff Ross Roasts the Border: Live from Brownsville, Texas” is a stand-up comedy special that premiered on Comedy Central last year. In this special, Ross traveled to Brownsville and held a comedy show by the border wall, where he roasted American immigration policies.
The producers were looking for Brownsville natives to help with production and Daniel took advantage of the opportunity, under Gilberto’s recommendation.
“[Working on the Jeff Ross show] was really exciting as it was my first professional job in the entertainment industry,” he said. “At the same time, I was extremely nervous, since I was working under Comedy Central, which is huge.”
Gilberto has appeared in such productions as “A Night in Old Mexico,” “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” and the ABC show, “American Crime.”
On “Fear the Walking Dead,” Daniel and Gilberto played “walkers” in the Season 4 episode titled, “Another Day in the Diamond.”
To prepare for their roles, Gilberto and Daniel attended trainings to act like convincing zombies.
“The first thing that my fellow ‘walkers,’ my father and I had to go through, was walker-training school,” Daniel said. “They taught us the basic principles of walking like a walker, which included no dragging the leg, no Frankenstein arms and to walk like you just got out of the bar drunk at 4 a.m.”
The trainings were about 30 minutes to an hour long and although he struggled a bit initially, Gilberto enjoyed the surreal experience of it all and mastered the walk.
“It was a lot of fun,” Gilberto said. “We had to pass an exam to make sure we were doing it right. Some of the things they’d say is no Frankenstein arms, no fish arms, which means you can’t be waving them. You have to arch your back a certain way, the taller [you are] the better. If you’re shorter, then you walk another way.”
Daniel said one of his favorite parts of the filming experience was seeing director Lou Diamond Phillips.
Gilberto’s favorite part was seeing the makeup and special effects transformation. He also liked the experience of getting the makeup done by the makeup artists the way he’d seen on TV as a kid.
“My favorite was sitting in the chair for two hours and having this army of makeup artists working on you,” he said. “[It’s] just like when I was a kid, remembering seeing how movies were made and [seeing] the behind the scenes [segments] and you’d have makeup artists working to make the people look a certain way. Well, with us, they were making us look like we were dead.”
Daniel detailed their work on “Blood Fest.”
“For this one, my father [played] a party bouncer and I was a Halloween party member,” Daniel said. “I was dressed up in a Halloween costume and we roamed around this big set and I got to act alongside Jacob Batalon, who [starred as Peter Parker’s friend in] “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”
For students who aspire to make a name for themselves in the film industry, or who want to participate as extras on a set, Gilberto recommends approaching the field like you would any other job–with diligence and humility.
“You have to be tenacious,” he said. “It’s tough to get into it. It takes a while to get onto people’s radars and to make a name for yourself. So, no different than any career, it takes a while and a lot of work, dedication and a little bit of luck.”
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