It’s easy to imagine Matt Berry’s Lazlo Cravensworth, vampire about town and self-proclaimed man of science, saying that “there is no subtlety allowed” in the quest to create life. But for the artisans behind FX’s “What We Do In The Shadows,” that really does hold true. Paul Jones, the show’s prosthetics makeup and creature effects designer — and creator of life insofar as it pertains to the animatronics of Nadja’s (Natasia Demetriou) doll — cites the mockumentary nature of the show as helping shape the style of his work to be big, bold, and very funny.

With all the quick pans and zooms and shakes that react to the antics of the show’s vampires (and friends), Jones told IndieWire anything less doesn’t read on camera. “Especially with the frenetic pace of the script and how we work. We shoot a lot of pages a day,...