Macabre Make-up Effects and Marcel Waves

Twelve weeks in and we're getting back into the swing of school. We continued with accident simulation, playing and experimenting with the products. We mainly played with Latex, Gel Effects and 3rd Degree, all professional products used in TV and Film, that could be used to create bruises, burns, cuts and swellings. With our grease make-ups and Illustrator palettes we could make them look even more realistic. Even surprisingly mundane products such as Vaseline and KY Jelly, gave bruises and burns an extra depth so they no longer looked like make-up sitting on skin.














On Monday we each had a go at creating burnt hands, you know you did a good job when people cringe a bit looking at what you've created - pus filled blisters... eewww...

We moved on to creating cold dead bodies, dying from various bullet wounds and slit throats.

With Tanya visiting again there was a reprieve from the macabre, where we created Marcel Waves with hot rollers and clips, then turned it into a high fashion look.

We ended the week with each being allocated a "dead body" to create. Burnt bodies, drownings, car crashes, bashings and 6 week old corpses littered the classroom. All in a day at makeup school.

Alice Baueris - Student

High Fashion Make Up & Accident Simulation

After a two week production break all students returned to the course with renewed enthusiasm for the remaining ten weeks.

We started with a period to high fashion makeup. This involved choosing a significant element from a makeup period that we studied last term. This could be a style of eye makeup, a colour scheme, or a hairstyle, and then giving it a modern twist bringing it into a contemporary look. Each student had a different approach and the end results were striking and unique. We all enjoyed the freedom to create in this exercise, which was different to previous weeks where we focused on getting techniques correct rather than creative flare.

We had a class with Gary Siutz on Wednesday. Gary is a makeup artist

and owner/creator of makeup brand ‘MultiMedia Makeup’. Gary has extensive experience working in fashion and editorial makeup and therefore his techniques and style are quite different to what we have learnt so far for film and television. He not only taught us some new tricks and shared with us new products but also talked about the realities of working in the fashion industry and the pro’s and con’s of putting together a makeup portfolio for fashion. It is really invaluable having teachers who work in different areas of the business so that we can gather different skills and tips from each of them.

The rest of the week was spent doing an introduction to accident simulation and special effects. Louise introduced us to some new

products to enable us to create realistic injuries. We will be using these products over the next few weeks to create a variety of simulated injuries. I think what we learnt is that creating something that looks authentic is harder than it looks. It’s a fine line between subtle/ real and fake and tacky. I’m sure with practice our skills will become more refined - although Rae turned a few heads on a lunch excursion sporting two black eyes!!

Polly McKay - Student