Autumn

There’s a chill in the air and the nights are slowly but surely drawing in. The changing seasons make almost every cell in my body tingle with excitement as I anticipate the sound of stepping on the first crunchy brown leaf.

Ok, so autumn is here and although I may have expressed it in a slightly wanky way (see above) the long and short is that I’m excited. Autumn has always been my favourite season, even when I was a child. I always feel like there’s a sense of mystery and potential in the air.

When I lived with my mum (only up until I was 9 years old - due to problems that I may or may not mention at a later time) she would take me "trick or treating" every year. And every year it would rain. I remember getting so excited about sorting out my costume and make up and I’d get a little bit upset that it never looked how I saw it in my head. I miss those times, when there was magic in the air, along with the rain and I was just another kid dressed up for Halloween and on those nights I never worried about a thing. Halloween is, and always has been more important to me than Christmas – I’m not sure what that says about me…

Of course it’s no coincidence that the start of autumn means that Halloween and World Zombie Day are just around the corner and of course I’m busy thinking about what to do costume wise for both of them.

Updates on actual make-up stuff

I know I’ve been doing my “brief write-up” (I honestly did intend to make it brief – but hey! – I will finish it off soon…) of FrightFest but decided to take a break to tell you about some actual make-up stuff.

So firstly – I have a project. It’s a vampire photo shoot that someone wants to do. Sadly I think they may have slightly misunderstood what type make-up I do as I think they are wanting me to make them look model quality beautiful and there will be barely any blood / effects involved. In fact I was even asked if I could do the make-up in a “nearby café”… hmmm – I tried to be as professional as possible and calmly responded that I didn’t think a café would be a suitable or appropriate place to apply the make-up. They also don’t seem to understand the need for light or the need to tell me what they want so I’m just going to run with it and give them (hopefully) what they want. I’m going to try to do a test on myself or Dave tonight to see what will work. I am however optimistic about this shoot – any experience is good experience and hopefully the make-up will look great and I can get some pictures for my website that I’m attempting to design  – the shoot is  supposed to be on Sunday 16^th September so I’ll update afterwards, success or otherwise…

 

Secondly, I almost had another project – one that I was both really looking forward to and shitting myself about. I was supposed to be doing the make-up for a short / promo piece which would be taken to help try and sell Blue Green Yellow Dead. I was soooo looking forward to it and was excited about trying all the effects Dave had thrown in but sadly this came down to money. I hate money. I couldn’t afford to go to Germany (where the short is being shot) so that’s that.

I’ve also been so excited that we don’t have a major event to splurge money on this month (such as FrightFest or moving house) that I bought quite a bit of make-up bits. I’ve bought a Neill Gorton life casting DVD and some alginate, some syringes, tubing, pumps and a tarpaulin (more attempting trying out some blood effects) and a selection of various make up bits from Charles Fox (including some fangs for the aforementioned Vampire shoot) spent a *bit* more that I intended but hey ho it’s all necessary

Right, I’m off to turn my boyfriend into a female vampire and splatter my kitchen in fake blood. Good times!

FrightFest : The Films : Part 2 : Friday

For me personally, Friday was not the greatest of days filmwise...

The day started with me groggy eyed and quite tired which didn't bode well for the rest of the day / weekend - feeling like I'd just woken up from receiving an anaesthetic (not a hangover just exhaustion leftover from my boring but busy office job) we had to change hotels. So it was an early start and quite a bit of rushing around but luckily we made it back to the Empire for Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut

Now, I'm not sure if it was because of the aforementioned tiredness or because I haven't seen Nightbreed before, but Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut was a bit lost on me. Halfway through I felt like I'd somehow passed out and woken up having missed vital parts of the film - I have no idea if this did actually happen but I don't remember falling asleep or waking up so I can only assume it was just the pure confusing nature of this cut. Basically, it's the original Nightbreed cut together with a load of fuzzy, lost footage which the makers found on some old VHS tapes - some of which is barely audible and some of which you feel like you have to squint and turn your head sideways to have a chance of knowing what was going on. Don't get me wrong - some of it was great and I'd love to see the original Nightbreed at some point or even maybe this cut of the film just not when I'm so tired.

After Nightbreed: the Cabal Cut there was an interview with Italian horror legend Dario Argento. This should have been great but was slightly hindered by the language barrier (not his or anyone's fault but it may have been a good idea to get an interpreter in - I mean they managed to get one for the Chilean director of Hidden in the Woods!) but was generally quite interesting in parts especially when Argento started to tell a story about Rutger Hauer, a bush and a Russian woman that I'm sure wasn't supposed to be for public consumption. Also his views on remakes were great and similar to mine. However, a massive shadow was cast over this interview once the audience Q & A started - some of the dumbest questions I've ever heard asked, some weren't even questions at all but were, instead a love letter told to over 1,500 people and then, a woman came up with a wedge of paper filled with questions she wanted to ask Dario including her asking him to come to her home country (France) and make a film with all French actors - she even asked if she could give him a script she had written!

After a short(ish) break there was a Chilean film called Hidden In The Woods. I should have seen the warning signs when the director came on stage before the film and said in broken English (despite having an interpreter at his side) that he thought we would like it as it is about sexy girls and is quite funny - this being said about a film that was about rape! The film itself was terrible. It started promisingly but then got worse and worse and the subtitles parallelled the falling quality of the film as it went on. Featuring a cum spitting montage of a girl who has been raped and is prostituting herself to feed her sister and nephew and a tasteless shot of her boobs jiggling around all over the place in a titillating fashion right after we have just seen her get horrifically raped. As I said the subtitles were awful and completely laughable in places (the whole cinema was in stitches at times) with varying spellings of "hooker" such as "hoocker" and odd phrases such as when a character asks "how are you?" and the other character responds "Sunday"...I could go on forever...IT WAS NOT GOOD to put it mildly

Next was V/H/S which was a generally quite good horror anthology. There were a few really good short stories within this collection but by this point I was getting a bit fed up of seeing the same character over and over again; the misogynistic, frat boy type male stereotype who's main ambition is to capture a naked girl on camera. The films were generally well made and all were well acted and there were some great effects as well but I was at the point where I wanted to see something new.

We didn't see [REC]3 or Stitches as we had already seen both as screeners before FrightFest - so briefly, I thought [REC]3 was ok but didn't think it could stand up to the previous 2 films which I thought were brilliant - it seems I didn't like it nearly as much as everyone else did as everyone was raving about how much fun it was but maybe it's because me and Dave didn't watch it with the right crowd i.e the FrightFest crowd. Stitches was quite good - the Inbetweeners meets IT in my opinion and was good enough and quite funny but I feel slightly odd about it as I've seen the short film Stitches by BloodyCuts and kind of feel the feature is a slight rip off.

So instead of seeing those last too we grabbed a couple of quick slices of pizza (it's amazing how you can forget to eat), freshened up and headed to the Phoenix Artist Club...until around 3.30am...more about that later.

FrightFest 2012 : The Films : Part 1: Thursday

So, FrightFest 2012 is finished for another year and I have to say it flew by.  

I don’t normally review films and I know this blog isn’t about film reviews but I’m going to give you a quick run through the films I saw and what I thought of them…

Thursday kicked off with Paul Hyett’s directorial debut with The Seasoning House. I’m pleased to be able to say I really liked it and while it isn’t the type of film you can say you enjoyed (with it being about forced prostitution and all…) it really was one of the highlights of the weekend. It was also beautifully shot and had a really interesting tonal shift towards the latter half of the film that while lots of people (I hear) didn’t like and thought was odd and ill-fitting, I thought it worked really well. Rosie Day was also absolutely brilliant as a young, deaf mute and carried the film without uttering a single line of dialogue – that girl is going to get an Oscar one day! I really look forward to watching again as I went into it at FrightFest not knowing anything about it.  

Lightening the mood after The Seasoning House, Cockneys Vs Zombies did exactly what you would expect. While probably slightly biased (I was a zombie extra in this) I really enjoyed it. James Moran’s script was great as expected and the film was only slightly let down by some slightly crummy CGI flames and a fairly obvious plot. It was great fun and it is guaranteed to make you laugh. A great addition to the British Comedy Horror subgenre (I don’t know if that’s an actual thing but I’ve said it anyway) I also made the cut and got a few seconds of screen time so if you want to spot me – I’m the redhead in the hideous dress with sequin shoulders in the docks scene. But still it was a great experience to be on set and even better to see the finished result.

Grabbers was the last film on Thursday and by the time it came on I was very tired – me and Dave had been up since 7.30am and the only food we’d had all day was veggie sausage sandwiches at breakfast – I suspect this is one of the reasons I wasn’t completely won over by Grabbers – being distracted by my rumbling stomach and thoughts of pizza. It was, however a very good film and I thought the effects were quite good and the film was quite funny but felt it was lacking the special something that I felt it needed though as I said this could be due to my distracting hunger and my tiredness.

 

 

Frightfest the 13th

So it's the event me and Dave have been waiting for all year... Frightfest!!!

We did it properly for the first time last year (by properly I mean all 5 days) and loved it and have been excited about this year's ever since.

Frightfest is 5 days of horror films hosted at the Empire Leicester Square but if you want a better description of what it's about please have a wander over here.

This year's Frightfest is especially important / special for me and / or anyone interested in Special Effects Make Up for a number of reasons:

• Greg Nicotero will be there to pick up a Variety award (please tell me you know who Greg Nicotero is...if not please see here or here)
• FrightFest will also be showing a documentary about Greg Nicotero 
• Special Effects Artist Paul Hyett's directing debut The Seasoning House will be opening the festival tonight 
• A number of films Paul Hyett has worked on in a SFX make up capacity will be showing over the weekend

So this is just a small portion of what I want to say about FrightFest and about the things going on / are important to me about FrightFest so I promise that at some point I will write a better post about it soon

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I’ve had bit of a break from doing make up at the moment so I can concentrate on exercising and losing weight (hopefully) in time for FrightFest.

I just wish that there was more time. By the time I get home from my boring day job and have something to eat there is only time for one thing, whether that be exercising or makeupping (that’s now a word).

So I’ve had a break, technically I’m still on the break but at least it’s really made me want to do it. And not just the really exciting stuff that I want to do but is probably slightly beyond what I’m capable of, I have renewed enthusiasm for all of make up.

I want to perfect my blending, for colours and for wax. I want to work out how to stop wax sticking to my fingers/hand when I’m moulding it. I want to have a go at solving the little problems that I’m usually too impatient to try and solve.

Now, I just need a couple of extra hours in the day…

World Zombie Day 2011

Here are some pictures from World Zombie Day which took place back on October 2011. World Zombie Day is a pub crawl in London where everyone involved is dressed as zombies. As you can imagine it was a lot of fun and I went with Dave and his brother, Patrick. 

So here's Dave's make-up first:

This is towards the end of the day and as you can see the edges of the latex are rolling up and are visible.

 Dave wanted a half face burn/over the eye wound, so that's what I attempted. I made the piece to go over his eye out of liquid latex and toilet paper. I made it on my thigh and then transferred it to his face, sticking it down with more liquid latex (I've since learned I probably should have used a better adhesive, maybe prosaide or spirit gum). It was then coloured with Kryolan Supracolors with various bloods being used as well, including scab blood.

This is Patrick's make-up:

 I worked on the idea that Patrick was attacked (by zombies) whilst riding his bike and this only came about because we hadn't really thought about what to do with him costume wise and then Patrick realised he had a Hi Vis vest and a cycle helmet in his car. I wanted it to seem as if he had scraped his face along the ground in the attack but this didn't really come across properly in the make-up.

Once again, this is towards the end of the night - the edges have been better.

 I wasn't as happy with this make-up as I would of like to have been, it kind of looks quite messy and the blood is starting to look a bit bean-juicy. I wanted it to seem as if his skull was showing through but this didn't really work out. Again I used liquid latex and toilet paper to construct the wound and Kryolan Supracolors. Various bloods including fresh scratch to try and look like scrapes.

My make-up:

After making up Dave and Patrick I realised I hadn't figured out what I was going to do for myself. I had given no thought to my costume whatsoever and we only had 30 minutes before we had to leave. I remembered that we had a Count Duckula costume somewhere leftover from a fancy dress party and decided that that would do. With little time I just made up my eyes a little bit (with Kryolan Supracolors) and tried to make it look as if a chunk of skin from my cheek was hanging off.

This is what I ended up looking like - I think we can all agree that this could be a hell of a lot better!

All in all it was a good day and I received some great comments about Dave and Patrick's make-up, also people kept stopping them so they could take pictures. I can't wait until this year's WZD and I am planning costumes and make-up already...TO BE CONTINUED (in October time)