Sci-Fi 48 Film Contest

So it’s probably a bit late in the week to talk about what I did last weekend but I’m going to do it anyway. I worked on a short film for the Sci-Fi 48 hour film competition where you are given a brief, a title, a theme, a line and a prop you have to use and then make a film out of it, all in 48 hours.

It was a good experience and the first proper(ish) experience of actually working on a film (in a make-up sense). We decided to go with a kind of pregnancy gone wrong theme so I spent most of the day working on a bump. They had bought the bump but the colouring was kind of fucked and I thought it would be cool to do the whole ‘poke from the inside’ thing a la Dawn of the Dead Remake. So I took the bump and make a hand sized hole through the middle of it and set to making skin to go over it.

I covered the hole with some cling film type stuff (technical term – I swear!) and stuck it down with liquid latex. I made sure it wouldn’t come off by covering it in a few layers of liquid latex and secured the edges with liquid latex and tissue paper. There was a bit of moulding wax involved in there somewhere and loads more liquid latex.  Then I let it dry helped along by a trusty hairdryer.

Then I set about sorting out the colours. I did want to make it a bit veiny and stretch-marky but unfortunately I had to leave to see an advanced screening of Avengers Assemble (brilliant by the way!). I have to say I was truly gutted to have to leave as I would have loved to have been more involved.

Overall it was a good day though I’m not sure if I got the balance right between being professional and social – I think everyone thought I was a bit of an antisocial loner as there were quite a few times where everyone was in the garden chatting and getting to know each other and I just didn’t realise as I was totally engrossed in doing the bump.

Please see below a link to ‘A Dream of Spring’ (sadly the bump didn’t feature as much as I had hoped)

http://vimeo.com/40474105

Let Me Introduce Myself

I should probably introduce myself properly. My name is Jess; I am a 20 year old woman. I work as a credit controller; I want to work as a special effects make-up artist.

You see my problem was that when I was in school and in sixth form, I had no real idea of what I wanted to do. I had always wanted to be a nurse because I thought it was a respectable profession, I wanted to help people and 3 generations of females in my family were nurses.

 Then when I was doing my GCSEs I decided I wanted to be a pathologist or forensic scientist - All the while also thinking that I wanted to be a writer.  As you can imagine this lead to lots of course changes and mind changes etc. And when it came part way through my second year at sixth form and I was supposed to apply for a course at university I was stumped. At that point I considered a writing/English language course, psychology, drama, and special effects make-up.

As it happened I ended up dropping out of sixth form at this point as I was living on my own and my sixth form took two hours each way to travel to from where I lived – and thus saving me from the terror of decision making. I was working at a tourist attraction/scare attraction and that is where my interest in SFX make-up took hold.

I have always loved films and in particular horror films and subconsciously I’ve always picked apart and been most interested in the work that goes into the character/creature make up etc. But the problem I have always had is that I find it hard to believe I am good enough to make my hobby a career. Maybe this will always be the case and I will be stuck in a dead end job because I don’t have the confidence/faith in myself to make my dreams come true (god I sound like such a twat) let’s hope not hey…

So there’s a bit of background, boring as it may be. The irony of it all is, now that I have rent to pay and a job and bills etc. and I can’t really up and go to university (although my partner’s brother has done just that at 32 years old...) I have found the perfect course…and I can’t afford or have the time to do it! Typical!

Anyway that’s enough rambling – here’s some old pictures of (crappy) make up I did when I worked at the tourist/scare attraction.

Hi!

The thing that made me decide to start this blog is that I looked around for a make-up blog to look at/read and could find loads of beauty/fashion make-up blogs but no special effects make up ones. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough or maybe there aren’t any (if there are some please recommend). So is born “Not Just a Bloody Face” although that’s not strictly true. I picked that name because I thought it sounded good but I’m mainly interested and do blood/special effects so I suppose I do just specialise in a “bloody face” as it were. Well a bloody, bruised, disfigured and hideously covered in boils face…

So anyway this blog is about me and my attempt to my hobby a career, various techniques etc and anything special effects make up related really. I hope it helps/proves interesting.