SFX make up! and other news...

Recently, I was asked to help out with a senior thesis horror film that required some special effects make up! I have done make up before but nothing all that complex. So far this is the most complex make up job I've ever done and it turned out really nicely.

I was specifically asked to create a slit throat on one of the actors. I was intrigued and really excited to figure out the best ways of going about this! First I looked up a few video tutorials on YouTube...

Both of the one's I viewed required liquid latex. I was extremely crunched for time and luckily found out that someone was letting us use their make up. They had liquid latex. HALLELUJAH!

I didn't even get to play with it until I was on set but it was really fun and really useful, you can easily make a scar with this stuff. It's awesome! I plan on getting my own stuff someday. I really enjoyed the opportunity to play with it and the shoot turned out really well! Everyone was really thrilled with my handy work!  The actor himself really got into the character (if you can call being dead/dying a character). 

As you can see above, I also played around with my hand. No, I'm not kissing him!

I'd like to have more opportunities to do this kind of stuff, actually. I think I could do better eventually after figuring out the nature of the materials and such. It's very exciting to be able to figure out this kind of stuff out. 

Also just another fun plug I just recently watched The Game by David Fincher. The film was made in 1997 and in my opinion is very much comparable to the possibilities we have now in epics like this. It was a very mind blowing experience! It was mind blowing in a sense that you are caught off gard a lot  and you don't know what to expect the entire time. It's crazy! But it's not one of those confusing movies that you would have to watch 2,384,903,802 times in order to understand it at all. When you get it, you get it but you'll be surprised how you got there. Go watch it!!! It's on Netflix!

Halloween=The Walking Dead

About this time last year, I started watching a new television series on AMC called The Walking Dead. With Halloween around the corner, this new show is packed with guns, violence, and you guessed it, zombies. The second season just started up this past Sunday, and left the audience in shock with a surprise ending. Compared to the other zombie movies and shows, this one definitely has the most realistic looking zombies and a practical plot that every other zombie movie is missing. After a virus breaks out, a group of survivors are forced to leave their home in attempt to find a secure location that hasn't been infected yet. There is no vaccine and they are getting by day to day with what they can find. The streets are blocked due to all the traffic that tried to escape, so the use of vehicles is almost imposs
ible. This is what a zombie apocalypse would be if one

were to happen in the US.

The presentation of the zombies is awesome. Each one is unique and acts differently to the one standing next to him/her. The makeup artist and costume designers both won awards for last years season at the Saturn Awards Ceremony for TV shows. Below you can see a before an after picture with the makeup and effects. Picture

Last, I wanted to comment on the music and sfx in the show. Almost every dramatic scene is silent on this show. At first, I didn't like how they were setting the tone, but later I realized that with no music, you could never tell when something was gonna happen or pop up. You can't guess, which sometimes pisses me off, but makes for great TV. The Walking Dead is a mini series and I seriously suggest you catch up on the episodes if you want a good scare and plot. You can find all the episodes at amctv.com or 1channel.tv. Any questions or comments, please ask. I love discussing this show.

Project 2 update

So we are now entering the third week of project 2, and I just wanted to show the class a couple things we were planning on doing in our film. For background information, our feature film starts off with a teenage boy (Jordan) going into his bothers room trying to find his nerd guns. His older brother, Patrick, is over seas in Iraq fighting for our country. Jordan decides to play with these guns in his front years with some friends, when all of a sudden, his brother gets dropped off in the driveway. Jordan is so excited to see his bro, and asks if he wants to play with him and his friends. He hands Patrick the gun, and this is where he starts to have his flashbacks. When this happens, we want the screen to flash to something like this:

In another scene, we are going to want o have realistic warfare sfx. I found a great site called free sound.org that has multiple war sounds that would be perfect for our film. Another post effect we want to have is camera shake or frenzy when a fake bomb goes off. We want the edges of the screen to whiten and the maybe the picture to flicker black and white to give the audience a chill. Something like this will definitely get the point screenshot.

I don't want to give too much away, but this is the premise of our film. Please give questions or comments.