About Me

Brisbane, Australia
A professional working Make Up and Hair Artist for over 20 years in the Film Industry I have ALMOST seen and done it all. Working on such films as 'Lord of the Rings', 'Daybreakers', 'Matrix','George of the Jungle II' 'Scooby Doo', 'House of Wax', 'Aquamarine', 'H2O Just add Water' TV Series to name acouple that are interesting. For the things I am yet to see and do I am saying bring it on. I have the best job in the world and would love to share with interested people some tricks of the trade that I have and will help them in their day to day lives and if your a aspiring Make Up Artist give you advise and answer those questions that come to mind about getting into the industry, resumes, tech tips, and more. This will help being online as I am not always able to take the calls I recieve. Lets get started. Love to hear from you. Movie Data Base: www.imdb.com/name/nm0756608

Saturday, July 3, 2010

BALD CAPS - What a nightmare

Well they teach you how to make one and apply one in Makeup School, but try to make it work on film is a nightmare you would rather hand over to someone else. Right!
The traditional Bald Cap, no matter what material you make them from , whether you can blend the edges always comes short with the back of the cap. The actor moves and it wrinkles unnaturally, it starts to move under all the closed in heat and sweat the actor produces during the day.
Bald caps are fantastic for under prosthetic appliances but in my experience a fully sculptured bald cap neck piece is the answer ( back of the head). You can sculpt in the natural curves of the back of the neck and even extend to shoulder and side of neck if you wish. (Go check out someones neck now, there are contours there and not just a flat surface which you get from applying a traditional bald cap)
Everyone remembers Tom Hanks in 'Philadelpia' when he had that bald cap on. It was all working well and then there was that ONE shot of the side and back that made me want to ring the editor and tear him to shreds on behave of the makeup department. You see you cant believe anyone when they say 'We will never see it from that angle' -  My advise is they don't have your back. Just be aware that your makeup will be shot from any angle and usually by multiple camera.
Photography is different as you do have control on the day. Just like this photo above, I designed and applied this makeup only to be shot from the front. Thank god as the back was a  wrinkle mess! lol.
The actress had really long hair and I had it hanging down her back. This is another problem with using bald caps on film, you have to wrap the actors hair tight and smooth to the head to iron out any lumpy bits, this is a big ask especially with any hair of length.
I have done afew makeups with what I call my 1/2 bald cap, and used the actors own hair at back and applied lace hair pieces to the top and sides of the cap ( old age ) and this works well.
Anyway , a technique to cool not to include in a Makeup class , so it will continue to be taught, just remember all the things that just dont work with them and you will be fine. And freshen up on your sculpting and moulding techniques.  Valuable tools for any makeup artist.
Happy Makeup....ing    . Kym

2 comments:

  1. Hi Kym,
    I was hoping you could give me some tips on continuity.
    In the past I have taken lots of shots with a digital camera and used the camera itself to look back for reference, it works OK for small short films, but its tricky to loose track of what is what even then. I have a 2 week location shoot coming up and I will have access to a camera & laptop but no printer. What would be the best approach?
    Thanks so much, really helpful great blog!.
    Shari

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Shari, I have written a blog for you, to read on continuity photos. Kym

    ReplyDelete

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