With how small my movie budgets are I've been fortunate to work with some very talented people and get some cool monsters, wounds and blood in front of my camera. I've also had to do some of the work myself when time and/or budget causes a conflict and unfortunately, it often shows.
When deciding on methods to use for make-up or creature F/X budget is always a concern that pops up on low budget productions, but there other factors to take into account that need to be addressed during post production to avoid snags later on.
For creature F/X, is your creature a straight on, rampaging monster or is there a character beneath that rough exterior? This will be important for determining how visible the eyes need to be and how flexible the facial features should be. For "File Error" our monster is a robot. The less expression the better. He's an emotionless killing machine. But if you want a werewolf that can convey pathos over a kill that causes conflict in his human soul, you'll want those eyes to be visible.
Speech is also something to take into account. Fangs, weird tongues, or facial appendages can make understanding an actor difficult. A full over the head mask means that all of the speech coming through the mask will sound like someone talking into a cup and your actor's breathing will likely be compromised.
How long will your actor need to suffer through this ordeal? Make-up should never suffer for the comfort of who is inside it, but the design does need to take certain things into account, especially where safety is concerned, but adding some comfort is a nice gesture too. Whenever possible I don the difficult suits myself. This means I need to trust my camera operator fully. And most of the time, full on suits are only going to be worn for a scene or two a day.
How durable does the make-up need to be? In "File Error" I wrote in a gag that the robot's face keeps sliding off or getting knocked off. This was mainly because at the writing stage I knew how I planned to pull of the cheap skin mask and I knew it would be too heavy to stay in place for any amount of time since it wouldn't be sculpted to the actor's actual face and is made of straight latex, not foam latex. My Werewolves in "The Lunar Pack" had to do some running and fighting. Tabatha Gipe put together two distinct designs that managed to stand up to one of my favorite werewolf fights ever. A bit old style Marvel TV series, but what I was going for and pretty dang cool. Thanks to Steven Shea we got to do some neat POV shots of the wolves jumping too. That was a case when we did have to keep reapplying make-up due to sweat and just plain activity, but the pieces survived the ordeal. In fact, we used them again in "Shelter" for different stages of the transformation.
What lighting will be used to shoot the make-up? I never like to answer this one until I'm on set because things on indie movies are so "in flux" that such things can change drastically, but for "Shelter" I knew where I was shooting, when and how I was going to achieve the low budget transformation using lighting tricks. Stuff that's going to be lit dimly can be a little less detail oriented. Quick edits help with that too, but on "Shelter" I did have one new obstacle. It was only my second time shooting a complex make-up composition in High Definition. The neck wound in "Savaged" was amazing and I wanted our creature in "Shelter" to stand up as well. HD is more unforgiving than the naked eye, so I called on Maryanne Schultz to take Tabatha's wolf pieces (Tabatha was working on something else at the time) and put her own twist on them to make them stand up to the 1080 lines of resolution.
When deciding on methods to use for make-up or creature F/X budget is always a concern that pops up on low budget productions, but there other factors to take into account that need to be addressed during post production to avoid snags later on.
For creature F/X, is your creature a straight on, rampaging monster or is there a character beneath that rough exterior? This will be important for determining how visible the eyes need to be and how flexible the facial features should be. For "File Error" our monster is a robot. The less expression the better. He's an emotionless killing machine. But if you want a werewolf that can convey pathos over a kill that causes conflict in his human soul, you'll want those eyes to be visible.
Speech is also something to take into account. Fangs, weird tongues, or facial appendages can make understanding an actor difficult. A full over the head mask means that all of the speech coming through the mask will sound like someone talking into a cup and your actor's breathing will likely be compromised.
How long will your actor need to suffer through this ordeal? Make-up should never suffer for the comfort of who is inside it, but the design does need to take certain things into account, especially where safety is concerned, but adding some comfort is a nice gesture too. Whenever possible I don the difficult suits myself. This means I need to trust my camera operator fully. And most of the time, full on suits are only going to be worn for a scene or two a day.
How durable does the make-up need to be? In "File Error" I wrote in a gag that the robot's face keeps sliding off or getting knocked off. This was mainly because at the writing stage I knew how I planned to pull of the cheap skin mask and I knew it would be too heavy to stay in place for any amount of time since it wouldn't be sculpted to the actor's actual face and is made of straight latex, not foam latex. My Werewolves in "The Lunar Pack" had to do some running and fighting. Tabatha Gipe put together two distinct designs that managed to stand up to one of my favorite werewolf fights ever. A bit old style Marvel TV series, but what I was going for and pretty dang cool. Thanks to Steven Shea we got to do some neat POV shots of the wolves jumping too. That was a case when we did have to keep reapplying make-up due to sweat and just plain activity, but the pieces survived the ordeal. In fact, we used them again in "Shelter" for different stages of the transformation.
What lighting will be used to shoot the make-up? I never like to answer this one until I'm on set because things on indie movies are so "in flux" that such things can change drastically, but for "Shelter" I knew where I was shooting, when and how I was going to achieve the low budget transformation using lighting tricks. Stuff that's going to be lit dimly can be a little less detail oriented. Quick edits help with that too, but on "Shelter" I did have one new obstacle. It was only my second time shooting a complex make-up composition in High Definition. The neck wound in "Savaged" was amazing and I wanted our creature in "Shelter" to stand up as well. HD is more unforgiving than the naked eye, so I called on Maryanne Schultz to take Tabatha's wolf pieces (Tabatha was working on something else at the time) and put her own twist on them to make them stand up to the 1080 lines of resolution.
I think the resulting creature stood up pretty well, especially on the budget we had at the time.
We were only shooting from the front as well, so that gave us some wiggle room on the back of his head. If you can plan out camera placement it can also help save some time, at least for specific days of shooting.
So, consider character, speech, comfort, durability, lighting, camera placement and work to make all of those work as best they can within your budget.
I'm sure make-up folks have a lot more to add, but from a filmmaker's point of view those are the most important, and often overlooked due to time and budget, things to consider when using creature make-up in a movie.
Examples of not preparing for some of these things can also be seen in my movies, but you can look for those yourself.
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