Makeup!!!

Created May 12th 2010

With shooting on our Klingon bridge scheduled for 9pm on Wednesday, May 12th, we had our Klingon actors report for make-up early so that while it was too warm and too well lit on the carport set, we could work on their Klingon prosthetics. Trey Cole reported first, and we just took the Klingon forehead piece from the Klingon costumes widely available. The first thing we did was simply remove the Godforsaken nose piece from the forehead appliance. We had extra hair from our female costume piece (we used the model's real hair instead of this mangy mess they'd sown into the scalp piece). We literally stapled the extra hair (removing the excess scalp) onto the male's headpiece. Then we took a few test photos and were pleased with the result (see middle picture below). We then had Trey don the male costume, and set about to transforming him into a Klingon science officer.

We use the Graftobian RMG (Rubber Mask Grease) to repaint the ghastly paint job on the original forehead appliances to match the fleshtones of our actors. (We purchased this along with some very nice pointed ears and even horns for an alien character from Aradani Costumes.) Trey looked outstanding in his makeup and costume. Once he was set, it was time to turn our attention on Blaire Erskine, our Klingon captain, Commander Kumaonna. Blaire has a completely different facial structure and skin tone, and that presented some unique problems.

From previous testing, we knew that the forehead piece from the costume wouldn't fit her. We already had trimmed off the scalp and hair. One we looked at applying the remainder of the forehead, we realized it simply would not curl around her head, despite the amount of spirit gum we applied. So, we made the decision to trim off almost all but the nose ridge and surrounding cranial ridge. (You can see the massive amount of rubber mask that we removed by looking at the bottom right of the picture on the left. We added some eyeliner for eyebrows, and brushed her hair forward a bit to hide the additional ridges. We also added some semi-molten wax that cooled and helped hide the rougher edges of the appliance. In the picture on the right, you can see Blaire relaxing on the set before the shoot.

Our makeup technician for this secondary shoot was Executive Producer Randy Landers. It had been years since he'd help make a pirate makeup for a friend's college film, and he was really concerned about making sure that both Blaire and Trey were comfortable in their makeup.

The costumes purchased, which are little more than Halloween costumes, actually worked fairly well, especially once we had the actors perform the "Picard maneuver" between each shot. Over all, our evaluation of the costumes were quite positive. The forehead scalp/appliance worked quite well for Trey's character, after we added the row of hair from the other appliance. We have decided that if we have to do more Klingons in the future, we're going to use Aradani Costumes for the forehead appliance. The pointed ears and rhino horn we have from them are simply excellent.

After filming for about 45 minutes (we took three shots for each scene and/or series of lines), we refreshed in the breakfast room with a softdrink or two, and talked about how good we all felt about the evening's work, it was time to take the makeup off.

Using plenty of dishtowels, Randy simply began removing the grease paint from where it had been blended onto Blaire's forehead. He carefully removed her forehead appliance using spirit gum remover and warm soapy damp dishtowels, and finally managed to remove the makeup from her face. Interestingly enough, it took as much time to take off as it did in putting it on (Randy was very nervous about making sure he didn't cause Blaire any discomfort).

All in all, it was a very successful evening. We will be uploading a few clips and vidcaps from tonight's shoot in the coming days.

Our thanks to Kim Landers for taking these pictures!

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