I mean, I get to play around in all kinds of things from makeup to clay to blood to cabbage. And in the end, I'm going to get a Master's Degree! Crazy, right?
Well, recently the shop has become really busy, because the show season finally started! Since I've last graced the world with a blog post, CCM Drama's production of Macbeth has opened and closed. Even though I wasn't on the running crew for the show (which means that I would have worked on makeup and wigs pre-show and backstage during the actual production every night to make sure all of the quick changes and regular changes that needed to happen during the show get accomplished. Which I didn't do for this show, but will be doing on Legally Blonde next week) I still got to work on projects for the show during class hours.
The main project that whole shop worked on and became our pride and joy was the severed head. SPOILER ALERT - Macbeth gets beheaded and Macduff brings it out onstage at the end of the show in triumph. SO we made a silicon head based off of the actress playing Macbeth's actual head. So, the first step in that is take a life mask/face cast of her from the head up.
There she is! The first layer (the pink goo) is soft, dental algenate and then she's all covered in plaster bandages. This takes about 25 minutes to dry enough to be removed (the red marks are keys so that we can fit the two pieces together later) and then she can go! The rest is up to us.
The next step is to fill that mold withliquid clay. They then sculpt and mold that clay so that it has the right expession, fixes any blemishes, etc. Then they take a positive of that clay sculpture the same way they took a mold of the actress. Then, the fill that mold with silicon. It's a semi-delicate process that I wasn't really involved in, so I still don't quite understand it. But, when it's all done, it comes out like this:
Pretty cool huh? So then it has to be painted to look like flesh, which I also didn't do. The next step is to give it hair! The hair is added through a process called punching, which is basically exactly what it sounds. We take a little two pronged needle and hold the hair in the other hand and push it into the soft, fleshy silicon. This is the part where I came in! I did a giant chunk of hair on the side, and on the top.
I did more than was shown in the pictures, but you get the idea. Laura, the actress, shaved her head for the part (to look more like a man, and for some other method-y stuff) so we had to punch in the hair when it was long, and then shave it off. In the end we added eyes, eyebrows, blood and all those finishing touches until it looked like Laura!
Here's our head! And here's Laura!
Pretty amazing, isn't it?
So, my other job on the show involved a bit of problem solving. You see, typically in Macbeth when Macduff comes out with the head, he's carrying by the hair, more or less, and then does....something with it until the end of the show. The way our show was abridged it stayed onstage until the end of the performance and so they decided to put it on a pike. Gruesome, huh? Well, during tech the director decided he wanted a blood effect to give the head a little more "umph" and realism when it was actually impaled. So, with a little collaboration from some other shop members (shoutout to you Nae!) we came up with these little cabbage filled blood bags that were attached over the openeing of the PVC that was Macbeth's neck so it would burst and slop/drip out soaked cabbage pieces that would then run down the stage for the duration of the show. Pretty nice, huh?
It looks like they're filled with little pieces of bone/tissue, doesn't it? The most satisfying bit was when I went to see the performance, when MacDuff impaled the head and everything came out the audience gave an audible reaction. In that moment, I knew I'd succeeded.
So there you have it! My grad school adventures have been bloody lately, but that's the way I like it :) It'll probably be quite a while before I update again, since I am on the running crew for the musical “Legally Blonde” . So once that starts dress rehearsal I will be there every night until the beginning of November. It’s the longest running show of all the shows this year. I’m also an assistant designer on the fall opera, Hansel and Gretel. So I attend meetings for that (such as production meetings with other design departments and the director, rehearsals, and wig and makeup fittings) during the week in addition to everything else like classes and such. When I’m not in class I help out working on projects for the various shows that we are supporting, styling wigs, scheduling fitting, taking notes, and just general maintenance. I don't call it 'grad adventures' for nothing!
And I shall leave you with this quote:
"I've said this so many times, but there's magic when you have a really good actor in a really good makeup." Rick Baker, makeup artist
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