Disturbing homemade makeup effects?!
Question: I'm making a film project with some friends that features a crazy person who sees a double of himself. Sort of similar to the scene in room 1408, but we want to make the double psychologically disturbing. What homemade makeup effects can we use to achieve some disturbing looks for this character? We are willing to spend a bit, but not too much. We'd prefer to make the effects and we are willing to work hard. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Answers: I'm making a film project with some friends that features a crazy person who sees a double of himself. Sort of similar to the scene in room 1408, but we want to make the double psychologically disturbing. What homemade makeup effects can we use to achieve some disturbing looks for this character? We are willing to spend a bit, but not too much. We'd prefer to make the effects and we are willing to work hard. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Well, it depends on the type of effect you’re thinking of. You can order or pick up supplies from some companies I listed below. They can also help you find vendors that sell makeup in your area, depending on where you live. You can also buy prosthetics online year-round, some of them include meaty torn up faces, distorted features (aha!), wounds, creatures, etc. If you’re going for something simple, then I agree with the others: apply a little makeup and add extra touches, the acting should demonstrate the rest.
Whatever you do, make sure to do a makeup test: try things out ahead of time and take pictures. You would be surprised how much you learn. Often, I have tried something new, tested it, adjusted it, and after a few tries, found what I was looking for. Do it yourself, or find that artistic friend and ask them to help out. Sometimes a school or local college will have makeup students looking for something interesting to do on their own. Offer them credit/copy/meal and perhaps a small amount for their supplies and they may take care of this for you. Whether or not they have a portfolio or pics to show their work, make sure they do that makeup test for you so you guys can work together to get your look. $25-$100 is reasonable in this scenario, depending on how much stuff you want. My first job was unpaid/no credit/no copy/no meal and I was fine, but I probably did about 30 mins of regular makeup with a little sweat. My second job was a trip to the Mojave Desert for 4 days, meeting great friends, meals, shared rooms, and reimbursement of $90 for the $100 I spent on supplies…I make a lot more now, but everybody has to get started somewhere.
Quick: You could use red, purple, or blue liner and line the inside lower eyelid, and edge of the upper lid. Red would mean stressed or sleepless, blue or purple could go with a dead or drowned look. You can use white or pale skin-tone makeup, use makeup sponges to apply and blend. Add a choice of red, purple, burgundy, or blue underneath the eyes. You could use liquid liners or makeup and a small brush to draw on creepy veins, again in your choice of colors. Add fake sweat (glycerin or castor oil, found in drugstore section).
Something really disturbing but simple: makeup for pale skin tone, depending on race: a dark shade around the eyes, use glycerin or castor oil for sweat (as you won’t have to keep refreshing it if you used water). You can make a nice mouth blood by mixing red dye, karo syrup, and hershey’s syrup. Just start with a cup of Karo Light Syrup (not dark!), and add red dye, then some hershey’s so it won’t look so clear. Test it, see if you like it. Put a little blood in the person’s mouth, just enough before each shot so you can see some, not enough to dribble out, unless you like that.
Slimy: I once bought this huge bucket of hair gel from Sally’s and coated an actor in it, you could mix in other things, like color or bits of something to give it texture. I think I got the gallon buckets on sale for $5-$7 each! You could even do face and body makeup in a pale color, with a bit of blues or purples blended in here and there, then coat the actor in the gel…warning, might be chilly!
Working out-of-the-kit, you could put down a layer of adhesive (such as spirit gum) and apply mortician’s wax to sculpt on some new features. You could use a small round-ended metal paint spatula or sculpting tool from an art supply store.
If you want to do more to distort the face, you could use bandages, tissue, and cotton as a base for sculpting with latex. Please don’t use store latex, and ask if your actor is allergic. Starting with a clean face, put down a layer of Pros-Aide, when tacky, apply your choice of cotton or tissue. If you use tissue, separate each piece into single, thin sheets. Tear away the straight edges and apply to desired areas. If you use cotton balls, unwind each ball into a little strip, or shred them, and apply. I like to use salon coil: a big old box of cotton that comes in ONE long strip, ready to use. You just tear off what you need and start using it, I think it cost me $12 at Sally’s. You’ll need to modestly reapply some Pros-aide here and there as you add in cotton wherever you want it to stick. Now latex: use a spatula or brush of choice to apply. As the cotton or tissue gets wet with latex, you can sculpt on new facial features or wounds: sores, thick brow, sharper cheekbones. Sculpt it up, let it dry, and then apply makeup.
Roughed up: you could use purple or pink makeups to simulate hits and bruises, then add a blood jam for crusty scratch marks. What is blood jam? Well, you could order some, or use some stuff out of the kitchen to make it: you could experiment with blending flour or cornstarch into your blood mix. Have the red dye handy, but remember to make this dark red, so it looks crusty and dark. Play with other food colors to adjust it darker.
A good book for reference is The Complete Makeup Artist by Penny Delamar, ISBN 0-8101-1969-2. There's also books by Dick Smith and Tom Savini that show you cheap and easy makeups, some with just using stuff from your kitchen, like oatmeal, gelatin, etc.
Some great places to order from:
Burman Industries: http://burmanfoam.com/
Kryolan: http://www.kryolan.com
Warehouse 51: http://www.warehouse51.com/servlet/Store...
Cinema Secrets: http://www.cinemasecrets.com/
Ben Nye: http://bennye.com/
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Pros-aide: an adhesive, I prefer it to the better-known spirit gum. You can buy it from the companies above. Tear a makeup wedge in half short-ways, use the rough end to apply sparingly. Not too little, but please do not apply huge amounts, it has to come back off the face later, yeah?
Spirit gum: Yellow resin-based adhesive, the stuff you see at Halloween time
Latex: get this from the makeup stores only, don’t use the household stuff, it can have too much ammonia.
Bond-Off: an adhesive remover. Ask for this or their own brand when you order adhesive…please don’t forget, I have heard too many stories involving adhesive mishaps.
Out-of-the-kit: somewhat self explanatory, it’s a makeup someone does on set with what they have, as opposed to pre-made or pre-designed stuff. Notably it includes things like sculpting on wounds, gluing on hair, etc.
Blood Jam: use it for fake scratches
Mouth blood: safe and tasty for the mouth.
Bloods: use laundry detergent, Karo Syrup, Hershey’s, and Red Dye to mix a washable blood. Must test to see if it will wash out. Use equal parts detergent and Karo, then add dye and Hershey’s to desired color.
If you need more help, like blood recipes, other designs, etc, contact me and a bunch of other artists on The Makeup FX Group, a Yahoo! message board: http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/mak...
Good luck!
Margaret
Something off of ebay.
black eyeliner black contacts
eyeliner,
contacts,
you can use some dark purple eye shadow.
red lipstick with some liquid eyeliner on the forhead or cheek to make like a small stich or something.
Goodluck!
give him some DARK bags underneath his eyes. maybe give him two differnt colored eyes using color contacts. stay away from cuts and gore because most costume stores don't cary the good products unless yoou order online. you could get some temporary hair color and make his hair look crazy. go to the thrift store and get some nast looking clothes. dirty up his fingernails. don't let him brush his teeth for a while LOL. nasty i now but that will look great with all that junk in there. um dirty up his face too
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You should buy pinnacle studio ultimate version 11. It has so many great effects such as, "reverse effect", "body double effect", "stop motion animation effect", you can add bomb sounds, fire effects sound effects and music scores and much much more, there's over 100 effects and a variety of everything else. It's a great program and i use it for my videos. I bought it at bestbuy for $129.99. It's also HD camera program, but you don't need the HD its just a feature, and you can burn your videos in "BLURAY", It also has a greenscreen, so you can make yourself invisible like a ghost and even add background settings, the money is worth it. It's only compatible with windows XP and windows vista
hope it helped
Eyeliner and any make-up you can get from you mom without her noticing...maple syrup (add cornstarch for thickness) dyed red for blood...flour for like, a white face or white hair...