1950's Film Noir Make-Up

 Recently our class was given a task to create a scene that fit a genre in groups and one of the groups (that I wasn't in) was given the genre Film Noir. The task was concentrated on the cinematography of the scene but the group wanted to make it look as close to the genre as possible in order to use the footage for other things as well. Due to this, I signed up to do the hair and make-up for the Femme Fatale character, Miss Darlington. I took references form the internet shown to the left and went from there.

From my references it was clear that the make-up is based on a naturally beautiful look with Luscious red lips and dainty blush on the cheeks. I also noticed that in most of the pictures I found the eyebrows were dark and shaped. Since I couldn't actually shape the actresses eyebrows I just made sure they were dark and filled a thinner line with some darker colour.

I based the hair on the top picture though the actresses hair was a bit thinner than that woman's seems to be. I curled it with a straightener and then using a comb I brushed out the curls to give a more natural look. If a piece of hair was being particularly difficult I teased it a little before curling it again. I tried to keep most of her hair parted to one side of her shoulders leaving only a little bit trailing down her back and a slightly larger section than that shaped over the opposite shoulder.
I pinned her fringe parts up into the rest of her hair to keep her face clear and from there my only task was to apply touch up's to her lipstick and to clear sweat from the face of the male actor.

I enjoyed taking on this task and I am proud of the work I have done. I received good feedback from the director and hope to do more of this in the future.

My 2014 Rialto 48 Hour Challenge Experience

The Rialto 48 Hour Challenge of 2014 was a completely different experience than that of the previous year for my team, Umbrella Fortress Productions. We had vast differences between our team, our preparation, and also our execution.

This year I played the role of the producer and as that my task was to organize releases and contracts, keep the crew on task, and to prepare locations to film at. Our crew was a small unit of merely four second year students in the Digital Media class at the Southern Institute of Technology. The decision to keep our crew small was a pre-planned and calculated one. The previous year our crew consisted of about 8 or 9 students in the first year of our course and we felt that because of the amount of crew that we had, we made our task far more convoluted and difficult than it needed to be. The director, Lana Black, and I discussed the points at which our team fell flat the previous year and the large crew came up and so we eliminated that risk this year by keeping our crew nice and small and concise.

Another point that came up in the discussions about 2013 was not having a clear idea of the story that our team was telling. We came to the conclusion that this had been due to a lack of pre-planning and a very complex tale filled with the thoughts of our entire team. We decided to take a risk and make 2014 work completely different. For the months leading up to Rialto 48 Challenge weekend Lana and I thought out and wrote down ideas for most of the basic genre’s we thought might be thrown our way; Comedy, Musical, Crime, Horror, Adventure, Fantasy and more. We wanted to be prepared for almost anything that we could be given. We also made the executive decision that our writing team would consist of the smallest amount of people as possible. This was so that when it came to writing it, there weren’t too many cooks in the kitchen I suppose you could say.

By the time the weekend of potential doom came around we felt far more prepared than the previous year. Upon receiving our text with our genre we breathed a sigh of relief. We had been given Mystery/Puzzle. We flipped back to our notes and the idea we came up with for the Crime genre a few weeks prior fitted perfectly into Mystery. “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” So we got to work. We finished plotting the story to fit our genre with just myself, Lana, and our ‘soundy’ Kim, who expressed a keen interest in being involved in the story process, present. By about 9pm on the Friday night we had our story planned and plotted, and our actors hired and organized, we ventured down to the Mac Lab at SIT Downtown to get onto Final Draft and begin writing our story out. I took charge of the script-writing while Lana (who had bravely taken on the roles of director and cinematographer) got to work on rough story boards along side me. By 11 that night we were finished, packed-up, and on our way home to get a good night sleep before we began filming at 8am the next morning. I felt absolutely no stress at this time because we had specifically planned the story for only one day with no night shooting involved whatsoever, and only one location, which meant absolutely no travel time. I was pleased to say the least. Most of my job was done with the fact that we already had our location; our own home, and scheduling would be easy as we were shooting in the same amount of time as the story unfolded. Actors were organized to be picked up in the morning and I had prepared some catering in our previous grocery shop. It was on our drive home on that Friday night that I thought back to that time in 2013 and realized that while I was on my home now, back then I would have still been sitting in our team’s headquarters planning the plot without even the smallest grasp on the intended story. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Shooting commenced at 8am on the Saturday morning and as the first shot was being taken I hashed out a quick schedule, making sure to overschedule for every shot in order to know the latest time that we could possibly be finished that night. Even then we were scheduled to wrap at 8pm that night. There were times throughout the day where we ran just slightly behind schedule because we were attempting tricky shots on a shopping trolley following our main character from point A to point B and the trolleys wheels didn’t take to our carpet very well. It was hilariously fun to try and work these out. We had tested it out slightly the night before when we got home, Lana pushed the trolley and looked at the screen of her iPhone that I was holding and informed me of how she wanted the shot and we thought it would work with our Canon camera the next day. Once again, Lana controlled the trolley while I sat inside it and controlled the camera for her and in the end the time we spent on it definitely paid off. We had two pretty professional looking track shots in our small amateur film. Our next shots following ran very smoothly and jumped us ahead of schedule in no time. We ended up having breaks galore throughout the entire day when we had to wait until actors were free to be picked up and things like that. We had a pretty relaxed day all up. A lot of this was due to how well our crew worked together. I loved that as soon as a shot was done Matt, our gaffer, would quickly jump in and get the next shot ready with the help of Kim when he needed her. Lana worked with the actor and set up the shot quickly, and as soon as she was ready so was Kim, holding the boom, ready to go. I thought our team was just absolutely brilliant!  By 7pm I was serving dinner of pasta to actors and crew and we only had one small scene to shoot afterwards. Once that was all done with we cleaned our house and headed into the SIT Downtown Campus to begin a rough edit.

This is where we ran into our first problem. Lana took control of the edit and I waited until it was ready to grade, making coffees for her in the meantime to keep her awake and stress free. Around 10pm Lana had gotten half way through the rough cut when her computer decided to freeze on her. We waited and waited for it to unfreeze but when it seemed obvious that it wouldn’t, we restarted the computer again and Lana had to start her rough cut over. However this wasn’t too stressful. The year before we were still shooting at that time and so we felt still cheery and that we could in fact get it done.

We left for some sleep and returned in the morning to begin cleaning the cuts and making the grade. I worked on our team intro and our credits while Lana chopped at our edit with skill and precision. By 1pm I was onto the grade. I decided to go for a very de-saturated grade similar to that of Saw during all the detective scenes. I thought this fit the Mystery genre well. The grade took a while to render but by 5.45pm we had completely exported our film ready to send.

Upon sending the film in the post to Dunedin to be entered and judged we were ecstatic. It was a far less stressful ordeal than the previous year had been.

I am incredibly proud of our 2014 48 Hour film; Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar. I think that we did an amazing job to keep stress-free and create an awesome film in 48 Hours. 

During the first set of holidays this year I was involved in two very different film shoots. One was the third year project, Bones of Essimer, for which I was brought on to help with costuming and the art department, and I was also on the art team for James Wilkinson's short, Click Clack, Click. The two experiences have been vastly different in some ways and yet similar in others.

One of the similarities that I noticed and loved was that being on the art team can involve doing some seemingly unimportant tasks but really each one was important and appreciated in its own way.

James Wilkinson's shoot began on the Tuesday evening of the first week of the holidays, though I had had some minor involvement in the week prior as well. I arrived on set early to dress shop windows for the scene that we would be shooting that evening. I loved being able to speak to the shop owners who were incredibly excited to be involved in such a new and interesting process. I believed that throughout the night I wouldn't have very much to do but oh how I was wrong. My night was spent cleaning windows and the following night was smoothing out carpet. Menial tasks at first thought but upon watching the rushes with the crew my heart warmed to hear James call out, "What a clean window," and "That carpet looks stunning guys." It felt awesome that such a small thing was appreciated by the director. I felt as if I really was a part of the crew and I loved it. On the third night we were shooting in a restaurant and I really loved working with my HOD, Steven Woller. His view of the world of the film was so complete it was interesting to watch the little touches he began to apply like dirty napkins and water glasses, things that might be over-looked on a more amateur shoot. He inspired me to start thinking about what was needed. I thought about the two wine glasses on the families table and how they would need some left in them but stopped to think about which character would be further through. I listened to James as he directed them and noticed that the man was lost in his phone and so I filled his glass more because I thought that his character wouldn't be as far through his wine as the mother would who was enjoying her dinner and chatting with her daughter. I learnt so much from being on this film about how a set should run, what call sheets need to look like, how to listen for director and 1st AD calls, and I really enjoyed the experience of learning all of these things.

Bones of Essimer has been an incredibly large and extensive process. It is a Games Cinematic made up of both CG animation, as well as live action acting, set in a post-apocalyptic world where the inhabitants have learnt to live with what they can salvage, it follows the story of an ex-slave who has become a slaver, on a journey to save a stranger's baby from the Bone Cult. Being on the art department for this has been incredibly challenging. Although I was originally tasked into costuming, due to my inability to sew, for every day that I was free during the two week holiday I tasked myself to helping with props, sets, costumes, and anything that I had any ability to help in. It has been an amazing bonding experience so far where we have gotten stuck in and used kiwi ingenuity to get ready for our first day of shooting. We roped in other students as well including one who studies fashion, and two from construction. They were amazing to have and I believe they have had an awesome time learning about how film works. One thing I have noticed about this film is that post-apocalyptic look, and student handy work go very well hand in hand. Some of the things we have made would not be very good as useful household furniture but they definitely had the right look for the film. By the thursday night before the shoot on Friday we were in a massive rush to get things done but we got there.

The shoot days so far have run a bit differently to my experience on Click Clack Click. I noticed that due to everyone knowing each other and being well bonded the shoot was a little more casual. Calls for 'quiet on set' weren't listened to every time and people did tend to relax a little more. It didn't bring the shoot down at all because it was well scheduled and everyone respected that it was a job and it had to be done. However, I think that if we had been on a real time pressure it may have caused some issues. I enjoyed being on set, even when things went wrong (as they do in film) everyone stayed positive and on track which I really liked. It made me feel less stressed to see that the people above me weren't worried and had things under control as much as possible. This created a lot of trust. One thing I would have liked to have being on the costuming department and dressing people for the scenes coming up would have been a detailed schedule including a shot list. It would have been a huge help when it came to making sure the right people were ready at the right time without having to ask the 1st AD every few minutes when he had other things to do and to worry about. Other than that I really enjoyed everything about the shoot and cant wait to keep shooting and get the project finished.