Two nights ago the season finale of the SyFy series "Face Off" aired. I missed the first episode of this series despite being very interested in seeing it from the first preview I saw. The premise behind this reality competition show was one that hasn't been done before (to my knowledge) and actually looked interesting. In this series "aspiring make-up artists" would go into each week with a challenge that would see them putting their skills as movie special effect make-up artists to the test, and each week they were judged by some pretty well known Hollywood names from the effects world and one person would be sent home until in the end only one remained and of course that person would get the awards.
The show of course had some interesting people on it, and while I wasn't overly attached to any wanting any one person to win I can't say there were too many that I really didn't like either. Maybe one or two that just seemed to not really care or that had a bit of an attitude, but overall the people were just regular people who loved doing movie makeup. I didn't really care who won last night, and honestly in the finale where four people competed for the prize 3 of them were extremely good and it could have gone to any of them.
The real draw to the show though was seeing all the Hollywood make-up done and how it was done, along with seeing the creative side of all these people in what they did in all their challenges. There is a lot that goes into doing this and they pulled off some great ideas and looks in very limited time frames. There were some that weren't so great too ... but overall there were some great works.
Each week had a different theme. One week for example was aliens, one was a gender swap where they took couples to be wed and made the man a woman and vice versa, and another was zombies. The zombies episode I really enjoyed, not just seeing everyone's spin on zombies but also in the twist that was given them that week. After the contestants all had begun their work, the host came in and said that not only were the zombies to be zombies but they were to be dancing zombies and the models had a dance routine they had to do and the makeups had to hold up. At the end watching the dance routine was very entertaining and fun. You can likely find it on Youtube so check that out.
The final episode was also fun. Each of the final four people was given a choice of fairy tales to take on, then each of those fairy tales had a spin to it. The four ended up being a haunted "Frog Prince", a psychedelic "Little Mermaid", a post-apocalyptic "Red Riding Hood", and an industrial "Hansel and Gretal". No one chose the option for Sleeping Beauty or outer space. Each person was to do two makeups, have a story for their makeup and a idea for a background that others would make for them, and the previous cast members were brought back to help out since this was such a large project.
The "Little Mermaid" was the least effective with some makeup flaws and an overall boring look. Even the background wasn't great and it was bolder than the characters which didn't help. The "Red Riding Hood" story was that the "Red Riding Hood" was a group of red cloaked warrior women who hunted and killed werewolves. It was a great concept with some very good makeup, though the Gatling gun was a bit cheesy, and the werewolf was a full body suit that wasn't this person's best work but was a very good costume. The glowing red eyes weren't great though, but put in with the background it was overall a success. The "Hansel and Gretal" showed a warped and twisted witch with some incredible makeup done down to children's hands pushing out on the stomach. The other character was Gretal with her cheeks stuffed full of candies. This was some great makeup and a pretty good background and story behind it ... but excellent makeup on the witch.
My favorite and the winner though was the haunted "Frog Prince". While it could have certainly been more "haunted" and my first thoughts were more ghostly, he pulled it off with some incredible makeup, great concept, and the background was excellent as well. His makeup on the frog prince, especially the prosthetics on the head, were great showing a tortured transformation from human to frog. He even built in a bladder like a frog would have that operated by way of a straw the model would use. That was extremely well done and the judges loved it. His take on the witch, making her more elemental than human with bark tones and mossy features and the like was a huge success as well.
Overall I really, really enjoyed this show. It was a great demonstration of the visual effects work done in movies and the creative process behind some of that. It was truly fun to watch them come up with new ideas and designs and implement them. Kinda makes me want to start drawing again even more than I already did, not that I have the time for it. If you can catch reruns or find it on Hulu or other online sites I would recommend checking it out and I hope to see them do another season of it next season...
No comments:
Post a Comment