The Wise One

Lessons Learnt.

Because of the things we had learnt from all of the other shots regarding makeup, e.g. Pungin and The Evil father shots we knew if we were to go into The Wise One scenes with the same approach we were in for big trouble ........ the problems wouldn't have arisen if we had a big budget and a large makeup department but we had neither.

The location shots for The Wise One were always a major factor on everything, regarding what he would look like and what he could do facilally.

Pungin's makeup took 8 hours to apply and the makeup procedure itself for both actor and myself as I was applying it was Knackering, to say the least, after that I would have to spend a whole day shooting. All this is great if you are filming on set but a location shoot with a small budget, we were heading into trouble. One thing I'm very good at is logistics and problems that may occur during filming, I get on everyone's nerves as I over prepare and try to cover every aspect and angle that could go wrong and have to have the answer to hand, because once you are at the location anything can cause delays and avoiding them because of problems you could have foreseen is time well spent. I have all the worry before the shoot but on the shooting day if I've done my homework I generally relax and enjoy the shoot. I've been on other peoples shoots when this is not the case and believe me it's uncomfortable and horrible, people are all on edge and very emotional and all of this could have been avoided with a lot of preparation and common sense.

So I knew I was not going to be applying prosthetic pieces to the actors head on location, but instead going for a full snug fitting foam latex head piece, yes I would be applying makeup around the eyes but that takes minutes instead of hours.

Jim Callanan the actor who plays The Wise One has makeup applied around his eyes this matches the skin tones of the full prosthetic headpiece.

The foam latex Wise One headpiece, very expensive but worth every penny, it fitted perfectly and took seconds to apply.

Hands were a different problem, I knew I didn't want the actors hands to be normal I wanted something fitting and somehow related to his face. The first shoot we were doing was when The Wise One is watching The Small One as a child playing outside his home, so having this luxury of being inside for the first shot.

I decided to apply latex strips and see how long the procedure would take.

Pre Prepared Latex Strips

I was very pleased with the results when finished but they took TWO HOURS to do, this was a problem, no way could we apply them on location, it just wasn't feasible and practical, I would have to come up with another solution.
While I was thinking about The Wise Ones hands I had about another thousand hair follicles to punch into the Wise One’s headpiece, the five thousands or so hair follicles I had already punched in using a very fine crochet hook before seemed fine but once we had done the first shot I knew that problems could arise especially if the wind should blow on exteriors and also for the dying scene where he would be lying down, there just would have not been enough hair to cover the back, so more hair was added and that worked fine.

Now back to the hands, I decided to make latex gloves that matched the original makeup, hopefully once complete they would take seconds to put on and that time would be invaluable for the shooting days.

On the days leading up to the shoots Jim Callanan the actor playing The Wise One was very busy and not available to cast his hands, so rather than let that slow down the preparation for the shooting days I decided to work around the problem. On a very quick meeting with Jim I asked him to quickly try on a pair of surgical latex gloves, I found a pair that fit him perfectly, using the latex gloves as a size reference I made a makeshift frame using a vegetable rack and very strong crocodile clips to hold it into position, also the piece of dowel that was going to be part of the stand was also held firmly into place, a screw was already screwed into one side of the dowel so once the casting mixture was pored in and dried the dowel would not be able to slide out.

Makeshift frame using a vegetable rack and very strong crocodile clips, this held the surgical glove in place for poring the casting mix.

To save money I made my own casting stone as true dental casting stone is very expensive and I knew how to strengthen Plaster of Paris

Instead of just mixing water into the plaster of paris you first mix Marvin Medium glue into the water, use a lot, pour that in and mix, the glue, makes a much stronger bind and if you use enough of the glue the plaster is bomb proof, I still have the hand cast now as good as ever.

Once I had cast the hand and cast a round base on the opposite side to use as a stand, I now could work on applying the latex makeup as I had already done once on Jim’s real hands, only this time three times thicker to ensure it wouldn’t rip.

The hand shaped mould was then covered in latex and the latex strips applied.

I only needed one hand mould as I just needed to reverse the direction of the hand mould to do the other hand, once the latex and makeup had been applied, I carefully, using a thin artist’s brush dusted talc between the mould and the glove separating it, slowly but surely doing this constantly adding talc to the brush, I was able to remove the latex glove hand with no problems.

The hands were coloured using the same skin colours as the headpiece and nails were also added again coloured to match the first makeup shots.

I was able to make several pairs of hands using the techniques and by pre painting them, save more time. Talc was dusted inside, in preparation for a smooth fitting by the actor on the shooting days.

The hands were pre packed in plastic tubs with the black wrist coverings, these would ensure that the edge of the hands at the wrist could not be seen.

The hands were then packed carefully for transporting to the shoot.

Evidently they worked so well on the exterior shots, I decided to use them on the final interior shot and again the time saved was better used filming and getting more shots to choose from.

The Wise One Wood Shoot

Using the same location as before to match previous shots, Penshaw Woods were used, very close to civilisation but just far enough away as to not have the shoot disturbed.

Penshaw Monument.

Penshaw Woods

Carl applies makeup to Jim's face before putting on the headpiece and hands.

Carl prepares The Wise One costume before shooting begins.

David Neal (Pungin) wanted to help out on the shoot as this was to be the last location shoot of the film, it was a nostalgic shoot as the production was nearing it’s end.