themakeupgallery blog

Hey I enjoyed Saturday at IMATS London.

Many thanks to those makeup artists who spared me some of their valuable time, especially Davy Jones, Neill Gorton and Charles Porlier. Looking at the work Davy did with HybridFX for the BBC’s Hyperdrive one can only despair that such excellent work can go into such complete dross. But the prosthetics for Sienna Guillory on display at Neill’s stand have got me practically drooling over the prospect for the later episodes of The Virgin Queen.

Neill Gorton’s keynote prosthetics application drew a big and appreciative crowd. And that was some big silicone appliance he used on the guy from MouldLife!

The MUD presentation on ‘Prosthetics in about an Hour’ was a hoot and left me breathless. I liked their female Samurai demon too.

Charles Porlier gave what sounded like a heap of sensible advice for any aspiring makeup artist looking to choose a makeup school. And if you missed it then look out for the Makeup Schools back issue of Makeup Artist Magazine.

As always the sheer patience of the bodypainting models totally astounded me: they standing there being painted when I arrived and some of them were still being painted when I left!

Oh yeah, just how many times can you plug one book during a makeup application? There should have been a prize on the Joe Blasco stand for whoever got the answer right. Better still there should be a legal limit.

Introducing the competition like in the US show was a very positive move and an added interest on the floor of the exhibition.

Now if only PPI would decide to come next year and bring some of their PPI Players. If there is one thing the London show is missing it is high quality prosthetic makeup demonstrations on the floor of the exhibition where you can see what is happening up close.

One thing Michael Key and Makeup Artist Magazine should consider is how they can develop this as an International and European show. There seems to be little effort put into communicating in any language other than English: for instance there appeared to be no multilingual version of the Program nor any multilingual announcements. The cost of simultaneous translation for the keynote speakers into French and/or German may well be prohibitive but there is no reason why it should not be possible to provide transcripts or even summaries.

I didn’t think I’d be able to get to the Makeup Artist Magazine Trade Show (IMATS) in London this year - the first year I would have missed it. But I can now go for most of Saturday so look out for a brief report next week (and hopefully pictures on themakeupgallery shortly thereafter).

For me Saturday looks the more interesting day though I’ll miss Michael Westmore who’s speaking on Sunday. But the two Speakers I most want to see on Saturday are on at the same time - an unfortunate clash as anyone interested in prosthetics will face a dilemma: I’d guess this is a result of speaker availability rather than incompetent scheduling or outright malevolence!

This year, for the first time at the London IMATS, there will be a makeup competition but I’ve seen no timings on this so I’ll just have to hope.

Oscar nominations are due to be announced at the end of this month. According to Variety the shortlist for nominations for best makeup consists of the following movies:
The Chronicles of Narnia
Cinderella Man
A History of Violence
The Libertine
The New World
Mrs Henderson Presents
Star Wars: Episode III.

There’s sometimes a question about the relative merits of in-your-face makeup transformations compared with with subtle characterisations. But this shortlist does cover a range of types of makeups.

There’s no great surprises. I wouldn’t personally rate Mrs Henderson Presents as outstanding and The New World I can only judge on the basis of the stills I’ve seen. But I accept that all these films contain fine makeups.

There’s some obvious omissions but Memoirs of a Geisha, I had mixed feelings about and it seems to have taken a lot of knocking and maybe the Skull Island residents in King Kong got overlooked in a push to get other effects nominated. The only real surprise is the absence of Sin City where I thought the makeups were superb.

So why am I not excited?

Well it’s all a bit predictable so I suppose that’s part of it. But also none of the makeups that touched me this year made the cut: the makeup on Diane Keaton in The Family Stone; Felicity Huffman in TransAmerica; Mónica Cervera in 20 Centímetros; 2046…

Okay at least some of those may not have eligible but I’m still not excited.