fakeovers
All those undercover TV investigations (claiming serious intent and educational value) usually make me cringe. It’s not just the blackface as in Black.White. or Dans la peau d’un noir but the whole idea that a skinny TV presenter like Vanessa Minnillo can tell us what it feels like to be fat after a day in a fat-suit. Think about it; it makes as much sense as asking [a dumbed-down] Anthony Hopkins for serious insights into cannibalism.
But these celebrity fakeover shows are different. Maybe it’s just because they’re more honest — simply playing it for laughs. Maybe it’s watching a D-list celebrity making a complete arse of herself. Maybe it’s the result of watching too many caper movies, and too much Candid Camera when I was a kid. Whatever, I enjoy fakeover shows.
And the makeups are great: Celebrity Swaps on Channel 5 UK by Neill Gorton & Vanessa White; Anonymous on Ireland’s RTÉ by HybridFX; テレビ東京, the recent Japanese show, by Make-up Dimensions; and now Anónimos on Spain’s La Sexta by Plan 9 FX.
This is one aspect of globilisation which I can endorse.
update 21/02/2008: there are a selection of before and after images from fakeover shows at my MySpace site.
Do you have photo links for the latter two?
Plan 9 FX have promised me a set of before & after plus makeup application images which will be posted on themakeupgallery as soon as they are available. From the samples they’ve shown me the transformations are very effective.
In the meantime you can see some small publicity images on various Spanish TV websites if you google Anónimos & ‘la sexta’. But Plan 9 are unahappy with the quality of some of these images so I have not provided a link.
As to テレビ東京, I have so far only seen a clip of one of the transformations.
are there clips of any of those on you tube and such?
There are certainly some clips from Anónimos & テレビ東京 (but those might be difficult to find). There were some from the UK Celebrity Swaps. You’d need to poke around, searching by programme titles, celebrity name, and/or keywords (‘mask’, ‘disguise’, ‘prosthetic’ etc).
i found clips for anonimos, but none for the uk ones.
Thanks to Nacho Díaz and Óscar del Monte of Plan 9 FX there is now a new feature on Anónimos at themakeupgallery.
Nacho and Óscar have also posted images of a fakeover from the series featuring Inocencio Arias at the FX Lab.