themakeupgallery blog

There’s a number TV show formats being marketed or produced around the world that involve prosthetic makeup transformations either of celebrities or ‘ordinary’ volunteers and hidden camera techniques. They generally fall into one of two categories: the fakeover — usually celebrities in disguise and playing it for laughs; the in-your-shoes ‘investigation’ (volunteers become fat/blind/black for a day).

The shows include:

Anonymous — celebrity transformations played for laughs — originally showed in Ireland a couple of years ago with a second series last year. The format is now distributed by Eyeworks and local productions have broadcast in Spain (Anonimos) and Germany (Experiment Inkognito). Eyeworks publicity says that another ten options (including by Latin American, European and Asian companies) have been taken out, though at least one (Greece) is not being taken up. Channel 5 in the UK ran a couple of series of something similar as Celebrity Swaps, produced by the Flame Group, a few years ago.

The Big Experiment — in-your-shoes with a claimed serious value — showed in New Zealand and is now being marketed worldwide by Distraction. It has apparently been sold for production in France (TF1, as La grande expérience?), Italy and Belgium.

Black.White. — two families swap race, again it claimed to seriously challenge our perceptions. Originally produced by FX in the USA, there was a local production in France last year.

Does anyone have any information on local productions of any of these or similar shows?

Even better, if anyone worked on any of these shows, I’d love to feature some of the transformations in themakeupgallery (with credits and links to the artists website of course).

Thanks

update 20/02/2008: I understand that there are also ‘fakeover’ shows in Japan (TV Tokyo) and Korea (SBS): if anyone has information on or images from these, please let me know.

update 21/02/2008: there are a selection of before and after images from various fakeover shows at my MySpace site.