Does anyone have any information on this in-your-shoes TV show currently showing in Denmark. The show, which features radical makeup transformations by Per Kapper, appears to be based on The Big Experiment format which oiginated in New Zealand.
Any images would be particularly appreciated.
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.
I’ve got a soft spot for celebrity fakeover shows, so I’m looking forward to Experiment Inkognito the latest version of the Anonymous format distributed internationally by Eyeworks. In the first episode Jeanette Biedermann undergoes a radical transformation with a lot of help from Robert Rebele.
There have already been shows in Ireland (Anonymous) and Spain (Anónimos) and there is apparently a Romanian version airing (on Direct Target?); Greek, Brazilian, Mexican, French and Norwegian versions are in the pipeline. If anyone has any information on — or better still, images from — any of these, please get in touch.
I’m far less keen — they generally make me cringe — on those ‘walk in my shoes’ reality TV shows that claim some serious agenda, but the makeups are interesting. So if anyone has information on versions of The Big Experiment format that originated in New Zealand and particularly on the forthcoming French version (to be called La Grande Expérience I believe), I’d like to hear about them too.
update 21/02/2008: there are a selection of before and after images from various fakeover shows at my MySpace site.
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.
I have just discovered that one of the participants, Laurent Richier, is an actor: check out his Blog.
The same thing happened with Black.White. — Bruno Wurgel, teacher, turned out to be Bruno Marcotulli, bit part actor and teacher, and Rose Wurgel turned out to be Rose Bloomfield, wannabe actress.
I’m not sure what that means for the honesty of the show but it sure doesn’t do much for it’s perceived integrity. Anyway, it’s starting tonight on Canal+ (France) so you can judge for yourselves. Please let me know what you think of it if you watch it.
Dans la peau d’un noir (official site & themakeupgallery feature) is a French docu-tainment TV show inspired by — or maybe franchised from — Actual Reality’s Black.White. (official site & themakeupgallery feature).
Like Black.White. it takes a black family and a white family and swaps their apparent racial identity with makeup. It then films them in ‘real-life’ situations, and examines their reactions using the standard tools of reality TV (video diaries, the hot-house environment of sharing a house, etc).
Having, at last, seen Black.White. on DVD I remain as unconvinced about its serious, investigative value and less convinced of its ‘reality’ than I was when I originally posted. How Dans la peau d’un noir shapes up remains to be seen: though not by me as I don’t get Canal+.
If anyone watches it when it shows next week, I’d be interested to hear your views (or to see better images of the makeup.). I’d also like to know if there are any other international franchised versions forthcoming.
Blackface and yellowface makeups have always made me cringe.
I can live with a lot of movie fat-suits – though not the cheap fat jokes. But blackface and yellowface are different. It’s bad enough in a dramatic role that avoids stereotyping but when it’s done for fun in a “fakeover” show it’s really disturbing. It’s odd because I don’t see anything wrong in and of itself with an actress playing a character whose ethnic origin is other than her own (anymore than I objected to Rock Hudson playing all those straight roles) but…
The whole issue is entangled (possibly inseparably) with the issues of how non-whites have been portrayed in films and, for decades, the practical exclusion of non-white actors and actresses from the Hollywood system But it’s more than that.
There’s a lot of interesting information on the issues around yellowface and blackface and their ignoble history in the movies in Robert Ito’s ‘A Certain Slant‘ (Bright Lights Film Journal) and at Bambizzoozled.
So what about the forthcoming FX Networks show Black.White. which according to the press release ‘examines race with an extraordinary approach by putting new faces on an African-American family, the Sparks, and Caucasian family, the Wurgels’? The BBC did something similar, though far less ambitous, in a show called Trading Races a couple of years ago but I was deeply unconvinced that anything of value came out of it (or by the makeups for that matter).
But Black.White. does come with powerful backing from Ice Cube. The makeups are by Keith Vanderlaan, and the first publicity images showing Rose Wurgel transformed into a black girl looked convincing; I am less sure about about the more recent images showing the transformation of Renee Sparks into a white woman.
Hopefully, Black.White. will live up to its aspiration to be extraordinarily provocative, entertaining and deep. It’s a big ask. One thing that worries me is that if (maybe especially if) it is even half-way decent it will open the floodgates for a whole set of valueless black-for-a-day investigations like the recent plague of ‘investigative’ fat-suits.
