LiveScience: His eyes were black as night, his teeth jagged, his nostrils unnaturally large. It's said that when movie audiences first saw him, they fainted in fright.
Lon Chaney's 1925 portrayal of the Phantom of the Opera was spooky indeed — and an impressive testament to what the actor could do with greasepaint and a bit of thin wire to pull back his nostrils, mimicking the open nose of a skull.
7 comments:
This is a really interesting article because it just goes to show that not everything is entirely lost to digital production and effects. Make-up artists and the art of make-up are so very essential to theatre, film, television, and live entertainment. Especially with the change in technology and expectation, the attention to detail is now incredible, and it has to be. I also thought it was interesting that the idea of 3D printing arose in this article and is especially relevant because we are soon getting a new 3D printer and maybe that could be a potential use for it.
This is like what I was talking about in the above article. It's amazing how film fakery has evolved. Like the article said, it took two tracks. On the one hand, a lot of effects have moved to CGI, which makes much more amazing things happen more realistically and cheaply and easily. The other side is the amazing development in physical effects. Like the article said, with the invention of HD cameras and TVs, along with the desire for better (and more) effects by the audience, physical effects have to be spot on, and that has led to advances in silicon, molding techniques, and such, as well as the integration of technology into real effects like inversion tables and 3d printing. I know CMU was looking at getting a 3d printer, and I was talking with Jon Ward about what we would do with it. I think we would find some uses in it for the props shop, just as people have done in movies and in theatre to bring more realistic effects to the audience.
I've never really thought of using 3D printing as a means to do prognostics for makeup. But it actually really makes sense now that I think about it. It was interesting seeing how they really use any and all resources as a way to get the desired effect. It's really fascinating to see how technology changes and yet stays the same within our industry.
Its strange how similar this article is to the one from tested. It even has some of the same quotes and facts. Either way I like what the article brought up about how its not just the desire for more gore that's pushing the effects industry but also the introduction of higher quality cameras. Now that cameras can pick up more detail the effects have to look even more realistic. I also liked how it brought up that having real effects as opposed to cgi because t really changes how the actors interact with everything.
This is quite an uplifting article for someone like me who is interested in doing practical effects. It is very true that having something tangible changes the way the actors act, making the whole experience more believable. Sure you can put an actor in a tub of water and cg in organs around them, but will they really behave in as grossed out a manner if they don't actually feel those textures? A very interesting article with some very important points addressed.
On of my favorite things to do is use tools and ideas from other jobs to do the job at hand. That's one of the reasons I love theatre so much. I have had people tell me that effects are all done on computers these days and that it's impossible to do anything cool with out CGI. This article does a really good job of pointing out how wrong that idea is. There is a whole lot that skilled people can do with seemingly nothing. By combining tools and materials from all types of jobs they really pull off great effects. I really enjoyed reading about how the effects for Harry Potter were built because those effects have impressed my when I saw the films and I've wondered how they were done.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing for the rest of my life but I hope that at some point I'll get to work on effects like these and combine cutting edge technology and old school techniques to make some really great moments to help tell a story on stand or on film.
This is an interesting article and relates to the comment I wrote on the tested article. I commented that I would be interested in seeing how traditional special effects and new technology could meld and this talks about that exactly. It is interesting to read that even with things like computer modeling, people still prefer to sculpt by hand which sometime leads to "happy accidents." This is a reason why I think CGI will never fully replace traditional special effects techniques, there is a human aspect and an art to it that technology will never be able to match. But still it's cool to see how they interact.
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