Application - Special Makeup Effects for Sondheim's INTO THE WOODS

This is the show that I was fortunate enough to win an ORCHID award for Excellence in Special Makeup Effects in the greater Cincinnati area in the summer of 1996. Press here to see award.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTS
This is the application process of the special makeup effects for the wolf and witch in Sondheim's INTO THE WOODS. These photos show appliances being attached to actor's faces and then what they had to look like afterwards. Remember I told you that my timing was the SINGLE MOST DIFFICULT thing about this makeup job. I had 1 1/2 hours to get them both into the makeup. The actor playing the wolf was only in his makeup about five minutes - I had 7 or 8 minutes to get him out of all of that into straight makeup and another wolf character made up PLUS a costume change for the main guy as the prince. The witch was in her makeup about half of the show and then right before intermission she changes to full glamour makeup in about 4 minutes. Surprisingly, this makeup was easier to deal with than the wolf. The photos are not that good but I wanted to give you the idea of what it takes to do this kind of work.

PREPARATION
What is being shown in the photo is the actor who played the part of the wolf and the prince, just sitting there waiting for me to start. I have just cleansed his face with a mild astringent. Makes the glue stick better on less greasy skin surfaces. What brave souls these people are. These actors who want to do this special makeup stuff really have little idea what they are getting themselves into. Of course, if you have to do life casts as I did in this case, then they get a sense of a lot of what this kind of stuff entails. They get indoctrinated to it quickly. Most of them don't mind it. If they have a hard time living through the life casting phase then you can pretty much count on the problems arising when they have the application phase done. But I view this phase as the fun part. I had a lot of preliminary work I did before this point. I prepainted the appliances and then had only minor touch up to do after applying the pieces. I used mostly cream makeups and liners to create the blend of the appliances into the actor's skin as you will see below.

APPLIANCE APPLICATION
Here you see the snout appliance having been fitted and glued to the actor's face and the actor is holding the chin piece in place as the glue sets. I used the last of my 355 adhesive on this show. I regret that they quit making this glue. In my estimation it was the best there was. I have used Pros Aide but that is so very hard to remove that I needed something quick and easy to clean up with solvents taking into account how little time I had to get him out of this makeup into straight makeup. In this case I didn't take as much care with the edges of the appliances though they were still VERY thin. But the nearest audience was about 15 to 20 feet away so I could get away with some minor mistakes. The pieces, however, still must be applied in the precise position they were intended to go or the finished product would be harder to legitimize.

APPLIANCE BLENDING
In this photo I have just finished blending in some of the edges of the appliances with cream makeup to begin to hide the edges of the appliances. The chin was less of a worry than the upper snout because the chin was mostly covered by the beard, as you will see further on. The makeup was similar to the color used to prepaint the appliances so the blend was fairly clean. I used long strokes of varied colors to give a fur-like appearance as the wolf would have hair on the face. This detail is one I probably could have left out because from the distance to the audience they couldn't see the detail work anyway. This detailing was done using small flat and pointed brushes. I especailly like working with brushes because for me, they handle so much better and I haven't found decent makeup pencils like some I have had in the past which held nice sharp points with which to do individual hair like markings on an actor's face. So I use brushes and it works well.

WIG ATTACHED
At this point I have pretty much finished all I needed to do with the blending of the appliances and have moved on to adding the wig and gluing that down. Believe it or not, on the Broadway program the wig approach that they used was similar but it didn't even look like it was glued down. It just fit on the actor's head like a cap and was loose around the forehead. I didn't like that and this actor was so animated with this role that I felt it HAD to be glued for it to be secure. The ears were already built into the wig which I adapted from an old wig I had laying around the shop. I created the bald front, added in the slush molded latex ears which were glued to the bald front of the wig. I then punched in a new hair line from about the middle of the head forward, around the ears and into the widow's peak front as shown, adding in the white hairs to give a similar look to the whole makeup as what was done on Broadway. I didn't create or design this makeup per-say I just copied the original to some degree adding in some personal touches that no-one really would ever see.

BEARD ATTACHED
Here you can see that the front of the wig is firm and secure and the actor can bounce around all over the place which he did a lot of in this role. I have begun to apply the beard section. I do know how to ventilate beards and such on lace but I already had this beard that I had previously used for the Fagin character in the show OLIVER (which I had done the makeup for sometime earlier). So I figured I could adapt this same beard for the wolf's chin area. This was a purchased item (about $25.00) And as I said, the chin area where I blended it, was usually covered with the beard anyway so I had less work to get that part applied than the snout area. Notice also, that I built the teeth into the appliance and just prepainted them white rather than glue in acrylic teeth which would have taken too long to deal with each time this had to be done. It was a little tricky at times to get those out of the baked mold, but plenty of powder and a lot of patience and I was successful all but once. I had to glue one of the canine teeth back on to a finished appliance because I pulled too hard trying to get it out of a mold.

FINISHED APPLICATION
What you see here is the final product of the makeup application. Both upper and lower snout pieces have been glued in place, blended, wig and beard section added. I blacked out his teeth with tooth enamel so they would not show underneath the appliance. Of course, I am not pleased with this application. If I had my way I would have taken at least and hour and a half to get this on as I know it should have gone - with exactness. But alas, in theater there is just never enough time to get it done right because of the restrictions of space and time. I live for the time when I get to do a makeup job that is extensive, and where I can take two to three hours to apply and finish. This makeup job, however, was a success and the people I had to please were pleased as was the audience and critics. For a larger view go to this VIEW BIG PHOTO. Otherwise, I doubt I would have ever won the ORCHID AWARD I did for this job. Press here to see award.

ANOTHER FINISHED VIEW
This is a view of the actor with full makeup and costume he wore, ready to go out onstage. Notice the hands were simple gloves the costumer created that had some of the fur that made up his chest piece on the backs of the hands and to that she added long false nails painted black. They were pretty effective in that they looked like paws with long black claws. He had a piece of the fur around his neck to keep any part of his neck from showing through. It all worked out pretty well. I didn't like the costume he wore and if I had done it he would have had the full fur body suit with the bright blue jacket and funky boots that the guy wore in the Broadway production. That fur body suit had a rubber chestpiece that made him appear much more dog like and it also had the "private parts" built into the suit like any male dog would display. When I saw this show in New York, the house was full of young school kids and here was this wolf with full, obvious privates, thrusting at the audience. I was embarassed for those poor kids but I guess if they didn't know about the differences between males and females before, they certainly knew after that show. Bizarre!!

HANDSOME PRINCE AND RAPUNZEL
This is a view of the actor with his girlfriend who played Rapunzel in the production. He has made the transformation from the wolf to the handsome prince. This is the makeup and costume that he had to go to in about 8 minutes while being cleaned up, changing and delivering some of his lines from the wings for the second actor who was doing the Granny and Little Red Ridinghood eating scene. Of course, the minute I got him out of the wolf makeup I had to reapply it to the second actor who was a stagehand filling in for this quick change. Of course, not full wolf makeup was applied because he was in Granny's nightie so I didn't need the wig. He wore the snout and chin with the beard and the gloves. And it was done behind a scrim so it was so brief and minimal that it didn't present a problem. Getting the main actor out of it was the trick but we never missed.

PRELIMINARY WITCH COMMENTS
This section shows some photos of the witch makeup during application. I was shooting against strong backlight and didn't think to adjust for that on the camera so some of these photos are realtively dark but again just some examples for your perusal. The witch makeup took about 35 minutes and she was in her makeup about half of the show and then right before intermission she changes to full glamour makeup in about 4 minutes. Surprisingly, this makeup was easier to deal with than the wolf.

GET READY
This is a view of the actress who played the witch. She has her hair up already before application of the makeup. This was because she had to get the wig on and it was easier for her to start this way. She was very much ready for this application. She was prepared, in that, she had already cleansed her face beforehand so that saved me a minute or two in the process. She is such a lovely person to be destroyed this way but she thought it was a kick so didn't mind. She thought the process was too much fun. This costume was hot and heavy and she was in it for at least an hour or almost. But it was very effective for the character. Again, two costumes had to be created because of the doubling while I cleaned her up for her transformation.

GET READY 2
This is just a closeup of the actress before the application began. I wanted to get these photos for both these actors so they would have rememberances when I got them developed. She is really a very pretty girl but she didn't stay that way long. I was so very impressed with this actresses performance. She was as good as many I have seen on Broadway and now is pursuing the possibility of a career in the business. She is so talented and won't have trouble getting hired. She sings, acts, dances, directs, produces - the standard triple threat and more.

APPLICATION
This photo shows the beginning of the application of the prosthetics created for the witch. I was so very surprised at how small these appliances were. She has a very small face anyway but the appliances were not that extreme either. I didn't want to give her a huge nose and huge chin. Rather, I opted for smaller, subtle pieces but when they were on were very effective. They added just enough to her face to distort it and I added huge gray eyebrows with plenty of deepening age lines, undereye bags, and wrinkles. These of course, were all painted on with water based makeup over the cream makeup used to blend the prepainted appliances. I used Duo surgical adhesive to blend the edges on both hers and the wolf's makeup. It is water soluable so it makes the quick clean ups I had to do that much easier and the pieces held very well on her with this light weight latex glue. I still used 355 glue on the wolf though because of his animated style. Giving her just enough of the haggard, old-age look was enough.

APPLICATION 2
Shown is the application, and the blending with Duo surgical adhesive, of the nose and chin appliances. Also in this shot, I added age lines, eyebags, sagging jowls, etc. all of which were painted on using brushes (which I love to work with) and then blended to smooth out hard edges. I decided that to clean her up in 4 minutes or less I would have to use water based makeups which she could simply wipe off with baby-wipes and it would be done as quickly as she could do that. Then we began the application of the glamour makeup after that - with a clean face. Gave us the opportunity to apply beauty makeup on a clean face and most of the transformation time was spent in doing that. Removal was easy - pull off the appliances , wipe and go on from there. Still was a timing issue but we worked it out before hand.

ADD EYEBROWS
This shot shows the application of the huge eyebrows I made for this character. They were a blending of brown and gray hair on a gauze base which were created using liquid latex. These matched the ratty gray wig she was wearing. I didn't intend to ventilate these on lace. It just takes too much time for all the longer she would have to be in them and I didn't get paid well enough to do any ventilating for this show. That's what happens when you do the work for friends - plus small theater groups with limited budgets. It was enough of a caricature the way it was to give the impression the director had in mind for the character. So they were pleased. I wasn't pleased - again because of the lack of the right amount of time to do this makeup as I wanted to do but certain requirements dictated what I HAD to do.

FINISHED MAKEUP
This shows the finished makeup with wig applied and gloves on. The costumer didn't think about the hands so I had already thought beforehand that I should create long bony fingers to sort of match the orignal Broadway production as close as I could on the limited budget I had to work with. I got a simple pair of garden gloves, added longer "sleeves", dyed them black, cut the fingers out and hot glued a set of those cheap Halloween witch fingers into the gloves. Then I painted the fingers with the right color to match the rest of the makeup, black fingernails and they worked well. The costumer said she had forgotten about that aspect of the job so it was good that I thought about it.

FINISHED MAKEUP VIEW 2
Another view of the same but different angle of her looking at camera instead of herself in the mirror. But wait a minute - she is awfully happy for a witch. Note that smile on her face. I think she was basically just tickled at how she looked because this actress always prides herself on how good she looks and how together she maintains her appearance. But this was a good, if not humbling, departure for her and she handled it very, very well.

TRANSFORMATION
This view shows the degree to which she had to change for the second act. But this transformation had to take place in about 4 minutes near the end of the first act. This is not the right dress. She was in some other fancy pink number but the idea was that she had to go from the witch makeup to this look in the face and hair after having all that crud on her and the change had to take place in no time at all. It was a trick but we had the secondary witch onstage while I was cleaning her up and getting this makeup on. She also delivered lines from the wings as I finished her up and like the wolf we never missed a beat, an entrance or anything. We were proud of ourselves.

FINAL THOUGHTS
These makeups were an excellent exercise for me. I had some good people who didn't mind experimentation and were game for just about anything. I learned a lot of things which will serve me well later on as I do other projects. One of the main things is that I want to try to do less theater stuff unless I get the opportunity to call the shots the way I want them. That is, I want the time to create what I know how to create and the time to apply it. That has to be my biggest gripe - that I NEVER have the time to apply these makeups in the kind of time frames that will render excellence in my book. Everything I have done has been OK and people are amazed at the results but I know better.

I think one of the things that impresses me most is the fact that we as makeup artists, have to deal with so much unusual, situational crud but that we always seem to do that with what the client thinks is tremendous work in spite of the difficulties. I know better. I want the jobs that should be done properly with ample preparation time and plenty of application time which could make the work so much more tiring but enjoyable. I know how this is SUPPOSED to be done. I never get to do that because of time or budget constraints. And that is what theater does to you.

I hope these photos (as poor as they are) give you some idea of what it takes to do this kind of makeup. And believe me, this is minor compared to some. I do the tough ones too and I understand what it takes, but I rarely ever remember to take photos or just plainly don't have the time because somebody invaribly wants what they want yesterday and for free. Yea, right!! Well if you have any comments just E-Mail me. You know the routine and thanks for the support and for having a look. If these help in any way I'd sure like to know.

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