How to paint slush cast latex

I have a stack of prosthetic pieces now waiting for me to bring them to life with paint but I've never actually worked with slush cast latex before... So, research time!!

*insert clicky clack noises and inspirational research music here* 

*ding!*

Pax Paint

translucent setting powder

Apparently the best way to paint slush cast latex is with pax paint. But the paint will stay tacky/sticky afterwards, so you have to make sure you set it with translucent powder after you're done. I found FX Warehouse to have the paint I'm looking for in stock, and the translucent powder you can get at pretty much any  make-up store. I'll probably hit up Ultra for mine. Oh, and "setting with powder" simply means to poof some powder on top of the paint job.




Ok great, now we know what we need, but how do we use it? That's where good old YouTube comes in. Here are the most informative videos I was able to find on the subject:

Now if I were cool I would own an airbrush machine and compressor, but I'm not. So I'll have to do this the good old fashioned way... with paint brushes.

There was a really cool tutorial that I may try, since it uses latex and acrylic paints instead of pax paint. I love cheaper options!

I hope you guys found this information as useful as I did, but if you happen to know of some more informative resources, please let me know! I'll add people's suggestions to the post.

Interviews and Adventures

Hi Friends!

This month has been awesome so far. Aside from the cold that made me miss writing Tuesday's post. *sniffle* There is so many exciting things going on. For one, the Women in Horror Month Festivities are going really well, 

This Monday I posted my newest interview for my Horror and Her Makers series. This week was an interview with Jackie Zbuska, special effects artist. Here's her reel, if you're interested. (Warning! some graphic content is in this video- because she does specialize in gore.)

If you'd like to read her interview you can find it by clicking over HERE

Over on Haunting TV my newest spaz-tastic reviews are up for the graphic novel Y: The Last Man along with the tour of Savannah Comics- from my recent visit to Georgia.

Here's the review:

And Here's the comic book shop tour:

Yesterday the Haunting TV micro crew (Alexander) and I wandered off into the frozen graveyards of Waterbury to get some handheld B-roll for our dark poetry video this Saturday. Beneath the shadows cast by of the glow of the giant LED cross of Holy Land USA we filmed some really fun shots with our infrared lens filter. We're going to be part of the Bloody Valentine Horror Hop 2015 so Alexander is whipping up something extra morbid for the festivities.

And so, there's you weekly round up of what the heck I've been up to. 

Women in Horror Month

Hello readers!

February is Women in Horror Month and I'm doing a bunch of things that you may find interesting.

Yesterday I posted an interview with director Emily Hagins on www.horrormade.blogspot.com . Emily and I, as you may know, worked together waaay back on "5 Senses of Fear." Here's a link to my post about that project: Horror Movie Renderings. Lol, at the time I had to be super vague because features don't tend to share a lot while they're in production. But I can share all sorts of things with you about it now.

It was so much fun to work on this project. Every week I got to work with a new director on a new story with one of my favorite film crews in the world - Synthetic Cinema International. For Emily's segment we took over some abandoned buildings in an old campground in Moodus CT. It was such a great location, and I certainly did my share of urban spelunking while I was there-- in the name of finding set dressing of course. ;-) We made road spikes out of plastic chunks and strips of wood, had quite the adventure with cataract contact lens that made the child actor pretty much actually blind while wearing them, and we had some uncomfortably cold days of exterior shooting. Thanks New England weather! But it was fun, especially when I got to smash in a few windows on the van for the car crash. Wrecking cars really never gets old to me. My interview with her is the first in a four part series where I ask some of my favorite horror-movie making co-workers about their experiences in the industry.I'll make sure to post the links to those here so you can check them out as the month progresses.

 I also posted the first youtube video for the month's festivities. This week is my review of 'Struck' by Clarissa Johal. Here it is for you to check out:

 And really, feel free to make fun of me. I'm still figuring out how to not be a total spaz on camera. Who knew I'd be doing so much acting?

The Babadook: Crafting it's Reality Through Psychology

I love watching movies with good production design. Not just the ones that fill the world on screen with interesting things and visually stimulating sets. I love to see ones that fill the world with visual subtext and say something deeper about the story. I often feel like that extra layer of depth is left out of people's work, even my own. Especially in indie film, it can be hard to add the details that create that additional layer of character to a space when you have no time and no budget to spare beyond the necessities. So whenever I find a project that actually does it well, I get incredibly excited. I watched the horror movie The Babadook recently and I enjoyed the heck out of it. It was scary, yes, and had some beautiful cinematography, and great performances, but I couldn't stop geeking out over the production design on this movie. If you want a good chuckle you can pop over to my youtube channel to hear my overly-excited review about it:

www.youtube.com/hauntingtelevision

The Babadook is a movie about a single mother who is struggling to take care of her son after the death of her husband. One night her son finds a mysterious and disturbing book about the Babadook and frightening things begin to occur in their lives. The Babdook is an Australian horror movie directed by Jennifer Kent released in 2014 and it created quite the hubub around the horror community. Everything about this film was masterfully done. The direction was spot-on. The score was beautifully woven into the film. And there were some powerful performances that were Oscar-worthy by Elsie Davis, who played the mother Amelia. This movie felt like you were finally seeing something fresh and yet instantly classic from the horror genre. So if you haven't seen it yet. please do. And then come right on back so you can join the conversation about the equally spectacular production design.

**** Spoiler Alert*****

I'm talking specific details here which will absolutely give away too much in the pursuit of scholarly analysis. So if you want to avoid me giving things away, come back after you have watched the movie please.

***Spoiler Alert***

Here, I would like to discuss a little bit further about how well Alex Holmes, the production designer, succeeded in capturing and enhancing the subtext of the film. As I mention in my review, the mother character, Amelia, is suffering from depression after her husband passed away in a car accident the day of her son's birth. And her depression has prevented her from connecting to her son emotionally. The state of being has also crippled her in her day to day life and you can see evidence of that all around her. Her hair is a frizzy unkempt mess, her kitchen always has dishes and food left out on the counter and all of the loving details are missing from her home. 

What do I mean by the loving details? I mean there are no pictures in her room, hardly any knickknacks in the main rooms and so few personal effects in the space she inhabits. It's physically showing how absent she is in her existence. She's there, but she isn't invested or interested in her world. This point is made even stronger when you find out that all of  the things connecting to her late husband have been locked up in the basement. And the only time she reaches out it is to her late husband's violin.

Her depression is made to feel inescapable to the audience and it's conveyed through the masterfully crafted color palette. The rich blues of her home make the darkest moments of this movie seem like Amelia and her son are drowning in this nightmarish dream-reality. The color design ties right into the lead characters as well. The son, Samuel, is dressed in the same grey and blue tones as the house. Which, if viewed through Amelia's eyes it shows that she can barely see him as a person, and instead he kind of fades into the scenery of the world around her. The appearance of the Babadook book marks very clearly in it's garish red hue the moment that their world begins to change. It's the only thing in the entire movie that is so saturated and strong in it's color tone. It practically screams, "Danger!" "Don't touch it!"

This is where the psychology of the production design goes one step beyond mirroring Amelia's mental existence and gets into manipulating the audience's emotions. The blues, grays, and blacks in the house are so oppressive that the audience is drawn into the same mindset of the exhausted Amelia.  And as the lighting in the house gets darker, the moments of set dressing brilliance start to play with the viewer. Because the tension builds for so long, you get to the point where you start expecting the Babadook to start popping out all over the place. Instead there are all of these human shaped blobs of darkness strategically placed all over the house to get your heart pumping. It starts with the clothing pinned up on the wall in the basement, which is an intentional jump scare. But the technique continues. In the kid's bedroom, his wardrobe gapes open revealing a terrifying void. In her bedroom, the mirror keeps revealing movement that draws your eye to the shadows surrounding them and not to mention that disconcerting dress form in the corner of her bedroom. I kept expecting them to replace it with the Babadook every time they cut back in that direction. It was a really great choice to make, because it gets the viewer watching the edges of the frame for the Babadook well before the creature makes a proper appearance.

I would love to see more films that take the time to really flesh out the environments in a more emotional way and I'm certainly going to be keeping these thoughts in mind for my next project.

Learning to After Effects like a boss

My artwork from The Spider's Nest featuring the novel Pandora

I've been working like crazy to get the artwork done for the next episode of "The Spider's Nest" done, but all I can keep thinking about is how much cooler everything would be if it were even lightly animated. You know, motion comic style.

Zac Gorman’s Legendary ‘Zelda’ Comics Get Their Animated GIF

Because up until now I've always had to shop out any animating needed for the web-series and channel. But I keep hearing that after effects and photoshop aren't so different. So I've been hunting around for some tutorials on how to start using the program and I 'm posting my favorite ones here so I can reference them later. And hey, maybe we can become baller after effects artists together. Why not?

Also I found this really cool site that I'm posting here to return to once I've got my sea legs. Because I want to be able to do the things this guys does someday.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/

HowTo: Fake Drugs On Screen

My fellow designer and friend Mary Paul sent me a link to this incredible article about what stand in products props masters use when drugs are taken on screen. I've pulled the basic info out into a neat and tidy list for future reference, but here is the link to the original article:

http://nypost.com/2013/10/23/what-actors-really-snort-shoot-and-smoke-on-set/

Cocaine 
Sitting on a table or in lines:
Corn starch and baby powder

Snorted:
Powdered Lactose or Vitamin B powder

Protect the Actor's nasal cavities from multiple takes:
Coat the inside of the straw with Vaseline, so most of the powder gets caught before it gets inhaled

Heroine

Powdered:

The same recipe for faux-caine will work

Boiled:

Sugar and baking soda,

or Bouillon 

or Gelatin

Retracting Needle or Stunt Needle

Rent or Purchase:

http://www.thespecialistsltd.com/stunt-kit-retractable-hypodermic-needle - I've used their kit before and it worked spectacularly - I highly reccomend this if you have the budget for it

http://www.newrulefx.com/products/retractable-syringe-needle - I haven't tried their needle specifically, but I have purchased other stunt props from them in the past and I am always pleased with the quality of their products and their customer service.

Marijuana

Entirely fake:

Oregano

THC free, but otherwise, the real thing:

Buy the real thing without getting the actors high with product bought on legalbuds.com. 

Dress that Bong:

Add coca-cola to the water to dirty it up, add crushed cigarette flakes to float in top.

Ecstasy

Purchase: 

Apparently you can buy stamped sugar pills from a prop house, but I have yet to find the prop house. I'll update this post once I figure it out. Otherwise people recommend Altoids or some other candy with food coloring stamped on it.

Crack Rocks

Not to ingest:

Krazy glue dropped into a pile of baking soda

Magic Mushrooms

Safe to ingest:

Purchase some freeze dried mushrooms from your local asian market

Happy propping everyone!

  

Long time no see

Hello Artful Pursuiters!

Sorry for the hiatus, I've been mildly obsessed with my horror themed blog lately - horrormade.blogspot.com - But now that 2015 has arrived I'm back into the land of writing here as well. I'm aiming to have a new post up every week. I haven't decided which day yet, but I'll keep you in the loop.

For this upcoming year I plan to use this blog to post even more about the how-tos of the filming world, but I am going to start branching out a teensy bit from the holy house of art department and allow a few more aspects of my film-making interests into the mix. More about photography, editing, and sound design for starters. But the production design, and explorations into digital design will continue as well. My work-life in the non-digital world has become a little more diverse lately because Alexander and I have fully embarked on creating our own production company, and finally launched our Haunting TV YouTube channel and all-original web-series.

It's been a ton of fun so far, doing reviews, covering concerts, and I'm especially proud of my book excerpt and author spotlight show The Spider's Nest. So now that I'm apparently morphing into the skin of a producer my interests have started to grow even more.

So, stay tuned to hear more about my adventures in the land of  YouTube and entrepreneurship. :-)