The 2nd Annual Oscar Nominees Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Symposium, hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, was held February 26 at the Hollywood Museum in the historic Max Factor building. Leonard Engleman, chairman of the Academy Makeup Rules Committee, moderated.This pre-award event allowed the Oscar-nominated teams to highlight their work by showing 10-minute clips from their nominated movies, and to discuss the impact of makeup and hair artistry on character development. This year’s Oscar nominees: Bill Corso and Valli O’Reilly (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events), Christien Tinsley and Keith Vanderlaan (The Passion of the Christ), and Jo Allen and Manuel Garcia (The Sea Inside – Mar Adentro).Corso and O’Reilly told how they were up against a film process that obliterated yellows and oranges, and turned red into brown in the finished film. They discussed the difficulties with such unforgiving high contrast that had them working hard to hide hair apparatus lace and keep pores invisible. “We had two teens going through puberty, which was tough for continuity of skin tone as well,” said O’Reilly.Vanderlaan and Tinsley—with creative collaborator Greg Cannom, one of this year’s Technical Oscar recipients for his proprietary new silicone formulation—were able to cut actual application time in half for the prosthetic skin covering used on Jim Caveziel during the scourging scenes for The Passion. “It was a brutal application process,” said Tinsley. They were able to reduce application time from eight to four hours.Allen and Garcia, in from London and Spain respectively, were able to share the layering techniques that subtly and realistically changed Javier Bardem from a handsome young man into what was left of him years after becoming a paraplegic.The Academy Award went to Corso and O’Reilly.
Written by April MacIntyre
