Makeup Oscar noms symposium

By April MacIntyre
The 1st Annual Oscar Nominees Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Symposium (hosted by The Hollywood Reporter) was held February 28th at the Hollywood Museum in the historic Max Factor building. Ushering in the proceedings, Leonard Engleman, chairman of the Academy Makeup Rules Committee, commented, “This is an incredible opportunity to see and hear exactly how these master craftspeople created the look.”
The event allowed Local 706 members and others discuss the impact of makeup and hair wizardry on character development and overall film success, and to hold a dialog with this year’s Oscar nominees: Richard Taylor and Peter King (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King); three-time Oscar winner Ve Neill with Martin Samuel (Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl); and Edouard “Ed” Henriques III and Yolanda Toussieng (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World).
After each team got a chance to discuss the mechanics and unique challenges presented to them for their respective films, the audience got an opportunity to question the panel about specifics. Notably, the sizable makeup crews for Master and Commander and Pirates both had to battle sea-sickness during the shoot days, working around nausea to create the well researched time-period griminess, scarification and bad teeth of their films’ past eras. Not to be outdone, Taylor and King recounted the seven-year odyssey of over 3,000 prosthetic hairy Hobbit feet alone that had to be made for the three-picture epic. Unimaginably, they had to make prosthetic nose enhancers for both Christopher Lee and Ian McKellan, adding to the actors’ already generous features because of the hair apparatus’ dwarfing effects. No surprise to anyone in the room, they also disclosed that Elijah Wood has the best skin in the business, male or female.
Local 706 recently underwent changes in officers. Susan Cabral-Ebert is now president, David Abbott is secretary treasurer, Linda Arnold is VP, Tommy Cole is business representative, Sandra Rowden is recording secretary and Travis Pates is sergeant-at-arms.