Face Off - Shakespeare
Sep. 10th, 2015 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leia131This episode began with McKenzie explaining that all the parts, even the female ones, were played by men in Shakespeare's day... But she made it seem like this was a huge revelation, not something that everyone and their brother already knows. Seriously, Face Off, give your audience (and contestants) a little credit. Anyway, then she brought out Ve (who did the makeup for Mrs. Doubtfire) to discuss how each designer was going to be assigned a female Shakespeare character and a male model, and they had to make him look female. That was pretty much the whole challenge, which I didn't think was that big of deal, but apparently it was because everyone started freaking out. Maybe because this was another focus challenge, meaning that they only had to do a face, but it had to be flawless?
Face Off was also using the term 'character' loosely, as they included Queen Mab (not actually seen on stage, nor even necessarily a real entity), Sycorax (dead before the play begins, never seen on stage), and Hecate (who only appears in some versions of Macbeth, and may have been added at a later date.) I think they picked these characters, rather than say Juliet, Miranda, or Desdemona, because they would give more creative freedom to the designers (being a fairy queen, an evil witch, and a witch goddess, respectively). I also think the simple human female characters they did include (Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Hermione) were chosen because they are crazy or pregnant or somehow more interesting make-up wise than just 'human female'. Not all the designers grasped this, in my opinion. They should totally do Shakespeare characters again at some point, with some kind of twist, and really let the designers go to town.
Clearly I had a lot of feelings about this episode.
I also learned that Jasmine does drag makeup semi-professionally, Joan of Arc is in a Shakespeare play, Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry VI, and who Sycorax and Hermione are, as well as a bunch about Hecate. How did we watch TV before Google?
Anyway, on to the looks!
Top Looks
Stevie, Hippolyta from A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Besides looking legit female, Stevie's main strength was the paint job on this, which is gorgeous.
It's hard to get a human looking skin tone correct using paint, but this is pretty successful.
Meg, Queen Mab from Romeo and Juliet:
Meg is so adorable, every time she's in the bottom (which has been a lot, she called herself 'Queen of the Bottom Looks') it makes me sad. This week however, even though she was clearly nervous after not being put through as safe, it was obvious from the start that she was the winner. She was the only one who really embraced doing a makeup BEYOND just making a guy into a girl, and succeeded.
Look at that beautiful, insect-inspired sculpt. Observe the spider legs acting as a crown. Agree with Ve's positive assessment of the color palette, especially the pink highlights. Meg was the clear winner, and she was thrilled.
Bottom Looks
Evan, Hecate from Macbeth:
In addition to consistently, irritatingly, pronouncing Hecate's name wrong, this is a huge mess. I don't even really know what to say about it, except that it is bad. So very very bad. You might think, from looking at this wide shot, that the biggest problem is the wig, (who knew witch goddesses were actually Marie Antoinette?) but you'd be wrong.
This is the biggest problem:
WAT. What IS this? The sculpt is... wrong, the eyebrows are heinous, she looks nothing like a witch or a goddess, she barely looks like a woman, and, last but certainly not least, the paint job. Dear God, the paint job. I don't know what he was trying to do, I don't know what went wrong, but the paint job is just ridiculous and ended up, as the judges rightly said, 'a muddy mess'. The only reason this didn't go home is that there was another worse (or at least equally bad) look.
Ricky, Ophelia from Hamlet:
Ricky, who I actually did not think was gay, started this challenge well, saying that his boyfriend is a drag queen so he knows about men looking like women. Unfortunately, his facial appliance, for some reason, went on wrinkly and then tore. He tried to fix that by giving Ophelia open sores on her face, like she had been picking at her skin, which is not a terrible idea given her character's insanity. But he didn't have enough time to paint them properly, and so they came out like this:
You can see how the chin is still wrinkly, despite his attempts to fix it, and the red spots look more like some kind of disease than open sores. But what the judges really disliked was that this does not look like a woman. (Maybe Ricky's sculpt wasn't great even before the application went wrong?) In any case, for failing at the basic challenge of making a man into a believable woman, Ricky was sent home. I personally think he missed a great opportunity to create Ophelia post (or mid) drowning, which would have been more exciting, but maybe he didn't want to take on too much. His boyfriend will probably tease him a little about going out on this, of all challenges. In a loving way.
Point of interest: Jasmine's application reacted to her paint (for some reason) by becoming a gooey mess and she had to scrap almost the entire thing and just rely on her painting skills. This was the result:
Not the best, but MILES better than the two bottom looks, especially given the circumstances. I bet her drag queen friends were proud of her. She is seriously going to win this thing, even though Nora remains my fav.
Face Off was also using the term 'character' loosely, as they included Queen Mab (not actually seen on stage, nor even necessarily a real entity), Sycorax (dead before the play begins, never seen on stage), and Hecate (who only appears in some versions of Macbeth, and may have been added at a later date.) I think they picked these characters, rather than say Juliet, Miranda, or Desdemona, because they would give more creative freedom to the designers (being a fairy queen, an evil witch, and a witch goddess, respectively). I also think the simple human female characters they did include (Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Hermione) were chosen because they are crazy or pregnant or somehow more interesting make-up wise than just 'human female'. Not all the designers grasped this, in my opinion. They should totally do Shakespeare characters again at some point, with some kind of twist, and really let the designers go to town.
Clearly I had a lot of feelings about this episode.
I also learned that Jasmine does drag makeup semi-professionally, Joan of Arc is in a Shakespeare play, Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry VI, and who Sycorax and Hermione are, as well as a bunch about Hecate. How did we watch TV before Google?
Anyway, on to the looks!
Top Looks
Stevie, Hippolyta from A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Besides looking legit female, Stevie's main strength was the paint job on this, which is gorgeous.
It's hard to get a human looking skin tone correct using paint, but this is pretty successful.
Meg, Queen Mab from Romeo and Juliet:
Meg is so adorable, every time she's in the bottom (which has been a lot, she called herself 'Queen of the Bottom Looks') it makes me sad. This week however, even though she was clearly nervous after not being put through as safe, it was obvious from the start that she was the winner. She was the only one who really embraced doing a makeup BEYOND just making a guy into a girl, and succeeded.
Look at that beautiful, insect-inspired sculpt. Observe the spider legs acting as a crown. Agree with Ve's positive assessment of the color palette, especially the pink highlights. Meg was the clear winner, and she was thrilled.
Bottom Looks
Evan, Hecate from Macbeth:
In addition to consistently, irritatingly, pronouncing Hecate's name wrong, this is a huge mess. I don't even really know what to say about it, except that it is bad. So very very bad. You might think, from looking at this wide shot, that the biggest problem is the wig, (who knew witch goddesses were actually Marie Antoinette?) but you'd be wrong.
This is the biggest problem:
WAT. What IS this? The sculpt is... wrong, the eyebrows are heinous, she looks nothing like a witch or a goddess, she barely looks like a woman, and, last but certainly not least, the paint job. Dear God, the paint job. I don't know what he was trying to do, I don't know what went wrong, but the paint job is just ridiculous and ended up, as the judges rightly said, 'a muddy mess'. The only reason this didn't go home is that there was another worse (or at least equally bad) look.
Ricky, Ophelia from Hamlet:
Ricky, who I actually did not think was gay, started this challenge well, saying that his boyfriend is a drag queen so he knows about men looking like women. Unfortunately, his facial appliance, for some reason, went on wrinkly and then tore. He tried to fix that by giving Ophelia open sores on her face, like she had been picking at her skin, which is not a terrible idea given her character's insanity. But he didn't have enough time to paint them properly, and so they came out like this:
You can see how the chin is still wrinkly, despite his attempts to fix it, and the red spots look more like some kind of disease than open sores. But what the judges really disliked was that this does not look like a woman. (Maybe Ricky's sculpt wasn't great even before the application went wrong?) In any case, for failing at the basic challenge of making a man into a believable woman, Ricky was sent home. I personally think he missed a great opportunity to create Ophelia post (or mid) drowning, which would have been more exciting, but maybe he didn't want to take on too much. His boyfriend will probably tease him a little about going out on this, of all challenges. In a loving way.
Point of interest: Jasmine's application reacted to her paint (for some reason) by becoming a gooey mess and she had to scrap almost the entire thing and just rely on her painting skills. This was the result:
Not the best, but MILES better than the two bottom looks, especially given the circumstances. I bet her drag queen friends were proud of her. She is seriously going to win this thing, even though Nora remains my fav.
