Article Homework

Our tutor gaves us an article to read. The article was an interview piece, interviewing Richard Taylor a Special Effects supervisor for the company Weta Studios. Richard worked on 'The Lord Of The Rings' (Jackson,P 2001) and the interview was primarily about the first film. The interview discusses some of the ways that himself and his team constructed many of the effects, such as the size of the hobbits and the amount of miniature sets and props used, "Weta manufactured a total of 48,000 props, including 1,000 pieces of armour, 2,000 weapons, 1,800 costumes and body prosthetics, 10,000 facial prosthetics, 1,800 pairs of Hobbits feet, 10,000 bows and 18 scanned miniature monsters!", Taylor states. The part of the article that I found interesting was when the interviewer asked him, 'How was the makeup for the Orcs devised?'.

Most films, especially horror, sci-fi and Fantasy have characters dressed up in artificial costumes made up of various materials, I often like watching 'extras' on some films to find out how they make up a character. For instance I watched the extras for the TV hit 'Walking Dead' (Darabont, F 2010) to find out what they use and how long it takes them to create a person in to a zombie using various equipment, its also a good way to find out whether it is possible to create wound effects or blood effects with easy to get hold of materials for future projects.

I also looked at another article by Ed French who created the make up and cloned Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator 2 themed ride at Universal studios. He says that to create this effect he took moulds of Arnold's face to get a positive reference. He then moulded the stunt mans head and compared the facial structure to the one of Arnold's. He then took 3-D scanning of Arnold's face as this was an easier way than creating moulds that take up to 45minutes.  

There is another artist that our tutor wanted us to look in to.

Joel Peter Witkin is a photographer who creates images dealing with death, dismemberment, deformity and dwarfism. He is known to distort photos usually scratching the negatives, bleaching and printing on  tissue to create pieces that shock and intrigue.

Joel creates his work to promote a response from his audience. He uses shock tactics which can repulse the audience or create negative feedback, but it is precisely these motifs that have excelled him. 

I dont like Joel's work because it scares me. Some may say it is very imaginative and very visual, but this is something I don't want to see. When I looked up this artist I immediately shut down the webpage because some of his photos shocked me and made me sick. I can watch a lot of horror films that contain dismemberment and blood, but I have a fear of Dysmorphobia.  

Thus I wont be putting up any pictures.