Make -up design does not always mean dentures or extremes – that’s why Emmy Awards Smart points out modern makeup design as its own category. But too often, the more immediately fascinating designs are those who get all the attention. No longer. Join IndieWire to celebrate makeup artists who create subtle, character -specific works for contemporary shows.
NBC’s “The hunting party“Has a spooky premise: A secret government program falsifies the deaths for the country’s worst, most violent killer and then holds them in a prison called The Pit for Scientific Study – until an explosion on the site releases them in nature. Now the FBI profile Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), CIA agent Ryan Hassani (Patrick Sabongui) and former Pit guard Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie) must detect the murderers before they can murder again. At best.
The episodes contain psychopaths and sociopaths, serial killers and suspension – except for a season -long mystery about how the explosion occurred – and it can be a heavy working day for everyone at the recording site. So the makeup department’s manager Paige Gatzka instituted a policy to keep the mood as easily as she could.
“I am really very aware that how they leave my trailer largely set the tone for the rest of the day,” Gatzka told IndieWire. “The days are long. You are there for hours and hours. So I always like to keep it very quiet in the morning. And one of the best things about being part of this production is that the actors really love each other. We introduced a hug ratio , and it basically said: “The happier you are, the more hugs you get. So if you reach 12 hugs a day you will be the happiest.”
These hugs probably came in handy when the three main roles meet some disgusting characters – they often suffer from injuries during the sections. “For the most part, we let the makeup break in the section, depending on what they do, what they have gone through, where they are going,” Gatzka said. “This whole series was truly amazing. There are many different things that happen throughout the season, and (we) just keep track of the whole thing as we move on so we can make the subtle changes quickly on the set to reflect them different things they have been through. ”
Gatzka addresses this issue partly by conquering and sharing, assigning members of the department to keep track of individual characters. All this is far from her previous assignment as makeup department manager at The CW’s “The Flash”.
“‘The Flash’ was obviously incredible for so many reasons,” she said. “But on ‘The Flash’ you can go through a tornado and you will still look beautiful. You know, it’s CW’s way and it was really fun. Definitely getting into ‘The Hunting Party’, it was much more realistic and, obviously, much more traumatic things happen. ”
Gatzka refers partly to the episode-in-week killer (“those actors are all the nicest people,” she said with a laugh) and partly to the flashbacks throughout the season. And they became as complicated for the makeup team as they are dramatic to watch because of the blue tones of their film.
“Once you get into the lighting, everything doesn’t work,” Gatzka said. “For example, if a girl wears rouge: you look in the mirror and you think,” Oh wow, this looks nice and soft and delicious. When you get into the blue light it looks like a bruise. We were definitely forced to knock down such things. And even undertones in men’s skin shine through differently when you are in blue light. It was to get them to the recording site and to make sure that when we got into those close -ups, nothing shone through that we didn’t want to be there. ”
And it says something, because both Sabongui and McKenzie have skin “as walking filters,” Gatzka said. “It was more to take care of their facial hair, to give them things for their cleaning and to do minimal makeup,” she said. Ah yes – facial hair on a series comes with its own challenges.
“Obviously I don’t have facial hair myself, it’s something you really have to learn, right?” said Gatzka. “Everyone’s facial hair is completely different. You think you have taken it. You go to someone else and you think,” Everything I knew came out through the window. “So it’s really just trial and erro. As much as the plans are, must you make daily changes to make sure everything is interconnected. ”
“The Hunting Party” premieres new episodes on NBC Monday nights at 22:00 et. The first section is now streamed on Peacock; The series returns to NBC with new episodes on February 10.
