Mise-en-scene

My role in our media group was to provide and organise all the mise-en-scene for our thriller opening sequence. In this role, I had to assist with making and coming up with the idea of the costumes [which included ripping up my own jeans and covering them in mud] as well as supplying and applying makeup for the mutants' faces.

This also meant practicing making fake cuts for Mutant 2's leg.
The process was long and complex as I did not buy any professional makeup or equipment for this experiment.

My Tools:


[Items from left to right]

• Liquid eyeliner
• Fake blood
• Hair styling wax,
• lipstick,
• sponge and cutical stick, used to apply the makeup.
• White facepaint [incase you need to be made 'deathly' white for a spooky effect]
• eyeshadow [was accidentally left out of the picture.]

As you can see, I was using basic makeup supplies to do this task with as we did not have the budget to pay for better quality supplies.

Method:

First, you scoop some hair wax onto the area you want the cut to be.

Smooth down the edges onto the skin so that it forms a smooth lump. Then, slice down the centre with a thin tool to create the basic effect of cut skin.

Run down this line with liquid eyeliner so as to add depth to the cut.

Then scrape out the deep and bright red lipstick from it's container and 'splodge' into the line. This should create a nice effect of bloody flesh or drying blood.

You can widen the edges of the cut using a thin, sharp-ish tool, and then press (lightly) with flesh toned eyeshadow/lipstick onto the inside and a bit on the outside so as to rid the wax of it's white colouring and to make it more natural looking.

[I got a bit carried away so these and the next few steps are missing ^^]

Finally, add fake blood along the line, making it look fresh and gorey. And there you have a fake cut. Here are some of my examples frm different angles.

A very thin cut, the edges were pressed back in on themselves and the blood went over them slightly so it looks almost infected, but very effective at the same time.

[The light started to go, so I had to get closer to the window to get good lighting]

A wider, more gorey cut. This started off as a smaller cut [the one in the method], but I used a pointed tool to loosen the wax near the skin and pushed the sides further apart and covered the newly exposed skin messily in the deep and bright red lippy aswell as fakeblood and a bit of eyeshadow to make it look a little bit more textured. This appears to be more like a gunshot or bite wound-both of which would be appropriate for our film.