Old age makeup
- Thread starterkpnac
- Start date
OMG ! Where do you start ? There are entire college courses dedicated to just this question.
Simplest answer ? You take you time and just like getting to Carnegie Hall you Practice, Practice, Practice!
Sure you can do a great job with Regualr makeup; adding lines and highlighting existing features in the face. Lenghten the nose, add shadows to the eyes, but to take a young actor and create a totally believeable old age treatment say, the one they use on Billy Crystal and Carol Kane in "The Proncess Bride" takes weeks of planning, and hundreds of hours of works and hundreds of dollars of materials. You should google " How do they do that?' the TV show. They did an old age treatment includings prosthetics, and showed a lot of the process. Beyond that any decent book, even a basic book on Stage Makeup, will have a section on Aging technicques.
One of the best pieces I can pass on from personal experience and practice is this: Don't try to add features. simply enhance features that are already there. For instance, Don't add lines on the forhead, look in the mirror, scrunce up your forehead several times. Raise and lower your eyebrows. look at where the lines form naturally and and use them as you starting points. Hightlight the top of wrinkle areas, sublte shading under those areas
Simplest answer ? You take you time and just like getting to Carnegie Hall you Practice, Practice, Practice!
Sure you can do a great job with Regualr makeup; adding lines and highlighting existing features in the face. Lenghten the nose, add shadows to the eyes, but to take a young actor and create a totally believeable old age treatment say, the one they use on Billy Crystal and Carol Kane in "The Proncess Bride" takes weeks of planning, and hundreds of hours of works and hundreds of dollars of materials. You should google " How do they do that?' the TV show. They did an old age treatment includings prosthetics, and showed a lot of the process. Beyond that any decent book, even a basic book on Stage Makeup, will have a section on Aging technicques.
One of the best pieces I can pass on from personal experience and practice is this: Don't try to add features. simply enhance features that are already there. For instance, Don't add lines on the forhead, look in the mirror, scrunce up your forehead several times. Raise and lower your eyebrows. look at where the lines form naturally and and use them as you starting points. Hightlight the top of wrinkle areas, sublte shading under those areas
Don't forget that while it looks hilarious from two feet away under fluorescent lighting, it will look much more natural from 25 feet away under stage lights.
MarshallPope
Well-Known Member
I think the "necessity" for old age makeup in theatre is a rarity. What I mean to say is this, only a few times in scripts do you take a character from young to old/ in most instances you attempt to take a young actor and make them appear old. In the case of Billy Crystal...though it was a younger actor in old makeup (no matter how brilliant the makeup) we all knew that it was billy in there and that he was doing schtick. We were not tricked into thinking that Billy was actually old and probably enjoyed a more fantastical version of what it is to be old. I think the job isn't to convince your audience that the actor is old....but rather have the audience accept that the actor will be playing an older character and accept it for the next 2 hours. So, don't attempt to trick us by putting down an overly elaborate makeup, rather suggest that the character is old through shading and highlighting with, at most, minimal latex work.
And outside of academia where your talent pool is usually all the same age and the occasional hollywood star role, this is never really needed in the real world. If you want an older looking actor... you cast one.
Thanks for the info. I actually have more experience with latex... I was able to make a HS student old; Many asked how did we get the old man to be in our show, most had no idea it was a 17 year old. It is very time consuming and took me away from all the other duties needing attention during "pre-show" time. Just wanted some input on makeup, I do not have a great deal of exp. with regular stage makeup. Thank you to all who replied.
Van's comments are "spot on" for the basics of Old Age makeup. Especially enhancing the features you have by highlighting, or low lighting (darkening) to make your naturally occurring lines look deeper. You can also enhance natural wrinkles with latex, or wrinkle stipple (a special kind of latex). To enhance forehead wrinkles, paint your forehead with latex, then place a piece of tissue paper over the latex (you may need to add a little more latex to completely wet the tissue). The scrunch up your forehead. Your natural wrinkles will translate into the tissue paper, and the latex will dry with those wrinkles. This is a great effect.
You can also get a complete "Old Age Kit" from Ben Nye. The kit includes all the makeup and applicators you would need to make your character, as well as step by step instructions with pictures. It doesn't include latex, or wrinkle stipple. You can do without those, but they do make some really cool effects.
Most importantly, always practice your makeup before you need it. Many small makeup errors are not obvious when you are on stage (as apposed to video), but large faux pas can been seen.
You can also get a complete "Old Age Kit" from Ben Nye. The kit includes all the makeup and applicators you would need to make your character, as well as step by step instructions with pictures. It doesn't include latex, or wrinkle stipple. You can do without those, but they do make some really cool effects.
Most importantly, always practice your makeup before you need it. Many small makeup errors are not obvious when you are on stage (as apposed to video), but large faux pas can been seen.
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There are some decent videos on the web if you are more of a visual learner. This one is part one of four.
Old Age Make-up for the Stage, pt 1 - YouTube
Old Age Make-up for the Stage, pt 1 - YouTube
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