Post by Naj on Oct 17, 2005 7:53:27 GMT -5
Aging them gracefully
Sunday, October 16, 2005
By VIRGINIA ROHAN
Usually with a milestone reunion the goal is to have classmates gush, "You haven't changed a bit since we tossed our mortarboards in the air."
But Fox's new "Reunion" wants to show time's passage on the fresh faces of six high school friends, who age two decades over one season. It's "an incredible challenge," concedes key makeup artist Keith Hall - especially since he avoids the popular industry practice of using prosthetic pieces. "The general rule with makeup is that you can age someone up to 20 years without using prosthetic applications," says Hall, whose Fox project just makes it under the wire. "I've never seen an aging makeup done with prosthetics that could convince me."
In a business obsessed with eternal youth, "Reunion" is one of several television series that regularly add years to their characters - using various techniques, which experts from these shows agreed to explain for this piece.
On CBS' "Cold Case," where murder suspects and victims' loved ones morph back and forth between their current and former selves, casting director Rebecca Mangieri usually hires two actors for the same role.
"It's double casting, because there's twice as many people. The episode I'm doing now has seven matches," says Mangieri, a Cresskill native and Academy of the Holy Angels graduate.
And on FX's "nip/tuck," Tom Burman and Bari Dreiband-Burman, the show's Emmy-winning husband-and-wife special-makeup-effects team, sometimes have to first make a "patient" look older so that, after [simulated] cosmetic surgery, the person will look more dramatically youthful.
"We usually try to find somebody in between [who'll look appropriate] when we add the age to them," Tom Burman says. "And then, after their surgery, we'll ... hold the skin a little tighter."
On "Reunion," to approximate aging from 18 to 38, Hall uses a stippling method of makeup application (a sponge is used to roll the makeup compound onto the skin). He then hand-draws tiny lines and age spots.
Hall takes into consideration each character's story arc.
"The Jenna character [becomes] a big Hollywood actress, so I assume she had a little work done and that she has a personal trainer," says Hall of Amanda Righetti's character.
Aaron (David Annable), on the other hand, goes on to run a big computer company - a high-stress business, as Hall sees it. Hence, Aaron's gray hair at age 38.
One of the most challenging to age is Will, played by boyish-faced Will Estes. His character went to prison to shield a guilty friend and eventually became a priest.
"Everything I did on him had to show around his eyes," Hall says. "We made them look a little deeper-set, a little duller, and we added more wrinkles."
Because the show tackles one year per episode while periodically touching base with the present, Hall had to decide at what intervals the characters would show significant physical changes. His conclusion: every seven to eight years, though women often exhibit subtler changes in makeup and hair before that.
Mangieri has no hard and fast rule on how far back a "Cold Case" has to go before it's time to have two actors play the same character. But generally speaking, she's more apt to use a single actor if the character is not young and has to get even older.
"When you're dealing with the older ages - someone in their 50s, say, and then someone in their 70s - it's just a lot harder to find two actors who are similar," says Mangieri, who might cast someone midway between those ages in such a case. "When you get into younger people - the teenager to someone in their 30s — obviously, people can change a lot in that time." (Her biggest challenge so far was a first-season episode involving only a four-year difference in age - 13-year-old boys who matured to 17. It involved double casting.)
Who gets cast first? The older or younger version?
"You'll always want to find an actor in the larger role first," Mangieri says.
Her company, FMW Casting - which she formed with partners Barbara Fiorentino and Wendy Weideman - has "an entire room full of picture files." But they also evaluate fresh photos for each episode, which could involve a lapse of a few years to many decades. (One from last season stretched back to 1932.)
"We try to match some facial features. We bring [the people] in. They don't have to just look alike, but have to have the same energy, to seem similar," says Mangieri, who in a second-season episode cast a father and son (Blake Clark and Travis Clark) to play the older and younger versions of the same character.
Usually, she tries to keep eye color consistent, but when that's not possible, contact lenses are used. And, if it's a big part, even more important than likeness, she says, is "to find the best actors."
Mangieri is especially proud of the matches her team made in last Sunday's episode, in which a 1978 case - the seemingly random murder of a young man - was reopened when the victim's mother found a letter suggesting that his death was not what it appeared to be.
"It doesn't happen very often that every one of them is that spot on."
On "nip/tuck," the Burmans' award-winning specialty is prosthetics. They start by doing a head cast of the actors. "Then Tom and I study their faces and see how we think the best way to age them, and how subtle it has to be," Dreiband-Burman says. "We decide where we would show the age. The eyes? The jowls? Would the ears get bigger?"
Tom Burman adds, "We sometimes make them teeth, so they'll look longer in the tooth."
Now, the big question: Why is it that with some shows or TV movies, when actors are subjected to extreme cosmetic aging - as in the otherwise splendid grand finale of "Six Feet Under" - they often look like refugees from a grammar-school production?
"When you're going that far into the future, it's really hard to age up that much," says Mangieri, a big "Six Feet" fan. "Claire [Fisher] died when she was 102. That's 80 years. ... I think it was just an ambitious amount of time to try to use the same actors."
Says "Reunion's" Hall, "Aging is the hardest thing to do realistically, because the viewer is used to seeing old people. It's much harder to do aging than to do a monster, because there's no point of reference for a monster. Everybody knows an old person."
Cold Case
Sunday, October 16, 2005
By VIRGINIA ROHAN
Usually with a milestone reunion the goal is to have classmates gush, "You haven't changed a bit since we tossed our mortarboards in the air."
But Fox's new "Reunion" wants to show time's passage on the fresh faces of six high school friends, who age two decades over one season. It's "an incredible challenge," concedes key makeup artist Keith Hall - especially since he avoids the popular industry practice of using prosthetic pieces. "The general rule with makeup is that you can age someone up to 20 years without using prosthetic applications," says Hall, whose Fox project just makes it under the wire. "I've never seen an aging makeup done with prosthetics that could convince me."
In a business obsessed with eternal youth, "Reunion" is one of several television series that regularly add years to their characters - using various techniques, which experts from these shows agreed to explain for this piece.
On CBS' "Cold Case," where murder suspects and victims' loved ones morph back and forth between their current and former selves, casting director Rebecca Mangieri usually hires two actors for the same role.
"It's double casting, because there's twice as many people. The episode I'm doing now has seven matches," says Mangieri, a Cresskill native and Academy of the Holy Angels graduate.
And on FX's "nip/tuck," Tom Burman and Bari Dreiband-Burman, the show's Emmy-winning husband-and-wife special-makeup-effects team, sometimes have to first make a "patient" look older so that, after [simulated] cosmetic surgery, the person will look more dramatically youthful.
"We usually try to find somebody in between [who'll look appropriate] when we add the age to them," Tom Burman says. "And then, after their surgery, we'll ... hold the skin a little tighter."
On "Reunion," to approximate aging from 18 to 38, Hall uses a stippling method of makeup application (a sponge is used to roll the makeup compound onto the skin). He then hand-draws tiny lines and age spots.
Hall takes into consideration each character's story arc.
"The Jenna character [becomes] a big Hollywood actress, so I assume she had a little work done and that she has a personal trainer," says Hall of Amanda Righetti's character.
Aaron (David Annable), on the other hand, goes on to run a big computer company - a high-stress business, as Hall sees it. Hence, Aaron's gray hair at age 38.
One of the most challenging to age is Will, played by boyish-faced Will Estes. His character went to prison to shield a guilty friend and eventually became a priest.
"Everything I did on him had to show around his eyes," Hall says. "We made them look a little deeper-set, a little duller, and we added more wrinkles."
Because the show tackles one year per episode while periodically touching base with the present, Hall had to decide at what intervals the characters would show significant physical changes. His conclusion: every seven to eight years, though women often exhibit subtler changes in makeup and hair before that.
Mangieri has no hard and fast rule on how far back a "Cold Case" has to go before it's time to have two actors play the same character. But generally speaking, she's more apt to use a single actor if the character is not young and has to get even older.
"When you're dealing with the older ages - someone in their 50s, say, and then someone in their 70s - it's just a lot harder to find two actors who are similar," says Mangieri, who might cast someone midway between those ages in such a case. "When you get into younger people - the teenager to someone in their 30s — obviously, people can change a lot in that time." (Her biggest challenge so far was a first-season episode involving only a four-year difference in age - 13-year-old boys who matured to 17. It involved double casting.)
Who gets cast first? The older or younger version?
"You'll always want to find an actor in the larger role first," Mangieri says.
Her company, FMW Casting - which she formed with partners Barbara Fiorentino and Wendy Weideman - has "an entire room full of picture files." But they also evaluate fresh photos for each episode, which could involve a lapse of a few years to many decades. (One from last season stretched back to 1932.)
"We try to match some facial features. We bring [the people] in. They don't have to just look alike, but have to have the same energy, to seem similar," says Mangieri, who in a second-season episode cast a father and son (Blake Clark and Travis Clark) to play the older and younger versions of the same character.
Usually, she tries to keep eye color consistent, but when that's not possible, contact lenses are used. And, if it's a big part, even more important than likeness, she says, is "to find the best actors."
Mangieri is especially proud of the matches her team made in last Sunday's episode, in which a 1978 case - the seemingly random murder of a young man - was reopened when the victim's mother found a letter suggesting that his death was not what it appeared to be.
"It doesn't happen very often that every one of them is that spot on."
On "nip/tuck," the Burmans' award-winning specialty is prosthetics. They start by doing a head cast of the actors. "Then Tom and I study their faces and see how we think the best way to age them, and how subtle it has to be," Dreiband-Burman says. "We decide where we would show the age. The eyes? The jowls? Would the ears get bigger?"
Tom Burman adds, "We sometimes make them teeth, so they'll look longer in the tooth."
Now, the big question: Why is it that with some shows or TV movies, when actors are subjected to extreme cosmetic aging - as in the otherwise splendid grand finale of "Six Feet Under" - they often look like refugees from a grammar-school production?
"When you're going that far into the future, it's really hard to age up that much," says Mangieri, a big "Six Feet" fan. "Claire [Fisher] died when she was 102. That's 80 years. ... I think it was just an ambitious amount of time to try to use the same actors."
Says "Reunion's" Hall, "Aging is the hardest thing to do realistically, because the viewer is used to seeing old people. It's much harder to do aging than to do a monster, because there's no point of reference for a monster. Everybody knows an old person."
Cold Case
