Dead Foxes

Following our work on Nailed Darlings in July we were contacted by the production designer, Coco, about doing make-up and special effects for her second year VCA film titled Dead Foxes. I'm really proud of the work I did for this film and think its some of my best to date. Given the fact that it was a mere ten days from life-cast to having the fox prosthetics on set, especially so.

First up we life-cast the youngest person we've cast thus far: Isabella age 10. Isabella was recovering from a head cold so we put it off until the last possible day when she was feeling better. I was a little nervous going into this life-cast because of her age, but Isabella was easy to work with and a total professional. Before doing her face and neck we life cast her fingers so she understood the process. Plus she got fingers to take home with her.




Then I cleaned up the stone life cast and made a silicone mould with a fibreglass mother-mould of Isabella's face.



After doing this I made a fibreglass positive of her face to sculpt onto. The turnaround on this process was insanely tight: Day 1 lifecast, clean up, silicone mould, Day 2 fibreglass mother-mould, fibreglass positive, Day 3 trim edges of positive and clean with water and IPA, Day 4-5 sculpt prosthetic, Day 6 fibreglass mould, Day 7 trimming edges, cleaning moulds, silicone into nose, Day 8 pull piece, make whiskers, sculpt teeth, Day 9 mould teeth, make teeth, paint and varnish teeth, attach them. Day 10 last fiddling around with it.




The sculpt was probably the fastest I've ever done. I knew it had to be done quickly so I used plasticine rather than Chavant NSP which I would have used if I had another 2-3 days up my sleeve.




Finished piece before attaching it to actor's face.



Some shots that I think I'll probably use for my portfolio entry into Neill Gorton's course in the UK sometime next year.






With some practice Isabella managed to get really good movement out of the piece. But she only worked out she could move the mouth after finishing her scenes.





I also did character make-up for the lead actress, Sarah. The third day of shooting called for Sarah to look dirty in a fairly surreal scene set amongst the ruins of this amazing burned down house surrounded by rusted car bodies and corrugated iron.



I'm not sure that you could probably take a bad shot of Sarah and James on location for the third day of shooting.



All up I feel like everything worked really well on this film: from script, acting, sets and locations, to make-up, production design and direction.