Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Prosaide transfers for the short film \"The Dark\"

Just last week I wrapped on a short film titled "The Dark". The two main characters both posed some interesting effects. Our male lead was going to have his eyes sewn shut for the entire film. We had talked in preproduction and out actor was comfortable enough to have both eyes covered while filming.... But what about when he wasn\'t..... I didn\'t want to compromise the look of the appliances by adding a see through piece, so my middle ground was to make something that would go on and off quickly and easily. For this, transfers were my choice. I had made 20 pairs for 5 days of filming. They were all stitched and had a little paint on the before hand in order to make the application as quick as possible. I think in the end, I was able to get both appliances on and painted in under an hour. This is how I made them:I measured the actors eye as to not make the appliance too big or small. Then traced the eye shape in the proper size on a piece of plastic (plexiglas).Then I sculpted the swollen eyes with chavant medium clay on to the plastic. I cast the eyes in OOMOO-25, a tin silicone that cures in a short amount of time.Once the mold was done, I filled the mold with prosaide bondo, squeegeed a piece of acetate over what will be the underside of the piece, and placed it in the freezer for a half an hour. After the bondo freezes the appliances pop right out, while still attached to the acetate and are ready to dry out.Since I had so many to make in a short amount of time I used a food dehydrator on the lowest setting to dry the appliances.They were all given a quick wash of color using skin illustrator palettes. I used the light skin and complexion palettes.The stitches were made with a wide cotton black thread. I used a little Vaseline on the tip of the needle to keep the needle moving.The pieces transferred beautifully to the waterslide tattoo paper and then onto the actor. Todd Debrencini has a great article on line for more information about prosaide transfers:http://backporchfx.com/Tutorial1_3DTransfers.pdf

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