In this generation we watch horror films and programmes on TV such as Criminal Minds or CSI, and we assume that it's all fictional and that the kinds of people shown in such entertainment do not actually exist, yet they actually do, and we hear a lot more about it in the news than we realise. When I was given this part of the brief, I noticed that I was hearing it a lot more in the news than I had ever noticed before. Over time, there have been some incredibly twisted people in the world that have committed horrible crimes that the majority of us think are incapable of ever happening to people we know. Some examples are described below.
Dr Harold Shipman - The World's Most Prolific Serial Killer
Harold Shipman was a doctor based in Manchester who preyed on his elderly female patients, who were alone and vulnerable. He killed at least 215 of his patients, before being arrested in 1998. His method of murder was injecting them with an overdose of painkillers. He was sentenced to life in 1998, and in 2004 he was found dead in his cell where he had hung himself.
The Zodiac Killer
This series of murders remains a great unsolved case. A series of murders kicked off after a girl was viciously murdered in 1966 by a man who offered to help restart her car, him being the man who had hijacked it in the first place, unbeknown to her of course. This killer frightened the people of San Francisco for years, and he often taunted the police with weird phone calls and messages. The police investigated thousands of possible suspects, however the case was never solved.
Eddie Gein
A man known as 'The Body Snatcher', whose emotional development had been stunted by his mother. Police were shocked when they found a vest of human skin and a cache of human body parts in his possession. He is now the model for characters such as Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs) and Norman Bates (Psycho).
The Birnies
Catherine Birnie was caused by her husband David Birnie's sexual appetite to abduct, rape and murder four women in their house in Perth, Australia. David's cruelty finally got to Catherine and so a victim escaped, resulting in their arrest.
Jack the Ripper
Undoubtedly a very famous serial killer. Known for murdering prostitutes in London's Whitechapel district, causing panic in 1888.
References:
- Unknown. (n.d.). Harold Shipman. Available: http://www.biography.com/people/harold-shipman-17169712#awesm=~oDuWtns68CLFUk. Last accessed 28th March 2014.
- Crime Library. (n.d.). Serial Killers. Available: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/index.html?PHPSESSID=926d850a17629c211e062beec450749e. Last accessed 28th March 2014.
- Unknown. (2014). Ed Gein. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein. Last accessed 28th March 2014.
-The story behind
it -> why is there make-up broken down? How has it happened/why has it
happened?
-What kind of dirt
-Think of their
surroundings
-Make-up is
dictated by the clothes they wear
-Everywhere in
shot to be made up/ dirtied down
-Hair => use brill cream to make greasy
-Put into the root
and pull through the hair
-Dry shampoo will
dull down the hair
-There are different
colour dirt sprays that you can buy
How to:
STAINING TEETH
-Make sure the
person doesn’t have teeth caps and note that you can apply the product straight
from the bottle
-Begin by drying
the tooth with a cotton bud
-Kryolan tooth
enamel comes in many different colours, such as gold, silver, black and enamel,
so you can create any desired effect, whether it be rotting teeth, stained
teeth, missing teeth or gold teeth
-Apply the
necessary colours for your desired effect using a small brush
-To remove the
tooth enamel, use methylated spirit with a cotton bud
DIRTYING DOWN
-Use your
supracolour palette and mix your colours to create different effects
-Mix the grease
based products with moisturizer to make them easier to work into the skin
-For sunburnt skin -> use reds, and mix with a
small amount of brown
-For dirtiness
-> use browns and greens, to create the effect of having fallen over
-When dirtying the
hands, make sure their fingers are bent, so that all products go into the
creases of the knuckles as well
EVALUATION: This was fun to
do as you could add anything and be quite messy with the make-up, yet still
come out with a good finish. Next time I
will work at creating different effects on the teeth, as this time I just
focused on trying to block them out.
Michael Jackson's Thriller is a classic gothic horror music video. It was the first song to have an accompanying music video that was more like a short film. The video sees Jackson and his girlfriend in the cinema watching a horror film before the music of the song starts. The music starts as they begin their journey home, in which they pass by a graveyard and wake the dead who then follow the pair and surround them in an alley. The make-up applied to the zombie characters within this music video is very detailed, and what you would expect from a gothic horror styled video. Although Jackson and his girlfriend appear normal, the fact that they are wearing red in the music video as they come out of the cinema implies that danger is just around the corner.
P!NK - Just Like a Pill
In this music video the styling appears very gothic, with Pink dressed all in black throughout it, made up with dark eyes and with black hair and nails. The song is about how she wants to get out of a relationship with someone that is a bad influence on her. The lyrics 'you're just like a pill, instead of making me better, you keep making me ill' imply that she is addicted to him, and the video jumps between different scenes that appear to be hallucinations, as someone would have if they were on drugs. One of these scenes that stands out to me most, is the one where Pink is in a field within a room and there is a man behind her who is dressed all in black with a long coat and top hat and is made up as a skeleton man. This scene stands out to me because I believe that he represents the bad and darkness in her mind, and his styling gives the video more of a horror feel to it, alongside the gothicness.
Franz Ferdinand - Evil Eye
This music video sees gothic horror as a parody (an imitation of the style of gothic horror with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect [Available: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/parody]). The music video shows people having limbs chopped off and then blood spurting out of the wounds. It also sees blood splashes over walls, one of the band's members laying on a bed with a dead corpse, and the band driving in a funeral car whilst holding a head out of the window. The music video makes fun of the blood and gore side to the gothic horror genre of films and TV.
Rihanna - Disturbia
Rihanna's Disturbia has quite a typical gothic horror feel to it, opening with long, black finger nails being dragged across piano keys, creating a creepy mood. The camera then pans to various people within what appears to be a torture chamber. Rihanna's eye make-up throughout the video is dark, changing depending on which character she has become, and at some points she has white contact lenses in, to make it look like she has no eyes. Her clothing is tight and she wears leotards, which are all black with different accessories, such as belts and high shoulder pads. This makes it seem as though she is the one in control of the torture chamber, however at points Rihanna is shown in a cage, making you question whether she actually is. The song has a creepy feel to it and the music video adds to that effect nicely.
Little Mix - DNA
Little Mix are not the type of girl band that you'd expect to have a gothic horror styled music video, however their DNA fits into this genre perfectly. The video sees the girls with very dark make-up and their outfits always feature at least one black item. They all have dark eyes and lips throughout the video, and their clothing varies from tight catsuits, to shirts and bow ties, to accessories such as veils and gloves. Leigh-Anne's hair really stands out to me in this - a sleek ponytail with a quiff at the front - it's simple, yet striking and bold. The lighting used in the video makes it appear darker, adding to the effect of the music video. The music video shows the band restraining men with ropes, standing outside a window with a man's shadow behind it and constructing what appears to be some form of investigation. The story behind the music video is quite closely related to the idea of Claudia and Quentin, with the girls being in control of the relationship.
The Ring (2002)
The Ring is an American horror film that is a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu, which itself was based on the novel Ringu by Koji Suzuki. The storyline focuses on a mysteriously cursed videotape that contains a seemingly random series of disturbing images and after watching the tape the viewer will receive a phone call telling them that they will die in 7 days.
The plot sees journalist Rachel Keller investigate her nieces death that appears to be related to the death of 4 other teenagers. The investigation leads Rachel to the cabin where her niece and her friends watched this tape. Rachel finds it, watches it and receives the phone call. If the legend of the videotape is true, she will have to race against time to save herself and her son.
Orphan is an American thriller that focuses on a couple who adopt a 9 year old called Esther when their third child is stillborn. The couple's daughter, Max, warms to Esther straight away whereas their son, Daniel, is not so welcoming. Kate, the mother, is suspicious of Esther and believes their might be underlying problems in her background when she seriously injures a girl who had bullied her at school, though she believes Esther when she claims it was just an accident. Kate's suspicions deepen when Sister Abigail, the head of the orphanage, warns her that bad things always seem to happen when Esther is around. Maybe she isn't as innocent as she makes out to be.
Black Swan is an American horror film that revolves around a production of Swan Lake by an NYC ballet company. The production requires a ballerina to play the innocent, fragile White Swan as well as the dark, sensual Black Swan. Nina Sayers, a dancer within the company is perfect for the part of the White Swan but not so much the Black Swan. She manages to convince the director to cast her as the Swan Queen, although she still finds herself competing for the part, causing her to lose her grip on reality and descend into a living nightmare.
Carrie is an supernatural film about a shy, friendless 17 year old girl. After being taunted by her classmates about her reaction to her unexpected first period, one of the girls takes pity on her and persuades the class hunk, who is also her boyfriend, to take Carrie to the prom. Meanwhile another girl in the class, who has been banned from the prom due to her aggressive behaviour, plans to embarrass Carrie in front of the whole school. Though what she doesn't know is that Carrie is different, and making her angry is not something that will end well.
[Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074285/]
The Omen (1976)
The Omen is about an American ambassador and his wife who want more than anything to have their own children. When the ambassador's wife has a stillborn child, he is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a newborn whose mother died during childbirth. The ambassador agrees, and after relocation to London, strange and mysterious events surround the family, leading him to believe that the child he is raising could be the anti-christ, the devil's own son.
In today's seminar we were practicing dark eyes and lips to get us inspired for our gothic horror characters that we will be creating in the coming weeks. We were creating a cat eye, winged effect on the eyes and perfecting our lip techniques.
CREATING EYES:
- To create the cat eye effect, line the top eye lid with eyeliner
- Continue the line further than the lid, creating a wing effect and thicken the line to make it more prominent
- Fill the rest of the eyelid with a dark eyeshadow, taking it no further than the crease of the lid
- Get your model to look up with her eyes and line the bottom lash line with eyeliner
- Join the bottom eyeliner to the top winged eyeliner, making sure there are no gaps
- Finish by applying mascara to the eyelashes
CREATING LIPS:
- When applying a base, make sure you cover the edge of the lips so that you can create the lip shape yourself
- Start with the top lip and line the cupid's bow
- When connecting the top of the cupid's bow to the outer corners of the lips, you want to make them slightly arched rather than dipped -> this will make them look fuller
- With the bottom lip, start with the straight line at the bottom making sure that you carry this no further than the edges of the cupid's bow
- When connecting to the outer corners, you want to make sure that the lip line doesn't curve in towards the inner of the lip or that it isn't too rounded in the opposite direction either
EVALUATION: I found this exercise useful, though difficult. I didn't find it easy when trying to get the eyes matching, as the angles of the wings were always slightly different. The lip technique I found easier, but then I was lucky as my model had quite even lips already. These techniques are definitely something that I need to practice some more.
-Blow-dry the hair back and straight and make sure
the cuticles are smooth and the ends are perfectly straight
-Add some mousse to the dried hair - mostly on the
roots and from frontal sections to occipital bone - with that you will be able
to control the hair from the roots and any cowlicks from the top of the crown
and forehead
-You can spray water if you need to reactivate the
mouse
-Comb back the hair or create a middle parting, combing
the hair down or back, depending on the desired result
FOR PONYTAIL:
-Comb the hair together if you want to make the
ponytail and tight it in the position you wish (high/low ponytail)
FOR HAIR BACK:
-Use section clips with paper - place the paper
between the hair and the clip to secure the hair temporarily and let the hair
set in the new shape
-Place the clips between the crown and the
occipital bone if the hair go back and if it goes back to the sides just place
them behind the ears
-When the hair is in the right place, use
hairspray to secure the hair in place and take the clips out
