S09.E07: All That Glitters

[RedHackle]

Wow.  I'm glad I'm not alone.  I was thinking this was hands down the worst ever result on Face Off, especially on what I thought should have been a fun challenge.  Difficult, sure, but I thought that someone would be able to come up with something that didn't look like a Halloween mask that someone had set on fire and then tried to douse  out with battery acid.  Just the worst work ever, all of it.

But this brings me to something I've been wondering about since the first episode of season one: is there a requirement that the artists must use prosthetic pieces in all of their makeups?  Because it's always seemed to me that they sometimes use them when they'd be better off using paint/makeup alone.  About half the problems I saw with this episode had to do with bad edges or fill on prosthetic pieces.  I haven't asked this before because for all this time, whenever it comes up I always think I'll hear the answer one way or the other - but I've never heard anyone say you must use prosthetics. Does anyone know?  Is the answer to this so obvious that it makes this a stupid question?

Like others here, I've spent some time with drag queens and a lot of them are lovely. This episode was just a mess.

Edited September 10, 2015 by RedHackle

[BensBritches]

[snip] like it's previous gender swap, old age etc make up episodes which also had uniformly bad performances. This is for a obvious reason: such make ups take much longer to create and apply than the usual make up the show and are actually a fairly specialized skill

 

I won't argue that some makeups are a specialized skill, but the guys on RuPaul's Drag Race can "beat their face" in a very short amount of time, way less than these contestants got to do their make-up this week.  RPDR contestants get only a few hours to transform themselves from male to female and most of them do it extremely well (again, with just make-up, no prosthetics).  Yes, some queens are "seasoned" but there have been plenty of contestants who have only been doing drag for a year or so... I just don't think it's that out of (or should be that out of) the Face Off contestants wheelhouse to know how to do basic beauty makeup or correct contouring to highlight cheekbones, de-emphasize jawlines, etc.  But then again, I can barely apply my own makeup so all of it is way better than I could do myself! 

[Quilt Fairy]

Difficult, sure, but I thought that someone would be able to come up with something that didn't look like a Halloween mask that someone had set on fire and then tried to douse  out with battery acid. (emphasis added)

Best description of this challenge by far.

[WearyTraveler]

Wow.  I'm glad I'm not alone.  I was thinking this was hands down the worst ever result on Face Off, especially on what I thought should have been a fun challenge.  Difficult, sure, but I thought that someone would be able to come up with something that didn't look like a Halloween mask that someone had set on fire and then tried to douse  out with battery acid.  Just the worst work ever, all of it.

But this brings me to something I've been wondering about since the first episode of season one: is there a requirement that the artists must use prosthetic pieces in all of their makeups?  Because it's always seemed to me that they sometimes use them when they'd be better off using paint/makeup alone.  About half the problems I saw with this episode had to do with bad edges or fill on prosthetic pieces.  I haven't asked this before because for all this time, whenever it comes up I always think I'll hear the answer one way or the other - but I've never heard anyone say you must use prosthetics. Does anyone know?  Is the answer to this so obvious that it makes this a stupid question?

Like others here, I've spent some time with drag queens and a lot of them are lovely. This episode was just a mess.

 

It doesn't appear to be mandatory to use prosthetics.  Jasmine threw away her piece and did only make up on her guy.  She was deemed safe, so, it must not be a requirement to use prosthetics, if it were, she'd have been eliminated (or at least scolded) for not using any.

[LittleIggy]

Titania was not a "trickster." That was Puck. Titania was an ethereal fairy queen.

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Face Off Joins The Wig Party / The designers try to turn men into women, and things get a little festive along the way.

There were mistakes in this. For example, Hermione was the one with the tears (very badly placed), and Ophelia is called Hecate in the picture with the judges. I did like the line about Hecate looking like a Blackadder fop. Edited September 11, 2015 by LittleIggy

[snakenax]

 

is there a requirement that the artists must use prosthetic pieces in all of their makeups?

Yes-ish under the basic understanding of how such professional competitions work. You're supposed to do the maximum amount of possible work, as skill intensive and difficult work as possible, in the time allotted. While you could go pure beauty make up, you will run into questions of what you did with your time, given your production didn't really start until the third day(As for Jasmine this episode, if Top Chef shows anything it's always worse to put out something that you know failed because you're unwilling to scrap it than to scrap it and make do with what you have left), it's never really come up on the show proper but it lost one person a chance to come back for season 5 when they went pure make up for their vampire. But in a competition of technical skill, you're expected to always be doing as much as possible that is as technically difficult as possible and ultimately the first two days of a challenge are devoted to sculpting and molding.

 

I won't argue that some makeups are a specialized skill, but the guys on RuPaul's Drag Race can "beat their face" in a very short amount of time, way less than these contestants got to do their make-up this week.

Drag make up and prosthetic gender bending make up for Hollywood use are so entirely different fields they pretty much have nothing in common. This challenge, with it's inspiration being Ms. Doubtfire was obviously meant to be the latter, not Drag make up. Even Jasmine, who went full beauty make up, avoided the optical illusions and pancake make up of Drag since she knew that was specifically what they weren't looking for.

 

But to use a comparative example, when this show talks about 'old age makeup' it isn't talking about Ben DeLa Creme at the Snatch Game, but prosthetics molded to the anatomical details of a aged face.

Edited September 11, 2015 by snakenax

[sourpickles]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one horrified by this episode. For sure one of the worst, even counting some of the earlier season missteps. I'm not a Shakespeare fan, but (once again) I thought the challenge sounded really cool and, well, challenging. And then at the reveal......I could not believe my eyes. I have NEVER...just, no, no, no. Meg's was the only one that even came close to fulfilling the challenge. The rest, I could tell which model was under there automatically, and to my shame, I did think of Caitlyn Jenner in at least one. Awful. Just awful. This whole season has been such a bomb. And I don't know why. I've speculated maybe it is the level of talent, or people out of their comfort zone, all of them, all at once. I still can't name some of the contestants, and that is odd considering how far gone the season is. It's just bad, and I wonder if SyFy didn't know it, because they used to run previous weeks before the new epis, or marathons, and now if they run other shows it is AFTER the new one. Not a lot of promotion there. I'll keep watching because the show is so unique and I want it to stay on, but I won't lie-I'll be relieved when this is all over. And I second whoever said to bring back Creature Shop. I LOVED that show, wonder why it didn't come back.

[carrps]

Did anyone watch "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" recently?

That Hecate was the evil Fairy (who was masculine) to a Tee.

[snakenax]

 

. I LOVED that show, wonder why it didn't come back.

Unlike most Reality TV shows, it was entirely honest in it's prize. Which also means it was a competition to fill a actual position at the Jim Henson Company. Which has been filled. Given the kind of job it is, it might be a while before they have another position open up.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

This is for a obvious reason: such make ups take much longer to create and apply than the usual make up the show and are actually a fairly specialized skill(the people studios turn to for that kind of make up can basically be counted on one hand) and so what you get are a bunch of people doing their first time at a very technical and involved skill that requires fine knowledge of anatomical detail and that only look right when given eight hours to apply and cover with make up.

I agree - so I knew this was going to be rough.  But what really shocked  me even more than the overall struggling was that the skin textures of the makeups looked like stucco or cement in practically every case except Meg's.  And I suppose Stevie's, which looked like glazed terra cotta.  

It would have been better for the show to acknowledge that this was going to be an unusually difficult challenge, since on the surface it doesn't seem like it would be to a civilian.

[WearyTraveler]

I once went to a natural mud and clay pool and covered my body with it, the color was similar to what Stevie did with her makeup.

[snakenax]

 

But what really shocked  me even more than the overall struggling was that the skin textures of the makeups looked like stucco or cement in practically every case except Meg's.

That is generally a result of one of three things happening, they rush painting so quickly that their liquid layers don't dry before adding powder layers and the powder clumps or they rush painting so aggressively it starts creating scrubbed foam texture on the latex or they don't have times to test paints, or choose the wrong paints, and it starts having a reaction with the latex that melts it(both Jasmine and the guy who was sent home had that one this episode).

 

Though some of the contestants here, IIRC Meg, Kevan and.. anonymous black haired dude are the three that pretty consistently have baked in texture problems to their sculpts.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

The best thing about this episode was watching the contestants goof around in the work room with all the wigs. At least we got to see them having fun together for a minute.

 

So making male models look female involves spackling their faces so that it looks like they have an inch of crap encasing their faces? And why was I seeing so much stubble?

 

When Stevie said she hadn't worked with "ethnic skin tones" before, she wasn't kidding. Her model's face was such an obviously fake color. Same thing with Scott's Cleopatra but he went the opposite route. Stevie made her model's face much darker while Scott made his model's face much lighter. In both cases, the color looked splotchy and uneven.

 

Kevon's Joan of Arc looked like a dude with a wig, as did Evan's Hecate (at least Evan admitted that he knew his was bad while Kevon thought he had done a good job with his model). The color on Hecate's face looked patchy too. Ricky's Ophelia was slightly better. She ended up looking kind of like Glenn Close, so take that as you will. Jordan's Lady MacBeth looked more feminine but his model somehow ended up looking like a Real Housewife with a botoxed face.

 

What did Ben do to Titania's lips? It looked like he gave her fillers. I'm guessing he just lined way outside his model's natural lip line.

 

Considering that Jasmine used only beauty makeup to transform her model, she did a pretty good job. She did a great job with all the shading and contouring to feminize his face. The tears made of glue looked realistic.

 

Nora's Sycorax definitely looked old but I think she was able to make her model's face look more feminine than some of the others. Then again maybe that's because Mr. Westmore told her exactly how to do it. I love how specific he is with his feedback this season, but at the same time I am annoyed that this crop seems to need such basic instruction. And maybe if he had given the same advice to the other contestants, their models would have ended up looking more feminine.

 

Meg's Queen Mab was the other one that looked very feminine. She also used really beautiful colors on her model's face. That blue with the maroon was really nice. In one of the closeups, her model's chin looked lumpy.

 

It was nice to see McKenzie in a non-bandage dress. It was sad to see how beaten down Kevon and Ricky were, but it was still nice to see them hug each other after their critiques.

Edited September 17, 2015 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Vicky8675309]

They have to do Focus Challenges since they all suck so bad. The contestants are so horrible they can't even due a face in 2 days--they couldn't even do it the last focus challenge. They are going to have to give them all personal mentors unless they cut out 95% of the cast.

I have a feeling we will be stuck with Meg (megan?) until the end--after they did that stupid award challenge a while back just to give her immunity since they knew she sucked. Now she is the winner for doing a scary mask---WTF. Then again the rest were so bad. The "ethnic" (per artist) one was probably the best of a crappy lot but I don't like the constant who whines about ethnic tones. Back to Meg--who the f*ck thinks of insect when they hear fairy. She is pretty and has a compelling back story so they will do anything to keep pretty cancer-survivor girl around even though she sucks. This time she still sucked but others sucked more.

Another challenge were they can do anything they want but just have to do one face…lol, PATHETIC group! One person applied a beauty make up in 15 minutes, after taking off the mask, and was safe--holy sh*t! What was funny was it was still better than many of the two day creations.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Vicky8675309