Blanca was really patient with us. She lay still – on a hard board for quite a long time while we took a zillion photo’s, making small moves between each shot for ‘stop frame animation’
Though our spirits were high and we really enjoyed it, the work was physically challenging, bending over Blanca in a confined space for a few hours.
Difficult to see in these low-res web-photo’s, but there were subtle changes between every stop frame, mostly twirling the hair between every shot, other changes included building up the make-up by adding layers of gold, then gloss then sugar to the lips, and adding glitter and diamante sparkles to the eyes, a little more between every shot.
Our favourite editor Alastair ventured out of his edit suite for the day and played a vital role, ‘head cookie twirler’. Jeremy in the background directing the twirl
Blanca was the perfect model for this. Not only did she have the right temperament, (a diva wouldn’t have coped) but when we did the auditions, we knew that we needed to have a good, natural hairline and long hair, knowing that the hair would be pulled back. Many of the models had weaves and things that would have been really difficult to work with.
There were some serious layers of make-up right there! wow!
Nice to have the opportunity to get colourful and crazy. I would have liked to have gone out of the lines a bit, down the cheeks, etc with the sprinkles and sparkles, but the clients kept me inside of the lines.
My back-ache melted away into gratitude. It was a good day.
See the complete TV Commercial below
I Studied make-up and special effects in 1993, and still get excited when a booking comes in. I'm glad I made a few good choices in my life, doing make-up for a living was one of them. I love my job!