Makeup

I have always been jealous of people whose talents and ambitions align (and are recognized) at an early age. For example, Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy's, pictured here with some chicken cook guy) knew he wanted to run restaurants before he was even a teenager. My best friend Mickey knew he wanted to own an oil company when he was still learning to fling newspapers from his car window in west Wichita. George Takei knew he wanted to be a thespian while growing up in an internment camp during WWII.

Those guys all achieved their goals, as do most people who grow up with such focus. Me? Well, my childhood ambitions ran the standard gamut from cowboy to helicopter pilot to matinee idol, etc. The problem was that I had no talent in any of these areas, and was completely clueless as to where my talents (if any) might actually lie.

And dadgummit, I still haven't really figured it out.

Fortunately, though, I have managed to muster enough skills to remain employable over the years. And along the way, I have at least been able to gain a slightly better understanding of my own aptitudes.

For example, when I was studying filmmaking in college, I found myself drawn to the recording side of things more than to what was in front of the camera. Of course, I did take classes that covered lighting and set design, dealing with actors, makeup, and wardrobe, etc...but I didn't care about any of that stuff. I found that I would much rather spend time as a cameraman, sound engineer, or film editor.

But...seeing the recent Star Trek movie and thinking about diverging universes (also known as the "Doc Brown chalkboard, 1.21 jiggawatts, don't-date-your-mother timeline deviation effect"), made me think about what it would be like to actually see if your predictions about the future came true. And that got me thinking about makeup.

I don't think the Original Series makeup guys understood the aging process all that well.

Actually, they didn't do that bad of a job with Spock...but then again, he wasn't aging as fast as the other guys.



But instead of unrealistically white hair and dark forehead stripes, perhaps they'd have been better off with nothing but jowl appliances.





And this one is just embarrassing:



I'd say they came the closest with Dr. McCoy. (Click to embiggen.)



For some reason, DeForest Kelley ended up playing "old Bones" in several different incarnations. The fourth panel, though (from TNG) starts to veer off in a bad direction...reminding me of Miracle Max, who I threw into panel 5 just to see if anyone was paying attention.

Anyway, I just found this study to be interesting, and thought I'd share it. I hope the techniques of aging an actor through makeup has matured as the artists have found more real-life "before and after" examples to learn from.

In my next post, I plan to share some more thoughts about my own convoluted career-path meanderings, as well as my own story of experiencing on-camera makeup first hand. Until then, stay away from irradiated comets, and have a great day!