Make-up

In terms of making sure everything looks authentic and looks right when it comes to the funeral parlour in the film, I think that making sure that the make-up applied to the actors in order to make them look dead is of major importance.

For Autumn Leaves, I have asked Lucy Pullinger (or Zombie Lucy as she is known) to do the make-up for me. When I first approached her to do the make-up for my project, I had a much more vivd imagining of gory deaths, with blood, guts and other visual treats but the more I thought about the film, the more I felt that having this amount of practical make-up and effects would just detract away from the overall feel of the film and from the characters. I think the tone of the film is definitely of the past and with that I've looked closely at older black comedies that are able to express murder and death without the need for excessive violence.

But what I will ask of Lucy is to make the certain actor's look dead and look the part, as it were. I need to do a bit more research into this and am aware of what dead bodies look like in their various forms (Courtesy of a Funeral Director's book that I will mention in a later blog) but what I really need is a visual reference, as horrible as that sounds. And getting hold of that type of thing hasn't been that easy so far. It's also not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.

Anyway, here is some corpse make-up Lucy has worked upon for the film.

To look at her other work, head on over to:

http://www.zombielucy.co.uk/

or

http://zombielucy.blogspot.com/