Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

To see the artis­tic val­ue in a gap­ing chop wound, an ooz­ing bul­let hole or the rot­ting face of the zom­bie un­dead is prob­a­bly the most ec­cen­tric skill any per­son might want to gain. How­ev­er, that is ex­act­ly what would be re­quired to cre­ate be­liev­able fake wounds ei­ther for a film, to scare friends at a lime, or to im­press the crowd at the nu­mer­ous cos­tume par­ty com­pe­ti­tions hap­pen­ing this Hal­loween. Steven Tay­lor's name has be­come syn­ony­mous with Hol­ly­wood-style spe­cial ef­fects make-up in T&T over the last few years. He has done pro­fes­sion­al pros­thet­ic and spe­cial ef­fects make-up work in movies, mu­sic videos and com­mer­cials.This month, Tay­lor hosts a Movie Make­up Ma­nia work­shop at the UWI Film Build­ing, Car­mody Road, St Au­gus­tine, with two ses­sions every Sat­ur­day from Oc­to­ber 12-26.Each two-hour ses­sion has a dif­fer­ent fo­cus, in­cor­po­rat­ing lec­ture-tu­to­ri­als on fake bul­let and chop wounds, bruis­es and burns, as well as an in­tro­duc­tion to the ap­pli­ca­tion of pros­thet­ics. The fi­nal Sat­ur­day will be a full Zom­bie Day, with zom­bie make-up ses­sion in both the morn­ing and af­ter­noon.

Dur­ing the first ses­sion on Oc­to­ber 12, Tay­lor es­tab­lished an easy ca­ma­raderie with work­shop par­tic­i­pants and set the tone of the ses­sion by em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of look­ing be­yond the su­per­fi­cial, grue­some ap­pear­ance of a cut or a wound to find its artis­tic el­e­ments."One needs to un­der­stand what makes re­al­i­ty look the way it does and to be able to trans­late that for the screen. Any­one can pur­chase a bot­tle of fake blood or even some liq­uid la­tex, but these are just tools. A trained [per­son] can use these tools to cre­ate a swollen eye," he said.Tay­lor's work­shop al­so en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pants to see colour vari­a­tions in a whole new way and to have a wide ar­ray of in­ter­ests from which in­spi­ra­tion could be gar­nered.Top­ics cov­ered in­clud­ed blood splat­ter analy­sis and tech­niques, the im­por­tance of see­ing vari­ant bone and flesh tis­sue coloura­tion, un­der­stand­ing bul­let tra­jec­to­ry, asym­met­ri­cal shapes in or­gan­ic wounds and even fa­cial re­con­struc­tion and pros­thet­ics. Tay­lor al­so shared dif­fer­ent tech­niques for work­ing with light and dark skin tones, make-up eti­quette and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, make-up tool hy­giene, client face cleans­ing care and lo­cal sup­pli­er tips and sources for make-up kit ma­te­ri­als.

"You have to be able to ob­jec­ti­fy re­al wounds and as­sess them for their artis­tic val­ue," said Tay­lor as he an­swered a par­tic­i­pant's ques­tion about why he did not choose to be a med­ical doc­tor or mor­ti­cian. "Now, it might sur­prise you, but I am ex­treme­ly squea­mish, so I have to take my­self out of that re­al­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. I have to look at wounds like a piece of art [...]; I still pre­fer to stick to the fake."A film­mak­er and make-up artist, Tay­lor is a re­cent grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) BA in film pro­gramme. He was trained in make-up spe­cial ef­fects at the Com­plec­tions Col­lege of Make­up Art & De­sign in Toron­to, Cana­da, spe­cial­is­ing in make-up for film, tele­vi­sion, the­atre, spe­cial ef­fects/ca­su­al­ty make-up, pros­thet­ics and an­i­ma­tron­ics.Tay­lor's work for his com­pa­ny Dream/Re­al­i­ty Make-up Artist in­cludes char­ac­ters from mu­sic videos for Trinidad James' Fe­males Wel­comed, Machel Mon­tano's Bot­tle of Rum and Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter's You (En­er­gy).

Tay­lor al­so worked on the films Home Again, God Loves the Fight­er and Jab in the Dark, as well as on an episode of Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic's Locked Up Abroad se­ries. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he cre­at­ed the an­i­ma­tron­ic ti­tle char­ac­ter for his own award-win­ning film Buck the Man Spir­it.Tay­lor said he had al­ways dreamed of re­turn­ing to T&T to share his knowl­edge. His plans in­clude pur­su­ing a mas­ter's in cin­e­mat­ic art in the US and, there­fore, he will be out of T&T for the next three years."I know that there are a lot of peo­ple with an in­ter­est in spe­cial ef­fects make-up but not every­one would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to trav­el abroad to learn this spe­cial­ty art form. So, I am bring­ing it back home to nar­row the gap be­tween dreams and re­al­i­ty for some make-up/film en­thu­si­asts," he said.

More in­fo: 494-3588 or e-mail theart­man15@gmail.com