Face Off: SyFy's Makeup Effects Artists Competition Show

They get two ten-hour days in the lab, then four hours on the third day for finishing up and application, then an hour to touch up. But too often we're seeing them still constructing the pieces-parts on the third day, and applying major chunks during that last hour when they should be doing final touch-ups and details. And it's never mentioned how the costuming is handled — do they need to also sew and alter the costume bits or are there costumers in the back room?

And now that rotpar has presumably seen it, I will also say that I was ecstatic that Roy wasn't sent home. That's one judges' discussion I would love to hear; Glenn looked like was almost going to cry when Roy said what happened; I bet he was reliving similar nightmare occurrences of his own.

Then the way the editors kept showing him saying "We understand and sympathize, but we have to judge based on what you showed us," I'm sure that there was a lot of discussion of how strictly they had to judge what he showed them, and how much consideration they could give to the fact that he had had to start over and he essentially had half the time the others did. It probably helped his case enormously that he didn't try to weasel out; he stood there and said, "Yeah, I fucked it up, and it's mostly crap and I know it and I know why."

edited 4th Sep '13 2:52:38 PM by Madrugada

Yeah, glad Adolfo took the bullet on this one. Roy taking the responsibility for his disaster helped.

This was one creepy ass episode. Frank's Horrible Teeth Thing should have won because it was freaking hideous to look at. Frank, Miranda, and Laura all made these horrors that you wanted to camera to stop doing close-ups on.

I know the one thing that I didn't like about Frank's Creepy Too Many Teeth Thing was that as creepy as the "too many teeth" part was, and as cool as it was that he put some mobility in the mouth and jaw, I kept thinking "But it couldn't really bite anything..."

edited 4th Sep '13 3:24:57 PM by Madrugada

^^^ Yeah, being able to recognize and own up to when you've made mistakes counts for a lot with these judges. It's when you screw up and don't recognize it that they take issue with.

Well, Laney kind of answered my question about whether there were un-mentioned costumers working with them: Yes, there are. (Her comment in her confessional interview that "The costume I got is not what I asked for...".) I like knowing that, even though it's not really vital information.

And RJ, what were you thinking?

Yeah, that was weird. Laney had a bad run of luck today.

Ok, editing is fun and manipulative. They edited the "preview" stuff to look like Frank's mannequin lost its head. A moment later they were doing the no-context judgement stuff and Glenn saying "I can only express contempt for this decision".

My first thought: did Frank decapitate his model?

Never trust the editing. Never.

On another note, I was kind of surprised that no-one went the "Mother Nature is the root of all life, but that doesn't mean she's all sweetness and light, nicey-nicey fuzzy and cuddly" route.

edited 11th Sep '13 5:04:31 PM by Madrugada

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

I had a TV class way back in 2003 or so and we learned about how deceptive and false "reality" shows are. Using Survivor as an example, seeing the woman who is playing the backstabbing bitch planning on betraying somebody and it cuts to footage of a jackal in the grass. Or seeing the stunt they performed "once" had different cameramen and shots that showed they did multiple takes.

I'm sure if any of the others went with the Good Is Not Nice route, they'd be in the same boat as RJ, who basically ignored the challenge conditions and did his own thing in an attempt to not repeat himself (good idea, bad execution).

edited 13th Sep '13 3:51:32 AM by Customer

Frank had trouble because his dad died recently and his mom is sick so it has been the hardest year of their lives.

Ah. I misheard then (thought it was his dad that was ill and mom was who died). I felt bad for him, but at least he overcame it for this challenge.

I'm not saying someone should have done full-on Good Is Not Nice. I'm saying I'm surprised no-one even went near Good Is Not Soft or Mama Bear, or Silk Hiding Steel. It wouldn't be ignoring the challenge conditions; that would be making a "Mother Nature is a stone bitch" concept. And really, everyone went with 'soft and gentle', even though every one of them also talked about how strong their mother was. But the strength wasn't in the designs. There was so much more they could have played with there.

RJ fell down on a whole bunch of points: his concept was a caricature, it was ugly, it was poorly executed, and his only justification for doing something completely different from the instructions was "I already did one of those and I didn't want to repeat it." Anyone of those things could have gotten him eliminated, all of them together was a death sentence.

But the big one was the last one: he straight out said "I can't do the same concept twice without repeating myself. I only have one idea, even when given a broad concept like 'Nature goddess'. " How many times did Michael Westmore have to do "alien" on Star Trek? How many different 'demon/demonic creature' designs has Patrick Tatopoulos done in his career? RJ confessed to a lack of imagination. That most of all is what did him in

edited 13th Sep '13 7:19:37 AM by Madrugada

The cynic in me can't help but wonder if:

A. Frank's problems this week were fake, he was told to "struggle" with it for the camera.

B. His problems were real and the producers deliberately set him for drama. "Ok, Frank will be returning this season, what's he been up to? His mother is sick and his father died? We can use that, didn't we have a 'mother nature' challenge planned? Make everyone base it off their mothers, that'll get some drama out of him".

edited 13th Sep '13 11:13:06 AM by Rotpar

I did wonder about that a bit, too, rotpar, but I haven't seen any other signs of the sort of cruelty* that your second scenario would require from the producers. But I think that the editors certainly cherry picked the footage to make the most of whatever amount of problem he was having.

* I'm talking about things that the producers of other similar shows have done; particularly the Magical Elves and Project Runway, with the challenge that forced the designers to trash their living quarters for materials, and then made them continue to live there (Very first challenge of the season, to boot), or the one that required that they wear a particularly treasured or meaningful thing to the challenge introduction, then were told that they must use it in their design — not use it as inspiration, mind you, use it as material. One woman had chosen a Hermes scarf that she had inherited from her grandmother and she got a huge ration of shit from the judges because she wouldn't cut it up or otherwise damage it. (side note: the contract for that show says that the things the designers make in the course of the show belong to the show.) That's the kind of cruelty I'm not seeing in Face/Off, and it's the kind of cruelty that would be needed to design a challenge just to fuck with Frank's head.

As I said, the cynic in me and that's the more cynical of the two options. I really dislike the reality show elements of this and Pawn Stars.

As for those other shows, yeah, that is cruel. Mutilate a family heirloom to impress us?

I don't really watch reality TV (this show and Heroes of Cosplay being a couple of exceptions so far), but hearing about Executive Meddling circumstances from other shows makes me wary a bit (even though I doubt this show would go that far).

One person tried to make Warrior Goddess; I don't know if that would be the Good is not nice or not. They tried to make it look like her armor was the rocks, water, and branches. I forget his name but he was on the bottom this week and made you think he was going home instead of RJ.

That was ... Edward? I concede the point there that he at least came within spitting distance of a Good Is Not Soft Mother Nature.

The reason that Edward's goddess was on the bottom was that it just didn't look good. The face had very little makeup (I don't remember there even being any) and was not tied into the rest of the makeup.

I didn't like it because the cowl had nothing feminine about it and the moss around the face made it look like she had a beard. The end result was a costume instead of a makeup. If he had done almost anything to tie the face to the cowl it would have been better.

The reason RJ got the cut that episode wasn't just that he didn't capture the sweet caring nature goddess but it was a failure even as a beauty makeup. A lot of the results of the foundation challenges produced better looking and more complex makeups than it. It didn't help that RJ basically told the judges that he didn't have the depth to do a variation on the theme. The one thing that is worst than making a bad makeup, is making a bad makeup and not being able to recognize it's a bad makeup.

I actually like this series better than the others like Hot Set, Monster Man, or even Heroes of Cosplay is they focus more on the drama than the design. Face Off only seems to show the drama when it's impacting the artist work like Frank's personal issues which he fought off well enough to make a decent makeup or Alana and Laney's fighting over how to design their creature. Although we will probably see Laney go Heroic BSoD at least at the beginning of the next episode since she believes, with some good reason, that she's the reason Alana got axed.

The other shows (especially Monster Man) focus less on the designs and more on drama between the artist. Heroes of Cosplay I found to be a decent second place to Face Off. It has hints of showing the work, dedication, and the cool costumes but there was a bit more drama than I care for.

Finally, at long last Alana is gone. Laney has nothing to do with it with Alana being a bad artist. Laney did what Alana asked to save her ass, Alana got booted for the poor work she does.

edited 2nd Oct '13 7:35:47 PM by Rotpar

rotpar, you're the one we're spoilertagging to oblige, since you said you don't watch til Wednesday... You don't need to tag for us.

I don't know that all the blame can go on Alana, though. Recall that she said "Look, I went home the first time for bad edges; we have to do something to fix these edges between the cowl and the face." Laney didn't see the problem until it was too late to do anything except not use the cowl. I Also disagree with the judges that Alana's and Laney's guy "didn't look alien"; he wasn't glaringly alien, no; but I liked the concept of the facial features.

That said, I entirely agree that the right team won last night. She was stunning.

edited 2nd Oct '13 9:02:27 PM by Madrugada

Ah. I'll keep that in mind then. The topic fell off for a bit so I figured just be safe for anybody else who hasn't piped in.

Good to see that Roy survived this week's mishap. I have to say, Miranda annoys the crap out of me. She's really talented and does good work but every episode is some kind of disaster with her. I'm not sure if she's a drama queen or this is the fake reality show drama, but it gets annoying to see her "OMG I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING OH GOD" and then she stomps everybody.

Still rooting for Tate or Laura.

Ok, last week: scary/funny ghosts.

Who else squee'd when Roy finally won? I did a happy dance in the living room. He so completely deserved that win. I was pretty sure he had it sewed up barring some horrible flaw that was only visible close-up when all three of the judges (even Glen, the freaking sourpuss perfectionist. I love him dearly, and he's even-handed about being demanding, but he's so humorless sometimes.) laughed when his model opened the coat and they saw that wonderfully grumpy looking little lower-half. The only thing he could possibly have done better (to me) is to have stuffed the upper half's pants legs more, so that they weren't collapsed back on themselves and obviously empty. But that was so minor, so very minor, compared to the rest of it.

Eddie needed to articulate his concept better. All the times in the confessionals he used the phrase "old-style cartoon ghost", and it looks like he didn't say that to the judging panel? I could see what he was going for, it was reminiscent of Casper's trio of antagonists (oldschool — the comic books◊, not the movie.)

Glad to see Roy take one home as well last week. Giving the bottom guy a cigar was the best decision he could make.

And aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh at this week. Laney wusses out and quits and Miranda squeaks by with utter garbage.