Managed to enjoy another birthday that just kept on giving these past few days, starting with dinner and drinks with Mr. Myers in Crouch End on Thursday night. On Friday morning (my actual B’day) AJB gave me a much sought after muffin tin and then took me out to mooch around Kensington, drinking overpriced coffee, shopping for pretty things and getting free movies and half price drinks (yay for Odeon employee passes!) We saw ‘Edge of Darkness’ which I thought was going to be standard Mel Gibson fodder but it was actually pretty good and included lots of awesome action shots and horrific gun shot wounds. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden for dinner, witnessed a fight, ate our weight in burritos and drank a lot of Corona.
Saturday was day one of IMATS (the international make-up artist trade show) at Alexandra Palace (round the corner from my house!) I had wanted to go last year but really didn’t have any spare cash. I knew there would be a lot of awesome sfx artists there from reading the reviews of the last 2 years and talking about it while at solutions last year. There are also all sorts of interesting demonstrations, seminars and panels to attend.
First thing on Saturday morning was a prosthetic application demo by Neill Gorton (head of ‘Millenium FX’ and also general fx badass) We missed the first 5 mins thanks to the ridiculous queues to pick up tickets but it didn’t matter. It was a fascinating demo, something really new to me to see in such detail. He also painted the prosthetic once applied (it had a flesh base and he painted it BLUE!!! I clearly have to go back to the beginning on this whole painting thing) I saw him use skin illustrators which was ace since I have 2 palettes both sitting unused due to to ignorance. Neill took a 1 inch chip brush, added a little IPA and just smushed the brush in before flicking it at the appliance.
Since he started posting on theeffectslab.com I have been constantly amazed by Aris Kolontes’ sculpture (the current MoTD is a sketch of one of his busts) so I was super stoked to see this little collection of his work in the ‘museum’.
The museum also had these items from the Narnia films that I studied closely in my research for the minotaur project, very very cool to see them in person.
The real reason I wanted to go to IMATS though was to try and talk to people who I knew could give me advice, criticize my portfolio and tell me what to do to improve and ultimately get myself hired. I knew this was going to be difficult and nerve wracking but thanks to prods from AJB I managed to get my folio examined by almost everyone I had in mind at the start, plus a few extras I didn’t know would be there. Here is a summary of what I remember each one saying (memory not perfect due to the raging nerves – also please forgive the hero worship factoids, just trying to put across what each of these people represented to me).
NICK DUDMAN – (head of creatures at Harry Potter, started his career on Empire Strikes Back, BAFTA nominated for Batman, BAFTA won on Fifth Element) – I had met Nick before on Harry Potter but couldn’t find him in my last minutes there to show him my folio then. Lucky that everytime I turned around this weekend, there he was! I picked my moment on the second time I saw him when we sat down for a coffee and there he was 2 tables over with another guy I recognized from HP. I waited a looooong time, trying to decide if it was rude and inappropriate to approach him while sat at the table or better to catch him sat down than trying to get through a crowd later on) He wasn’t eating or drinking so I went over and apologized for interrupting, stated my case as above and he agreed to look! He said I had some lovely work, asked a couple of questions about materials and such, read through my CV and asked if I had left one at leavesden. He said he wouldn’t take the one out of my folio because he’d lose it but please post one out and it’ll be kept and looked at when he’s next hiring. I know this is probably standard schpeel, I know how hard it is just to get on his list of considerations, let alone actual hires but obviously I’ll do what he says!
TOM SAVINI – (make up on and small parts in Dawn of the Dead and From dusk til Dawn to name just two, ‘king of splatter’ pioneer of anatomically correct horror and gore effects, author of ‘Grande Illusions’, general fx badass) – Though Tom is not a potential employer (he works out of Pittsburgh) His opinion and advice obviously matters to me. He posed for a photo with AJB and then shook my hand and politely accepted my folio. He said my minotaur looked like Quentin Tarrantino and showed the foetus face thing to his friend (hope that’s a good thing and not a ‘look at this piece of crap thing’) He was also super nice and complimentary, he told me to always have my folio with me and told me about a girl who had been showing him her work earlier when Christine Blundell walked by, noticed and hired her on the spot.
NEILL GORTON – (Worked for BBC FX dept from the age of like, 17 or something, started up Millenium fx when BBC closed down that dept, Millenium FX is the holy grail of the UK fx industry providing make-up & creatures for Dr.Who amongst many many other things) – My opening line for Neill was ‘I just wanted to say hi because I bought your silicone prosthetics DVD and wandered if I could show you what I made?’ I got to ‘say hi’ and he went HI!!! which kind of made me giggle like a moron and then say ‘hi’ again and shake his hand before getting back on track. Again, he was very nice and polite, I can’t remember if he actually said whether the work was any good or not but he said to get a job at Millenium I should keep doing what I’m doing, sculpt more, do anatomical studies and most prominently get better pictures. It meant a lot to me to hear ‘KEEP’ doing what you’re doing over ‘START’ doing this.
That was the end of day 1 for us, most of the rest of the day was fashion-y type make up so we went back this morning for the Bill Corso panel, a Neill Gorton ‘What makes a good character’ seminar and a reunion of the Nightbreed fx artists (including Bob Keen and Mark Coulier). Also there was a Tom Savini retrospective/interview thing at the end of the day. The Bill Corso & Tom Savini things were awesome because it was mostly about their journeys in the fx industry which I love to hear from anyone. After all the panels were over I went hunting again and found Bob Keen sat at the Make-up Artist Magazine stand.
BOB KEEN – (Worked on Nightbreed, Hellraiser, started on Star Wars & Superman, general fx badass) Liked my Minotaur sculpt, told me the variety in my folio was great was generally very enthusiastic and encouraging, took my crappy handmade business card out the back of my folio and PUT IT IN HIS WALLET!!!!! told me he’d email me, probably not as a work prospect but because I asked if I could stay in touch and send him new work.
BILL CORSO – (worked on Gremlins, freaked, galaxy quest, planet of the apes (new), indiana jones 4 and won an Oscar for Lemony Snicket, general fx badass) – Thought my minotaur was a ‘very cool’ sculpt and liked the artwork on the horns, did not, in fact realize that I made them. Again, very nice and enthusiastic about my portfolio, acknowledged that I’m working really hard to make a good folio. He’s currently working on John Carter of Mars, I asked about traineeships, he said there were some though it did not seem like it was something I should get excited about (he didn’t say that, I’m just assuming the case) but he told me where to find his email address and get in touch. – eep!
So yeah, that was it, worth the ticket money a hundred times over just to make those first contacts and learn about just how much work I have to do to get my folio up to scratch. I was hoping to find Mark Coulier, just cos I know he works out of the same building in Wembley as Solutions and Artisan but didn’t see him at the end.