Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512433
26 • THE ARTISAN WINTER 2024 prepare was immense: just short of 300 between the actors and background! Her team scoured every possible store in Tulsa, as well as online, to find cost-efficient pieces and wefts for extensions (which were mostly used on the crowd). That was the only way to keep the hair budget from going through the roof. The hair department's main challenge, however, was the fact that a lot of the Osage men in our cast had modern/short haircuts, whereas their characters did not. The hair department used wigs to create longer braided period hair styles. Some wigs and toupees were used on Caucasian men to create the "short sides and back" period look, as a lot of them came to set with hair far too short on the top. For the Osage women, a lot of extensions were used to achieve waist-length hair. Bob wigs were used for the trendy and fashionable Osage woman, such as Anna Brown (Cara Jade Myers). For Caucasian women with modern highlights or modern straight hair, short bob wigs were also used. The make-up department faced plenty of challenges of our own. One was the side effects of wearing masks to avoid COVID infection. The weather was so muggy during the summer months, and the traditional blankets and woolen suits the men wore didn't help. People were wet from sweating, and their masks more often than not soaked. I cannot even tell you how many boxes of Kleenex we went through blotting everyone down in between takes. Because of the moisture, the glues for the mustaches and beards didn't stick, so we had to create pieces with Super Baldiez backings in order to keep them in place and ensure the hand-laid mustaches wouldn't fall apart. Even though we gave everyone sunscreen constantly, tan marks from the masks started to show. Of course, we had to cover them. …and then there were the tattoos. Tattoo sleeves were just not the trend at the time. Though we had actors show up with modern tattoos covering their hands, necks and even creeping up to their faces, it wouldn't do for the 1920s. Our fantastic background make-up team took care of concealing all of that. In order to create the appropriate make-up for our characters, we split them into categories. There were the traditional Osage, then the trendy, high-fashion ones. Then we had the regular town folks, the rich ones, and the hoodlums. We worked with color palettes that defined the lip colors, rouge and eyeshadows, according to the period. Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) was the more traditional type, with a nice natural glow. In the story, she goes from fresh and healthy-looking to sick and debilitated, close to death. It was essential that no foundation, unless the character called for it, was ever visible. As we all know, though: A no make-up look does not mean no make-up. This applies for both men and women. For Mollie, I used the Visiora MV foundation plus Kosas tinted face oils. Overall, I designed four looks for Mollie: warm, glowing and healthy, then slightly paler, then pale with under eye circles and finally, pale dark circles and dark contouring to create gauntness. Dry lips toward the end of the shoot supported the look of the last stages of her health issues and her near-death look. When we first met our cast, most of the Indigenous members told us that no matter what, even if they stayed out of the sun, that they would still be at least three shades darker in a few month's time. Because of our shooting schedule and in order not to run into any continuity problems (we went from spring to full hot summer season to fall), we warmed the Osage cast up a few shades, then once they reached that exact color naturally, we were able to cut back on make-up. Carla White has a long-standing working relationship with Robert De Niro, just like Siân Grigg and Kathy Blondell have with Leonardo DiCaprio