Local 706 - The Artisan

Winter 2016

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When director Peter Landesman and producer David Crockett approached me to design character make-ups for actors David Morse and Albert Brooks for their upcoming fi lm, Concussion, I leaped at the chance. I am a huge fan of both actors, the subject matter was interesting and topical, and of course, any opportunity to design and create portrait make-ups of real people is always a welcomed challenge. The fi lm chronicles Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith, who led the discovery of head trauma and brain damage within the NFL, known as CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). In the fi lm, David Morse plays Hall of Fame Steelers football center Mike Webster and Albert Brooks portrays celebrity medical examiner Cyril Wecht. The fi rst step was to gather as much information and visual reference of both the real Webster and Wecht, which there is plenty of, thank- fully. KNB EFX GROUP prepped the make-ups, with Norman Cabrera sculpting. Mike Ross handled all the syntactic molds and Derek Krout ran all the silicone and transfers for David Morse's make-up, which there are three different stages of for this character: Stage one is the Hall of Fame look, which is prior to his decline caused by CTE brain damage. David wore a full custom silicone forehead, with hand-punched eyebrows, dentures made by Grady Holder and prosaide transfers for his hands, giving them a gnarled look caused by decades of playing football. Kathrine Gordon B Y H O W A R D B E R G E R C O N C U S S I O N B Y K A T H R I N E G O R D O N As Department Head Hair for the movie Concussion, I was in charge of designing and executing the hair for all the actors except Will Smith and Albert Brooks on a daily basis. I knew coming into the job that it was going to be very exciting. Since it's a true story, I knew all the people had to look real, which can make it extra challenging. It also gave me a chance to team up with make-up artist Howard Berger and Chris Gallaher for the character of Mike Webster, played by actor David Morse. I called the fi rst wig on David the Podium Wig. It's where Mike Webster is giving a speech. I designed the wig to have three different textures of hair and colors within the wig. Around his entire perimeter, including the sideburns and temples, I had white Yak hair mixed with other grey hair for a coarser texture. For the remaining part of the hair, strawberry blonde plus a deeper neutral red color, and golden blonde hair for the rest of the wig except his crown. On the crown, Angora Hair was used to show the receding and fussiness in a white color. Every day, I shaved back the top of David's head all the way back past his crown. For styling and cutting the wig, I washed it, dried it soaking wet on the block. The next day, I ran a fl at iron over the hair and cut and styled it into "the look" of Mike Webster. The second wig on David was the "wig in the pickup truck." At this point, he is really distressed. For this wig, I used a completely different kind of hair—it's wavy, softer. The sides, temples and sideburns of the wig continued to be whiter but the back and almost all the way up to the crown was much greyer now, with S P E C I A L C H A R A C T E R M A K E - U P E F F E C T S S U P E R V I S O R D E P A R T M E N T H E A D H A I R 26 Continued on Page 28

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