BAFTA Masterclass: Film Make-Up with Lois Burwell

To introduce this post I want to say something about the amazing woman I had the fortune to meet. First of all, she revealed to be an incredible source of inspiration. Not only for people working  in make-up design, but for everyone who loves, or by using her words, adores films. She made it very clear: everything starts and can happen when you really love something. Sitting in the last row in the cinema, I had two free seats on my left, when, suddenly, I saw the BFI interviewer and Mrs Burwell entering and sitting just there next to me. Before the talk, we watched a 10-minute video showing some of the most remarkable films Lois worked on. I was very excited, and my first thought went to my future. Do I really love what I'm doing? Yes, I absolutely do. And as Lois said: "If you really want to do something, in the end you do it."

Let's now have a look at most of the films she worked on starting her career in 1982.
(Lois Burwell was born in London and began her career as a make-up artist by first working on film school films and low budget projects. The first break into feature films came on Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl followed by Peter Greenways The Draughtsman's Contract.)

 

After the showreel, the first question Lois was asked was how she came to the decision of becoming a make-up artist. As I have previously stated her reply was very simple, and clear: because of her love for films. She remembers something that happened when she was 14: she was coming back from school with her friends, when they saw the shooting of a BBC play, and accidentally, they were shown the make-up room. She thought: "I'm going to do this."

She never studied for her job: she started her career through film school students. After she had to take exams to become first an assistant, and, then, the supervisor/chief. When she went to the US, she had to take other exams, but her ability was never based on academic studies. She has always been an observer and a film-honnivor, and thanks to these qualities she was able to acquire her personal taste, and an extraordinary ability in coping with every situation. One thing is very important to do her job, when they research on the character and on how they make-up should be done, they have to look at the surface first, in the same way as children look at the world. Seconly, they have to make a character look real inside the film, believable, they have to support the film's narrative and make people believe in the film's world.

Of course when they did not have special effects it was more difficult to achieve this purpose: they had to find a place in which the person and the character meet, and work on that.
For her work on Lincoln ( Steven Spielberg, 2013), for example, there were years of work behind the idea, an idea which changed over the time, and a film on which she was added later, so she had to adapt to that new idea.
I had never imagined that make-up designers had such a big involvement within the film production, but I realised it when Lois explained her working method.
First of all, they read the script, and picture the scenes in their minds to engage with the story, secondly they write the make-up script, thirdly they look for images based upon that script, and work on them.
Lois made a very nice comparison between her job, and making films in general, and weddings. You can organize everything, even the smallest detail, but you will always bear in mind that not everything can go as planned, and be ready for the unexpected.
Another expression I loved was that their aim is to "make people extra-ordinarily ordinary." Which always concerns the ability of making a character believable.

Since I studied Stardom this year in my course, it was very helpful to hear what someone, who actually worked and works with stars, had to say about it. She stated that there is a big difference between ACTORS, and CELEBRITIES. Real actors are those who are prepared to change in the film-process, for the film's good. Therefore, it is very difficult to work on big-budget films, because they have to deal with the studio and the star persona. To explain this she told an anecdote about the production of Braveheart. There was a big concern with Mel Gibson's blue face. They received a reply by the producers saying: "Think you should lose the blue." Gibson, however, as main actor, director, and part of the production, liked it so they could keep it.

Since she had to focus on a single person many times, with Gibson and Tom Cruise, for example, she says that you always have to be careful to not find yourself working for the actor, but always for the film.
We were, then, shown a clip from Magnolia. The interview of Tom Cruise undermining his star persona. Lois explained how they created that look: she discussed it with Cruise. It had to be a complete body make-up, which had to change between the two parts of the interview in relation to the change in the character. It is a parody of the star persona, there had to be a strong contrast between the body (in the first part), and the face (in the second).

She always talks to the actors through the mirror, it's a spacial relationship which allows you to see something lying behind the surface.
One of the last point she touched was the change from 35 mm to the digital and the 3D. How does her role change in relationship to the technological developments in visual quality? Her answer was that there are many new choices unravelling for filmmakers, but just because some tools are new it does not mean they are the only right ones to use. The ability of the filmmaker lies also in choosing the best tool  for each  particular task.
About her work with Steven Spielberg she said he is a very demanding director, and that when you work with someone for such a long time it is because you have a natural connection with that person, and it developed through the work you did together. She also said that Spielberg is one of those directors who really shows his love for films during the shooting. When a shot comes out right he stands up and says: "Yes! That's it!", with the enthusiasm that only who really loves something has.

"Working in films is a privilege, but some people forget that." Lois Burwell.

Thank you for inspiring everyone in the audience, the young ones especially, in pursuing their dreams, always.

Prizes and Nominations:

1996: Oscar winner for Braveheart, and also nominated for a BAFTA Award.

1999: Nomination for both Oscar and BAFTA for Saving Private Ryan.

2013: BAFTA Film Award Nomination for Lincoln.

Pierre Lauret on The Searchers - Philosophical Screen

Last Monday, Professor Pierre Lauret (Professor of Philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris), introduced and discussed John Ford's The Searchers, and the figure of the 'lonesome cowboy' in the person of John Wayne.

For those of you who have never seen the film, here is a brief plot summary:
"At the centre of the film is Ethan Edwards, a bitter, ruthless and frustrated crusader engaged in a five-year quest to retrieve a niece kidnapped by the Comanches. Edwards is perhaps John Wayne's most accomplished characterisation, bringing to bear the icnonography which has made Wayne synonymous with the Western. Isolated by the violent individualism which defines his heroic status, Edwards is torn by the neurotic split inherent in the archetype: he belongs neither to the civilised community of settlers nor with the savages he fights on their behalf. A crusty, intolerant misantrope, he occasionally betrays a wellspring of emotion which again and again is sublimated in violent action and an insane hatred of the red man."

First of all, Professor Lauret started by talking about the Western genre. For the American audience, it is part of the cultural values, and national identity.
The greatness of Ford, Lauret continues, has always been debated. However he had a great influence on the New Hollywood, and voted as the 7th best film of all time in the Sight & Sound CLASSIFICA.
We can consider Ford as a visual poet, especially considering the plastic splendor of his films' images. His love for the Monument Valley is another key element in the film, also defining a pattern in his auteur career.
Professor Lauret compared him to a painter, a careful and precise one, who is concerned with framing, camera angles, and depth of field (a painter's main preoccupations).

 

After the screening, he gave us a brief talk before answering questions from the audience. Firstly, he said he agree with what Lindsay Anderson wrote about the film: its narrative structure tends to weaken in some parts. However, this weakness is correlated to the greatness of the film. The tragedy in the film is inner to the characters, it is also an atypical film for how far Ford pushes Ethan's character making him slow the action scenes through his racist "religion" and "morality".
Two elements in the film function together, but are opposed to each other: there is the treatment of the race issue in terms of sexual violation of the female characters, and, then, there is the comic counterpart.

About the film's ending, and its visual pattern quality, P. Lauret, said something similar to what I had previously written in my essay this film and authorship. John Ford quotes himself by using an apparently same ending in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. However, there is a change in perspective, the image and its meaning are not the same. In that moment, Ford uses an objective filming, there is no point of identification, he proposed an angle that raises a problematic reality, concerned with the film being both epic and moral.

The real goal Ethan is pursuing is to find peace of mind and soul. Another moment of contradiction is Ethan's desire for revenge, on one hand, and his obsession with finding Debbie, on the other. Here, P. L. mentioned an interesting fact: in the moment of Ethan's "redemption", when he decides not to kill Debbie, there used to be a sentence in the screenplay explaining the reason, in a very direct way, and without leaving any doubt. Because of Hollywood conventions, though, the sentence was eliminated also due to its immediacy, and impulsity.
Ethan, the tragic hero, discovers that he is not who he thought he was.
In the ending scene we do not know what the door closes on: and Ethan stays outside, there is a symbolic dimension in the scene defining Ethan as an implacable loner.

If we compare The Searchers with The Man who Shot Liberty Valance. 
This last one tells about a transition period the American history. The passage from the heroic to the democratic age. Ford demonstrates an equilibrium, in which he shows that democracy is better than the heroic age. Whereas there is no equilibrium in The Searchers, always confrontation. It is not a racist film, but it is about a racist character.
He did was not trying to make the film more realistic, by setting it in 1868, three years after the Civil War which tore the country apart. He mixed the creation of a work of art, and an historical document.

After being asked a question about Ford's interest in outsiders, and the possibility of Ethan to represent Ford's alter-ego, P. L. said he was influenced by Murnau, and this expresses very well in the use of shadows: in the symbolic shadow of Scar, the Indian, for example. There is a mirror relation between Ethan and Scar, a way through which Ford can express all the contradictions in himself.

Another question, asked about John Wayne's acting and his conservativeness. Of course John Wayne probably was the most conservative man in the world. His acting, however, came from a huge experience of moving on the scene which helped him create a musicality of speech connected to the action, and movements. He knew Ethan was his best role, and he really tried to feel the character's obsessiveness. His silences throughout the film are accompanied by a very modern framing which highlights these moments' intensity.

A film fact I did not know about, brought up by someone in the audience, was the issue of redemption in the film: is there or isn't there? Considering that a film as Taxi Driver has often been seen as a remake of The Searchers, and it is, of course, a story about redemption.
The man sitting next to me made a comparison between Ethan and Huckleberry Finn, the isolation of the hero, the connection to the wilderness, two characters who resist the domestication of the American society, and I considered this a very interesting starting point for a discussion.

To conclude, this was my first Philosophical Screen, and I chose to attend this one, not only because of the film, but also because of all the questions regarding John Ford's career, his ideas, his relationship to the studios, and, of course, his dramatic hero, a probable metaphor of the American society, and the American dream.

David Forgacs on Dirt and Order in Pasolini

Thanks to the King's College of London the BFI hosts a lecture on a topic/director, and so on, with different scholars and professors from all over the world. Back in March I had the pleasure to attend the talk of David Forgacs, Professor of Italian Cultural Studies at the New York University, and author of the BFI Classics on Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini. The talk was lead with the help of visual examples from films' clips, which helped both in terms of textual analysis, and in understanding the changes of context.


I will give you a summary of the main points of the lecture, which will certainly increase your knowledge of Pasolini's work, or, arouse your curiosity in it.
Professor Forgacs introduced the talk by stating the recurrency of two elements in Pasolini's productions: dirt of various kind, material or not, opposed to order, representing symmetry. These two elements could be interpreted as the director's divided self. There are interrelations between the two, concerning the meaning of dirt, especially, which is influenced by the changes in the historical context.

First of all, DIRT, meaning matter out of place, is subject of shifts in meaning and value. In Pasolini's early works dirt is positive element, whereas in the later Pasolini, dirt really becomes "dirty".
There are four types of dirt which can be recognized in his works:

1. Earth and mud
2. Trash
3. Excrement
4. Contamination 

1. The first kind of dirt in strictly connected to the Roman landscape, and to the Italian language, which contains a rich vocabulary of words to define this term. In the landscape of Pasolini's Rome, that of the Borgata, mud is everywhere. In his first novel, Ragazzi di Vita (1955), he plays with the different Italian expressions for dirt. The positivity of dirt is expressed in the children playing in the borgata, their strong connection to earth, and use of mud as a playing tool. In Una vita violenta (1959) he represents the beauty of the landscape spoiled with dirt.

In Accattone (1961), the ambivalence of dirt is reflected in the ambivalence of the main character, torn between sacred and profane, angelic and diabolical, in the ambiguous gesture of self-mortification.
Another famous mud scene is the one in Teorema (1968), experimented by Emelia's character. This scene can have multiple associations. Lastly, Petrolio (published posthumous in 1992), his last and unfinished novel, portrays the capitalist corruption, the end of the borgate, and the predominance of a dirty dirt.

2. Trash, in the early period, is considered a source of vitality. It is another concept which allows the writer/director to play with the numerous Italian words: immondizia, immondezzaio, ecc. This concept is firstly represented as the redemption of rubbish, recycling to make order out of waste.
In his later work though, he talks about "sconfinato immondezzaio", he transfers the term's connotation to people. In his Trilogy of Life (Decameron, Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) he represents an insincere eroticism, he defines young people as "immondizia umana". The ultimate level of the negative side of trash is expressed in Salò (1975), turning into aggressiveness and mysanthropy.

3. In Una vita violenta, excrements were represented as comic outcomes in the texts. This completely changes in Salò, in the dark comedy scene of eating shit. He wanted that film to be very difficult to watch. In the end, it became an allegory about consumption.

4. The contamination element started, once again, from the language, the Italian dialects, which Pasolini saw as enrichments of the language, were often used together with high literary language. There was the elevation of the poor characters etc. Ultimately, the contamination became of another kind: in films/documentaries such as Le Mura di Sana'a (1971), he represents the personal struggle against modernization. The deturpation, negative contamination.

Second, the element of ORDER divided into its two connotations:

1. Positive (frontal visual style, openness)
2. Negative (symmetrical, closure, oppression)

1. In the first case, to give some examples, he used close-ups in the middle of the frame, and short-takes. In this stylistic choices he was influenced by Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with Maria Falconetti's close-ups.

2. In the second case, the negativity is expressed through an excessive symmetry: through architectural features (archs), for example. The term becomes negative when the films are about entrapment, giving a claustrophobic feeling.
In Salò, for example, there is an opposition between open and close spaces. It is an allegory about the control of body and behavior.

In conclusion, Professor Forgacs stated some general points while answering the audience's questions. Pasolini was very perceptive in his writing about Italy. His advice is to use Pasolini without thinking through Pasolini in relation to everything. He was a conservationist with radical beliefs, he did not follow a linear trajectory. The Libertines in Salò are Pasolini, the projection of his anger.



Thanks to David Forgacs, for an insightful talk and making we Italians in the audience proud of our culture, richness of language, and epic figures such as Pasolini.

If you are interested have a look at:
http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/london-gay-and-lesbian-film-festival.html

My Summer Books' Wishlist

Since my birthday is approaching, and summer is my busiest reading time, I have been writing titles in the last few months, and now the time has come to make a proper list to remember my next purchases.

Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema: Studies in Ford, Wilder, Coppola, Scorsese, and Others. Carl Freedman. It will be published on the 12th June.

Price: £ 15.63

 

World Film Locations: London. Neil Mitchell.

   Price: £ 8.95

Stephen King on the Big Screen. Mark Browning.

Price: £ 16.50

Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine: Authorship and Genre in Photojournalism and Film. Philippe Mather.

Price: £ 14.20

 

Polanski & Perception. Davide Caputo.

Price: £ 13.13

The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol. John Wilcock.

Price: £ 26.51

Role Models. John Waters.

Price: depending on the sellers.

 

Alfred Hitchcok and the Making of Pyscho. Stephen Rebello.

Price: £ 6.64

 

The Saga of the Century: The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund. 

Rebecca West.

Price: £ 16.47

Belli e Perdenti. Antieroi e post-eroi nella narrativa contemporanea di lingua inglese. 

Silvia Albertazzi.

Price: £ 18.12

Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting & Selling Your Script. David Trottier.

Price: £ 15.19

 


                           
                           

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 

Stephen King.

Price: £ 5.99

Life. Keith Richards.

Price: £ 5.66