Wasted Lives; Live car crash rescue demonstration

 

Taken from Lancashire Telegraph
 

So last week was uber busy for me and my students, we’re midway through completing their media makeup module where the students have to produce a tramp character, a character with prosthetics included as well as a character including ageing effects and prosthetics. In between these assessments we’ve been very busy with work experience jobs.

We’re still completing the photo-shoots for the local police who are creating a calendar to raise money for charity, recreating movie posters. Last week it was Charlie’s Angels, Twilight, Trainspotting and James Bond, which my students did fantastically well with.

The big event that myself and my fabulous students, Shannon, Pam, Aleena and Amy took part in was the “Wasted Lives” campaign, working the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Services, North West Ambulance and Lancashire Constabulary. We were invited to help out by Harry who is a student studying fire and rescue service management at the university centre, Blackburn to help him create demonstration which saw our models play passages in a car that had crashed. The demonstration was provided by “Wasted Lives” programme, set up by the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety and saw characters being cut out of a car crash and how the emergency services deal with car crashes as well as campaigning to protect young drivers by raising awareness of the dangers of dangerous driving.

Our job as makeup artist was to create realistic car crash wounds to reflect the characters injuries. We had a variety of injuries to portray from busted lips, grazes, cuts, bruises, airbag injuries to internal injuries.

 

The majority of sfx wounds benefited from the use of a little sponge that every makeup artist should carry, stipple sponge. This sponge is perfect for creating random grazes and adding texture to your cuts. Dip it in Ben Nye’s Scratch blood and away your go, extra tip: to create definition use a mixture of red shades and add gravel texture for a really nasty graze caused by a scrap across the ground.

Another saving grace to this project was Shannon and her creation of a gory prosthetic to reflect the fact that her model was thrown through the car window at 100mph and rolled across the road, so obviously received some nasty road burns and scraps.

She created this effect by using latex and tissue, then building up the colours to create a very realistic, textured effect. This method is taught on my course at Blackburn College and I do teach you how to create basic prosthetics, so if you’re interested in finding out the how’s, come join my merry gang of makeup artists.

Grimas derma wax was also a well-used product in this project, Pam used it to create this lovely busted lip effect. The key to using derma-wax is keep your model and hour hand cold! Usually if the wax is applied and blended well it will be self-sticking but in this case where the models are running around and being cut out of cars spirit gum and sealer is needed for that extra staying power!

Now in the case of internal injuries….blood capsule are your best friend (those used were by Kryolon). Team this with pale out face and glycerine (also supplied by Kryolon) to create a sweat look and tell your model to use the capsule just as the paramedics are moving them….bish bash bosh nice internal bleeding effect.

 

So all in all it was a pretty exciting day for myself and my fabulous creative bee’s. We got through quiet a lot of blood….Mehron’s dark stage blood is definitely recommended. And as I told my students endless of times….if you come away from a job like this clear…you haven’t added enough! For more plenty more images check out my facebook page…..http://www.facebook.com/Ruth.E.Moulden.MUA

xRx