Although in the present day special effects makeup is a common theme among film and theatre that hasn’t always been the case. Although theatre has been around a lot longer than motion pictures special effects makeup has only become more advanced in recent years. 

 

Within the theatre the makeup we see is often used to accentuate features and assist actors in their portrayal of roles. This began thousands of years ago when people discovered that mixing pigments with wax/grease could assist in creating amazing effects with severe transformation. Theatrical makeup is often used to convey a stereotype to the audience such as a grumpy old man or an over the top peppy teenager. A stark difference between theatre makeup and film makeup is the ‘severity’ of the application - in which within film actors prosthetics and makeup are designed to be as realistic as possible whilst in the theatre actors will often have extremely over exaggerated makeup to ensure that an audience member is able to gather the intended connotations even with an actor under the harshest lights and from a distance. 

 

When motion picture was just beginning the idea of film production teams spending the time and money on makeup teams and materials was rare. The makeup used within the theatre was duplicated for film for quite some time although as the quality of production and cameras improved special effect makeup was required to follow suit to ensure the realism the production team was aiming to achieve was still attained.

 

In the mid 1920’s actor Lon Chaney pioneered special effects makeup for film with his make-up artistry for ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ as he created ‘grotesquely disfigured’ monsters to elicit sympathy from audiences. This is widely considered as one of the first uses of special effects within film. 

 

Just under a decade later in the early 1930’s makeup artist Jack Pierce worked with Boris Karloff to create the iconic makeup used in ‘Frankenstein’. Each day Boris Karloff would sit in the makeup chair for 4 hours whilst Jack Pierce created the now classic look with cotton, spirit gum and green greasepaint (although this paint appeared white on camera as technicolour film was not as widely used as today). This makeup is now widely accepted as the visual representation of Frankenstein’s Monster.  

 

These works are still incredible however with the current realism required in today's industry it is very rare that when using special effects that an artist will not use life casting. Life casting is the process of creating a three-dimensional copy of a part of the actor’s body (and most commonly their whole head). This specific process sees an actor’s head covered completely in silicone and once this has dried strips of plaster to create a negative cast of the head. This cast is then used to create an exact copy of the actor’s head allowing the artist to make custom prosthetics for the actor that fit their face perfectly. 

 

In recent years CGI has begun to work its way into production with teams often using a mix of special effects and CGI or complete CGI. This choice is often dependent on the budget of the film and the time a team has. With the progression of CGI it is questionable how much more special effects makeup will be required within film, however with the advancements of special effects in the last century it seems these effects will always be used to some degree as along with CGI makeup is constantly growing and improving.