My lovelies it is Face Off season yet again. I am giddy with anticipation of meeting this season’s cast and seeing what psychotic challenges the production team has come up with for this season. Quick editorial note – the lovely PR people for this show are letting me interview this season’s cast. If you have any specific questions you can leave them in the comments any time – I can’t ask ‘behind the scenes’ questions (IE is the costume department actually run by a bunch of demon witches, hell-bent on clashing with awesome makeup designs) but I CAN ask relatively specific questions about things we do see (so technical questions on a certain technique, inspiration of a design, that type thing). Make sense? Awesome, this should be fun.
Since this is the first episode it’s going to be SUPER picture heavy, since we have to introduce the artists, their portfolios, and their runway looks. Enjoy!
We open with rapid-fire cuts of shockingly normal-looking (what, no pink hair or half-shaved heads this season?) contestants arriving outside of a theatre marquis in LA. (editorial note – to make this easier for the reader, I am putting all of the introductions back to back. In the edit of the show they were dispersed throughout the episode, but since a lot of people come her to ‘get to know’ everyone, it made more sense to me to lump them all together to see them side by side. So, introductions start here, the plot of the episode will appear directly after them, make sense? Good)
Up first we have Katie from Illinois – she has a background in pre-med. That’s it. No additional information. Fine show, be that way, leave me to generate my own elaborate backstory for Katie. Hmmm…. Ok, my personal cannon is that she was a child genius, went to college at 12, was pre-med but then a dramatic hazing incident from her classmates turned her to a career change. She learned special effects and makeup as part of her transition into a vigilante superhero and claims to be a makeup artist as part of her elaborate cover story. Also in my head she has 2 parrots. PROOVE ME WRONG SHOW. (yes I realize I could go to the SyFy website for her entire bio, but I will not reward the editors for their superficial treatment of Katie’s backstory). Ok, that said, we’re only shown 2 looks from her portfolio and they both look like student work that was more ‘proof of concept’ than anything else. She gets bonus points from me for appearing to be SUPER EXCITED but I’m not convinced she’ll be able to hold her own until I see the rest of the cast.
Next up we have Rob (fun fact, when I was a teenager I had 2 trombones, 1 named Rob and 1 named Bob. Shockingly, and potentially unrelated, I did not have any friends), Rob apparently will be the token cast member this year wearing a hat. (do the editors demand someone wear a hat to make it easier to locate who is in what shot and achieve continuity or something?) Shockingly it’s a subtle navy knit and not an outlandish neon cartoon. Jeeze is this season’s cast subtly trolling me? Are the youth of the world now ironically dressing in non-flashy muted colors? I AM SO CONFUSED. Oh wait, there’s a manbun under that hat so we have a reflection of these modern times after all, phew. Anyway, where was I? Rob is super excited to be there. I am immediately LOVING his portfolio, I can’t tell if he has a stylized look, or if his portfolio pieces are all from 1 shoot/collection since there is a strong similarity in some of the technique. That said it’s a really cool technique that looks like carved wood/coral/bone. He seems really talented.
Ant (hopefully short for Anthony and not ‘Anteater’ although that would be a badass name) started off doing makeup on his little brother (it’s terrifying and awesome.) He has really calm energy that I find soothing (although I can’t figure out his voice – sometimes it drifts into an almost southern accent that might just be an affectation of how he paces his speech that I’m misinterpreting? I can’t decide it I like it or if it’s annoying me – it’s a little lilting and melodic but it veers towards lispy, and as a former lisper that’s not my favorite sound in the world. Sorry, I’ve been sidetracked, moving on).he’s been doing wigs for broadway productions, and from the limited work we see in his portfolio, he seems really talented. He has that slow-talking energy of someone who is methodical in their approach. I’m nervous that since he’s been focused on wigs for a while he may be off his makeup game, but hopefully it’s like riding a bike and he won’t be too dusty.