As an Orion Slaver on Star Trek: Enterprise
Mmm... piercings... Steve Anderson did the makeup and took this photo. The process went a little something like this:
- The night before - shaved/waxed everything from the waist up (except for eyebrows and lashes)
- I was in the makeup chair on the Paramount lot at 4:30am
- Steve applied the prosthetics where piercings would be (right side of the head, right cheek, left jaw line, collarbone)
- My whole head was covered with a base coat of green
- I went downstairs to the huge spray painting room to get sprayed green from the waist up by another makeup artist - Brad Look, who was using the kind of airbrush used to paint cars. The room has filtered holes covering two opposite walls - one to the outside, and one in front of a big air handler that sucks air through the room. 5am air. COLD 5am air. The paint was alcohol-based, so that made it even colder, and one coat was never enough, so the process took about a half an hour. This was fun.
- I went back upstairs where Steve airbrushed shadows and contours and all that cool stuff that you can't really notice unless I had before and after photos (which means Steve did it right), but trust me, I looked a lot cooler after.
- Back downstairs to the paint room to get covered with stuff called Green Marble Sealer. It's even colder than the paint, but it makes it a lot harder to rub off the makeup, reducing the touchups we'd need on set.
- Next I trekked across the Paramount lot (sorry) to the Wardrobe Department to get my fancy threads on.
- Back into Steve's chair so he could attach the "metal" plates and screws, which were actually neoprene. He then added shading and corrosion-like drips to make the plates look like they've been there a while.
- Finally, I grabbed a quick snack and was on set at 8am.
