Issue 013 June/July 1998

Digital Design: Make-up’s Death or Future

With the advancement of CGI there are a lot of people concerned that computers will take over the job of the make-up artist. That make-up artists will become obsolete. This is not the first time technology has caused concern over job security. In the early 1980s it became popular to use drum machines in recording studios. Yet we still have human drummers in the studio. It didn’t take long for people to find out that no one can program a drum machine better than a drummer. And likewise there is no one better suited to program and use computers for makeup than a make-up artist. In this article MA discusses the pros and cons of digital design and gives some general concepts for using digital design.

Double Martini: Patricia Messina on Murphy Brown & Seinfeld

In Hollywood lingo, “the martini” is the last shot of the day. Patricia Messina has been juggling two of the biggest sitcoms in television history: Sienfeld and Murphy Brown. Ironically both have chosen to say so long this season. We went to the set of Sienfeld for the last episode to talk with Patricia about her work. Yada, Yada, Yada.

From the Earth to the Moon

HBO’s ambitious 12-hour miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon focuses on the twelve Apollo missions in which manned spacecraft journeyed to the moon. The mini-series provided a forum for make-up department head Gina Lamendola and special make-up effects artist Gregg Cannom to showcase their talents. Many different kinds of make-ups were created for the show, including six age make-ups designed by Cannom for the principle characters, one of which was Tom Hanks. With its 12 distinctive but interconnected episodes, HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon, can be seen as a uniformly groundbreaking event, in that it features movie-quality production values in a TV mini-series.