The Making of Scrooge

I know this is a late update to the Christmas season, but I felt it was worth publishing.  I had a wonderful opportunity to photograph the special effects make-up process of RJ Haddy of RADFX Company in Charleston West, Virginia.  For those of you who are not familiar with RJ’s work, he was a finalist and fan favorite on the SyFy Channel’s second season of Faceoff.  RJ (pictured below) came to Wheelersburg, Ohio to transform Jordan Nickles, a 19 year old actor, in to the elder Ebenezer Scrooge for JAX Theatre presentation of A Christmas Carol: The Musical.

RJ, in the weeks preceding the play, had taken a plaster mold of Jordan’s face so he could design the foam latex mask to apply to Jordan’s face to make him look “old”.  Below is Jordan.

The mask was a 6 piece foam latex prosthetic that was applied one piece at a time and then the “seams” were glued and blended together so it would appear as one piece.  The “mask” moved naturally with Jordan’s facial expressions and was very realistic in appearance.

The next photos show how the mask application progressed.  The entire process took 4 hours to complete. If you want to view the video of the entire process (8 minutes) go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2l0BF8ieXc

Veins and age spots were added to make the skin appear more realistic.

The following sequence is the application of the hair, eyebrows, and sideburns.

I enjoyed, very much, photographing and video taping this process.  RJ is a wonderful to work with. Jordan is a very bright and talented young man and he has made JAX Theatre a wonderful establishment and had brought a variety of cultural experiences to our area. 

Jordan and RJ posing and showing off the final results.

I have to include one more shot…This is my favorite shot of the two of them.

I hope you enjoyed this visual journey of The Making of Scrooge.  This was such a fun assignment that I hated not to share it with everyone.  

Stay tuned for my next adventure!