Life Casting Actors

Now that we had a more concrete idea as to the actors that would be playing the Orc characters we could begin the process of creating head casts. We had a lot of previous experience in creating simple fast casts for previous projects, however, tackling a whole head and shoulders was a much more complex and time consuming task. Pete assisted us in our first cast to give us a clearer idea of what was needed and the rest we undertook ourselves.

The process began by preparing the actor for the cast. Firstly they needed to remove their clothing from the waist up and then be wrapped in a protective cover, like a bin bag, from below the shoulders, this was then held in place using masking tape.  A bald cap was the applied and the hair line beneath the cap was marked out using black aqua colour, this would transfer onto the alginate face cast and subsequently the plaster cast to give an indication of where the prosthetic would need to go up to. Next the actor’s back, chest, shoulders and cap  were covered in Nivea or Vaseline to prevent the cast from sticking, this was the same case with the eye lashes and eyebrows. With male actors this is a particularly crucial element of the preparation process as the more body hair the person has, the more risk there is of the cast sticking. The final step in this preparation process was ensuring that the actor was relaxed and aware of what would be happening to them. A method of communication must be established before the cast is begun, e.g. thumbs up to say everything is OK and slapping the thigh repeatedly to indicate the actor is in distress and would like the cast removed. 

The first stage of the casting process was to cover the back of the head, neck and shoulders in plaster bandage (mod roc). This was applied first by creating an edge using thin strips applied directly to the cap/skin and then filling in the centre using wider pieces. This process was then repeated until 3 thick layers had been formed. When the back piece was dry it needed to be coated around the edges with Vaseline. The alginate could then be applied to the front of the face, neck and chest as quickly as possibly, always ensuring the 2 holes were left clear in front of the nostrils to allow the actor to breathe. When the alginate was dry the rough edges were trimmed away to leave a clean line between the alginate at the front and the plaster bandage at the back, The edge of the plaster bandage was then covered once more with Vaseline to prevent any sticking and the process of applying plaster bandage in 3 layers could be repeated on the front of the face, this time laying a strip of plaster bandage with a neat edge ever so slightly onto the back plaster bandage to create an over hang that would enable the 2 pieces to slot together again once they had been removed from the face.

 

Once this was all dry and firm enough, the 2 pieces could be separated by pushing the thumbs up underneath the alginate and plaster front piece and very gently easing the 2 sides apart.

Creating plaster head casts from the life casts

The 2 pieces of the life cast, once separated needed to be coated in a thick layer of Vaseline on all areas of exposed plaster bandage to prevent plaster from sticking to plaster when the cast was filled. The 2 pieces could then be slotted back together, trying to avoid any gaps between the 2 edges and the seams covered with 3 more layers of plaster bandage strips, leaving rough turned up edges to allow for something to hold onto when ripping them off at a later stage.

When the plaster bandage holding the seams together was dry the cast could be filled with liquid plaster. This was done in stages and the plaster patted into all the crevices of the face cast at various stages to ensure an even fill. When the cast was completely filled and dried the plaster bandage strips could be ripped off from the seams and the 2 sides separated once more to leave a plaster copy of the face inside.

This plaster copy of the face will never be perfect and will always require a lot of clean up to remove any air bubbles, seam marks, creases, imperfections etc. This is done by applying small amounts of plaster into any holes and sanding down any bumps. In this case it is important to take accurate head and face measurements of the actor to ensure that too much plaster is not removed in the sanding process. The line painted on to mark the hair line, if successfully transferred, then has small holes drilled into it at short intervals. This will mean that when the silicone and fibre glassing stages are complete, the cast will have a small line of dots marking out the hairline.

Difficulties encountered in the casting process

Paige and I knew that a full head cast needed at least 3 people working on it in order to be safe and successful, so we asked one of our most promising first year assistants, Jack, to help us with the process. As none of us had ever undertaken a full head cast with no supervision from an expert, it was inevitable that we would encounter some problems along the way.

The first cast that we undertook on our own was on Liam Atton, an actor doubling up as the character of Bill Ferny and an Orc. Liam was not the most co-operative of models in the first place as he began speaking once the alginate had been applied over his mouth which we were convinced would warp the shape of the mouth, however, miraculously, it did not! The life casting process itself went very smoothly other than this and we were happy with the finished cast, the problem came, however, when we came to fill the cast with liquid plaster. Unfortunately we had not left the plaster bandage securing the seams to dry for long enough and it was quite weak. This meant that when the cast was almost entirely full of plaster, the seams split and the plaster flooded out of the cast, across the floor. We were very fearful that this would ruin the cast, however, as a reasonably thick layer of plaster still clung to most of the facial features, we decided to fix the seam and refill the mould, which worked reasonably well with only the nose being affected. We also realized, right before we demoulded the cast, that we had forgotten to apply the Vaseline to the inside of the mould which meant that getting the back plaster bandage piece off was very, very difficult and the surface was very rough, requirely a lot of sanding. However, as a first solo attempt, the cast could be useable and we learnt a lot from the experience that would allow our future casts to run much more smoothly. 

In the life casts that followed the most common problem that we encountered was with the application of the alginate. Because the room that we were doing the head casts in was quite warm for the actor's comfort, the alginate was setting a lot more rapidly than we had anticipated and on two occasions were were forced to rip the now set alginate off the actors face because it was incomplete. We resolved this problem by placing the actor next to a window which we opened when the alginate application process began and by mixing the alginate to be ever so slightly runnier than we would usually use.