WonderCon 2024: All in the Details: Costume, Makeup, and Hair Design for Film and TV
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Research was the name of the game at the WonderCon panel All in the Details: Costume, Makeup, and Hair Design for Film and TV. Organized by ImpactPR24, the panel was all about what it takes to bring characters to life in film and television. On the panel was a great mix of people including: production designer Brandon Mendez (Flamin’ Hot), makeup department head Elle Favorule (The Iron Claw), costume designer Emilio Sosa (Disney+ Descendents: The Rise of Red), key hairstylist Joyce Gilliard (Genius: MLK/X), production designer and supervising art director on Loki season 1 Natasha Gerasimova.
The Devil is in the Research
The panelists have all worked in pretty high stakes environments, from superhero shows and period pieces which means that every single detail can be scrutinized to the nth degree. Brandon and Elle both did period pieces and mentioned that the research they did was all about localization. For Elle, she was doing makeup in The Iron Claw to do makeup on Texans, but that looks in the 70s in Dallas was different than those in Houston. Similarly with Brandon, he had the challenge of building the Frito Lay factories but with them not looking the same anymore. He ended up finding footage of a woman on the internet who did a field trip to one of the plants in the 90s, so they were able to source from there.
The Challenges of Different Mediums
Emilio has had a long career in the theater, being a two time Tony Award nominee, and now working on the Disney Descendents franchise has gotten to explore a different facet of costuming. In theater, he worked to put in small elements of the actors into the costumes during development (like a locket from their grandparnets), but those costumes are being seen from 30-40 feet away. In film, you’re seeing the costumes much much closer so he gets to dive into the details on things much more.
Being Transported
It was great hearing from Natasha and Joyce about how the elements of their departments help people get into the world. For Natasha, who worked on several Marvel shows, she spoke about how different it is when stuff is built versus just blue screen. On Ms. Marvel, they built a particular 3 story set in a mall with a skylight that resembled a particular area of Pakistan that many of the actors who are from that country felt like they were back at home. Joyce had a lowkey Herculean task on Genius: MLK/X becuase there aren’t too many people who have hairstyles that are similar to to anyone in the 50s and 60s. Nearly everyone had a custom wig, hair piece, or haircut to line up with the actual people and settings they lived in.
Cool Elements
One really awesome part of the panel was hearing Elle talk about the sweat makeup effects in The Iron Claw being akin to some science wizardry. From studying how the actors actually sweat to dealing with using specical mixtures so that the fake sweat wouldn’t remove the tattoo cover on the actors…makeup is such a crazy element of filming!
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