Cinematography
Aug. 8th, 2012 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesI should blog more about books. I've been reading books. And I did vote for the Hugos, so...
Anyway, I was thinking about something I saw on Twitter, a post about the makeup for Cloud Atlas the new Wachowski sibling project. (You know, those people who brought you The Matrix and those other, lesser movies.) Anyway, Cloud Atlas is based on a book (which I haven't read), and the central conceit is apparently one of reincarnation and nested storytelling; that several of the characters over centuries are the same people. I have read The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson which also covers about a thousand years of alternate history using a theme of reincarnation to tie the stories together.
So, the post I saw was of make-up shots, as several of the reincarnations in Cloud Atlas are white in one life, and East Asian in another. And, reader, the make-up is unsettling. And also bad.
Now, it does present the question of how do you handle a conceit like this in film, where (for example in Rice and Salt), a character can go from being a Mongol horseman to a Sufi mystic to a Miwok girl to a Japanese ronin. I think the Wachowskis chose to use the same actors, hence the unsettling East Asian makeup. Robinson's novel codes everyone with a letter: the character I mentioned in my example was B, because hir name always started with B. (I remember it took me a bit to catch on when reading it.) That would be harder to do in film. OTOH, in addition to the weird yellowface make-up, I'm not good enough at recognizing actors while in makeup (or even changing hairstyles), so the Wachowskis' technique would be lost to me.
A couple of alternate means I can think of, but would be clearly artificial involve use of color. Simply put all the extras and non-reincarnations in blacks, greys, whites and browns, then give each string of reincarnations a color and make their costumes all in that color, even when it's stunningly artificial (like dyed leather and furs artificial, or poor peasants don't generally bother with bright yellow). It's would keep the intent, and if you make the film dreamlike enough, people might think it was artsy. (The other idea involved color wigs and was even sillier.)
Anyway, I was thinking about something I saw on Twitter, a post about the makeup for Cloud Atlas the new Wachowski sibling project. (You know, those people who brought you The Matrix and those other, lesser movies.) Anyway, Cloud Atlas is based on a book (which I haven't read), and the central conceit is apparently one of reincarnation and nested storytelling; that several of the characters over centuries are the same people. I have read The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson which also covers about a thousand years of alternate history using a theme of reincarnation to tie the stories together.
So, the post I saw was of make-up shots, as several of the reincarnations in Cloud Atlas are white in one life, and East Asian in another. And, reader, the make-up is unsettling. And also bad.
Now, it does present the question of how do you handle a conceit like this in film, where (for example in Rice and Salt), a character can go from being a Mongol horseman to a Sufi mystic to a Miwok girl to a Japanese ronin. I think the Wachowskis chose to use the same actors, hence the unsettling East Asian makeup. Robinson's novel codes everyone with a letter: the character I mentioned in my example was B, because hir name always started with B. (I remember it took me a bit to catch on when reading it.) That would be harder to do in film. OTOH, in addition to the weird yellowface make-up, I'm not good enough at recognizing actors while in makeup (or even changing hairstyles), so the Wachowskis' technique would be lost to me.
A couple of alternate means I can think of, but would be clearly artificial involve use of color. Simply put all the extras and non-reincarnations in blacks, greys, whites and browns, then give each string of reincarnations a color and make their costumes all in that color, even when it's stunningly artificial (like dyed leather and furs artificial, or poor peasants don't generally bother with bright yellow). It's would keep the intent, and if you make the film dreamlike enough, people might think it was artsy. (The other idea involved color wigs and was even sillier.)
