How to Apply Stage Make-Up for Manly Men

Jennifer O'Rourke: Hi, I'm Jennifer O'Rourke.
Mark Montgomery: And I'm Mark Montgomery,
Jennifer O'Rourke: and this is our Tips and Tricks segment for today. I'm using Mark as a guinea pig because I’m going to teach you how to put make-up on men.
Mark Montgomery: Yeah, I’m like the make-up test rat. So…
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yeah.
Mark Montgomery: If things go wrong, you know… It could get ugly.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yeah, it could get really ugly.
Mark Montgomery: Hopefully not.
Jennifer O’Rourke: This is why we’re doing just this segment; we’re not putting him on anything else. Mark, are you ready?
Mark Montgomery: I guess so. I don’t know. This looks a little intimidating.
Jennifer O’Rourke: It is very intimidating. He thought we are going to have just a little bit of powder, and a little bit of blush, and that was about it, but there’s …
Mark Montgomery: I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Jennifer O’Rourke: There’s really a whole lot more. First thing you want to do, though, is you want to prepare your talent perhaps the night before. Tell him the day before, or a week before, whatever, that you’re going to be using make-up. You’re going to either have a make-up artist or you’re going to be putting make-up on them. And it might be nice to give them a little bit of a cheat sheet on things that they need to do and know ahead of time, so they’re a little bit more comfortable with it.
One of the things I tell people ahead of time, if they’re going to have make-up on, is to really wash your face correctly, so that the make-up will stick to it right.
So, you want to use an exfoliator, the night before, and clean your face with exfoliator. And then, the toner afterwards, because the toner will close your pores.
Mark Montgomery: I’m laughing because, you know, this is really helpful because I would have no idea what to do for makeup.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Right. Well, you know, actually, you have very good pores, you have very nice skin, so you actually don’t have a problem. But a lot of people will have very large pores, and the toner helps close them, and the make-up will then help hide the pores a little bit.
You can buy your make-up if you’re going to be using it a lot. Just a regular drugstore. There are special make-up that is for TV and theatrical make-up. Because believe it or not, all this cost me a $100, so makeup is not cheap. So you want to take care of it, and that’s the next thing I want to talk real quickly, is, never apply make-up on your subject directly from the tube unless he’s the only one who’s going to be using that. Otherwise, you will contaminate it and you can’t use it again for your next person.
I’ve bought three different types of concealers here. And concealer is going to be for small blemishes, like this. Or scars. And this is a tube concealer that looks like a lipstick. This is a stick concealer. But I brought this one for Mark, because it is a little bit more liquidy, and I can apply it to my hand like that. And then you use a cue tip from my hand to put it on to Mark. That way I’m not contaminating the concealer. And actually, concealer is the very first thing we’re going to put on.
So, since I got that started out, what concealer does is a little bit dark and heavy than a regular type of makeup, and you just blot it over whatever the scar, or a, blemishes that you want to cover up. You do it a couple of times, and once you have it over it, it just kind of blends in a little bit.
Mark Montgomery: All right, I probably shouldn’t talk while you’re doing this, but-
Jennifer O’Rourke: No, you’re okay, you’re okay.
Mark Montgomery: Blemishes are especially important to cover up, right? Especially when you’re shooting in HD formats.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Right, and actually that’s why we decided to this story on makeup. Because we used to be shooting for the small screen TV or big screen movies, and you can use all sorts of theatrical tricks with lighting and makeup, but with HD it all shows.
Because of that, they’re coming out with a new line of makeup for, geared towards the high def video.
Now, when you’re buying foundation, if it’s foundation just for Mark, then he can buy his own, he can buy whatever color he wants. But if you have a lot of different people making up, you buy foundation, like, three various colors. Medium, light, and semi dark.
For TV lighting, you want something a little bit darker than their complexion; some people tend to go lighter. But, it gives you a really bloomed out face once you have all the lights on.
Mark Montgomery: So, I see. Concealer you use sparingly, on spots that need to be hidden. Then foundation if, if my memory serves me right, is something to apply to the whole face?
Jennifer O’Rourke: The whole face, the whole face.
Mark Montgomery: Okay.
Jennifer O’Rourke: So, I’m using a sponge. These are really cheap, by the way. A $1 at the dollar store for a pack, lasts quite some time.
You want to go upwards on someone who has a beard, because you want to get underneath the hair. All the way through, entire face. Blend it in to his throat.
Mark Montgomery: So, you put this on somebody with a beard, or are we talking about a little bit of a…?
Jennifer O’Rourke: A little beard like what you have. For the heavier beard we’re going to have to do something different.
Mark Montgomery: So, like an after shadow, you can stroke…
Jennifer O’Rourke: Right. Right.
Mark Montgomery: Interesting.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yeah, and I’m only going to do this side of his face so we can kind of see the difference. Something I forgot to do, I wanted to drape them. You can buy a hairdresser’s drape, or you can just put a regular towel.
We’re using a monitor to monitor up our video, and we’re using the regular light we’d actually be shooting on.
Blend all the way up, into the lips, and under the nose. And on men you don’t really need to go up until the eye area, but make sure you do smooth that down here. Into his chin. I’m going to put something a little bit darker on him. So a little darker than the blush we just used. And I’m going to draw a line down his face and little bit on the sides, and then blend it down. And what that did is it gives him a fake jaw line. This is how you deal with people that have, maybe a little bit more of a chin or neck coming into their skin. Or someone with a very round face.
Mark Montgomery: So it defines that edge a little bit?
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yes. Because television is two dimensional, we’re going to, a little bit three dimensions, by shadowing. This is just a blush on a man, you don’t want to do too much. Just a really small amount down his cheek like that.
Now, if he has a wide nose, we can put a little bit of the darker parts across the edge of his nose and we’ll thin his nose out a little bit. If he has a narrow nose, we’d put white down and actually we’d give him a little bit more of definition on his nose.
Now, after you’ve got the makeup on. Take powder. Again, this is matte powder, why do we use that? We don’t want to use anything shiny or shimmery because it will show. And this just finishes off the whole look.
Do not use mascara on men, especially with high def. It will show, he will look like he’s wearing mascara. But if he’s blonde, you may want to put a little bit of dark eye shadow across eye lids, eyebrows also.
He doesn’t have very thick eyebrows, but for a man who has thick eyebrows, brush them down a bit, and brush them up. And then smooth it across, like that. Gets them from being a little bit, unruly. And then, with eyebrows, I get something that’s called water wax. I put a little bit on my finger, and pull it down just a little bit across his eyebrow like that. Or, you can use hairspray again. Spray the hairspray on your finger, and then smooth it across like that.
Mark Montgomery: If we were really doing this, you’d do both sides, right?
Jennifer O’Rourke: I would do the whole thing, yes.
Mark Montgomery: So, you don’t do one half and then go back to the other half.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Exactly.
Mark Montgomery: You know, I don’t… I’m sure everybody understands that.
Jennifer O’Rourke: I never, I never would recommend putting lipstick on men, but once we put the matte on him, we actually put matte up to his lip line, so we kind of lost a little bit of the definition of his lips. So, let him buy his own chap stick, bliss sticks, anything like that, it might sound more manly than a lipstick. And have him use that, it will give him a little bit of a glow, little bit of a gloss, without looking too feminine.
This is something I like to use as a bronzer. It’s actually not for eye shadow, but I use this for eye shadow. It’s a tip that I’ve learnt, it’s more natural looking colors. And if he had sunken deep eyelids, close your eye, I would put a little bit of the eyelid, lighter bronzer right up there over the top of his eye. It gives his eyes a little bit more of a punch without looking like he’s got makeup on. Even on women, you don’t want to have a shimmery color because it will really show, especially in high def.
Mark Montgomery: It’s a little distracting, isn’t it?
Jennifer O’Rourke: Very distracting, yeah. Again, if you don’t have bliss sticks, if you don’t have a tube of chap sticks to give him, let’s put a little of girl fashion Vaseline of score. Just take your little cue tip, dip it in there, and just wipe it across his lips a little bit, and just tell him to kind of smooth it out. Just like that.
So, pretty much that’s how you put makeup on a guy. If you’re going to buy makeup, you’re not going to go to makeup counter at a department store, and say, you know, what kind of makeup I want. You might be a little intimidated by doing that, or your talent may be a little intimidated of doing that, so you might ask your hairdresser.
Hairdressers are pharmacologist trained in the art of applying makeup. So they actually can give you a little bit more tips on, in a lot of salons they have aestheticians, who do facials, and they may actually be willing to come on your show, for free, to do a facial for you, or to do a makeup for you, just to get photo credit. So you might think about doing that.
If you’re feeling comfortable, you can go to department store and ask, but most men don’t want to do that.
Mark Montgomery: Yeah, and I’m also aware that there are people who that at salons for the local TV talents.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yes.
Mark Montgomery: Who do it for the credit on their show. So there may be actually someone with a lot of experience in your neighborhood who can actually help you figure out some of the fine details.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Right. Because if you’re a director, I mean, and don’t know how to do this, or are uncomfortable with this, it would be really good to bring in someone in. After it’s all over, you do not want your man to take off looking like he’s just put makeup on, right? So, I carry these disposable makeup cloth, they’re pretty moistened. If you hand it to him, let him kind of wipe off until he feels it’s all off his face. And he feels comfortable enough with it. And then tell him, when he goes home that night, to do the same kind of cleansing routine he did the night before.
Mark Montgomery: Where do you store all this stuff? If you’re a producer on the go, or you got a small crew of maybe yourself and yourself or a few other people.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Well, here at Videomaker we have a tackle box. It’s more manly than a makeup bag or a makeup kit. I didn’t use any of these pads in our demo box, because they’re very old and I don’t know any way if they may have been used or contaminated.
Mark Montgomery: We don’t use makeup on our show. We just-
Jennifer O’Rourke: It’s just makeup. We don’t because, well, I do, sometimes, but they don’t because they don’t need it. We’re shooting for a very small screen and once you go through encoding and all those stuff, you don’t need makeup to stack a show. But if you’re shooting for a high definition, you better believe it’s going to show.
You notice I have cue tips here, and cotton balls, but I brought them on just to show that I do not use them. Throw them away. Because, they’re too cottony, and they’re going to stick to a man’s beard and you’re going to have that going on there. So I tried to use something that’s more synthetic, some pads, the wipes that I showed you. There’s blotting tissues that you can buy, they look a lot like the tissues that you clean your lense cleaners with. And use those instead of Cleenex because the moment he’s packed Cleenex to, to pull out the oil, he’s going to get the white beard.
Mark Montgomery: I can actually feel it breathe over my chin. Like cotton floating around.
Jennifer O’Rourke: Andrew’s shooting for us, by the way, I forgot to mention that sooner. These are concealer sticks. They’re just a little bit different than the concealer stick I showed. One is green, and one is yellow. They’re for correcting, color correcting. The green actually helped for that red, some of the red lines he’s got right under his eyes there. And the yellow will help cover dark circles.
And again, if you’re shooting indoors, with fluorescent lights, don’t let your talent wear any green tinted makeup. If you’re shooting outdoors with daylight, don’t let them use any yellow tinted makeup. That will give them a Jonda’s looking tint their skin.
Mark Montgomery: Interesting. And you’ll be able to notice that if you have a monitor?
Jennifer O’Rourke: Yeah. And we didn’t mention that, but we always try to shoot with the monitor here so we can see exactly what he looks like, and, he looks pretty good, to me. What do you think?
Mark Montgomery: Yeah. It was, it was painless.
Jennifer O’Rourke: It was painless. Yeah. Have you ever had makeup on before?
Mark Montgomery: No, it’s a first.
Jennifer O’Rourke: That’s a first. Oh, one more thing, speaking of, there are some states where it is illegal to apply makeup to another person, except for licensed cosmetologist. Check on that in your town if that is an issue. You may have to hire someone to do it for you.
And that’s Tips and Techniques for today.