Face Off Season 10

What a combination of Rob creating this really weird face, and then the director having a lot of changes – well, sure, Rob’s design is not that great, so it should be changed – but the director came across as kind of a flake to me, and I could see him asking for changes for just about anything he was shown. Rob’s personality, essentially freaking out over everything, is completely magnified here.

I think Walter is the strongest at this stage, and I think he was aided by having a director who was pretty straightforward at the get-go and described what he wanted in a way that was easy to translate to a design. I was worried that Robert would get up to his usual antics, but thankfully that didn’t happen.

Melissa has some good elements in her design. Because we just had a cyclops challenge, I wish that the show had orchestrated this a little better. But overall, she created something with a different look, and it’s good thinking on her part to make the cyclops aspect an empty socket instead of an actual eye.

I’m still not sure how I feel about Rob. It does feel like the show is playing up how anxious he gets, and in past episodes, that has often been the run-up to him turning things around at the last minute. With this challenge, I think Mel would have been a contender – I think she does better when she has more direction and would do well in this type of challenge that has clearer parameters.

I just went back and rewatched those segments with the director. He doesn’t come across as a flake to me. I admit I don’t quite understand “crushed shell” in combination with “dry, cracked soil”, but some of his criticisms are direct visual, and some are clarifying and adding to the look, such as what Melissa’s did with the stick hands. But change the nose, and change where the horns start so they aren’t so consistent, more random come across as “how do I fix this mess”. Of course, I feel like everything is consistent with how a real set might go, with a director deciding he wants less in the look, or seeing on screen and then thinking how to make it better for the story he wants to tell. It just seems to me that Rob’s result isn’t very good.

I can accept that Rob’s freak out attitude could be being played up.

Sorry I haven’t posted on this sooner. Internet connection problems.

First off, I’m really surprised at the results. I can’t believe that Rob won. On what grounds?

I will try to get to the run through, but can’t at the moment.

Briefly, they did not get a third character. I’m surprised. Each did the rework for their characters.

Melissa’s team had some rework on the demon chest and some for the guy, showing more damage and indications of tree limbs growing out of his body. I think both of those were highly successful. Definitely fixed the lactation problem.

Walter had very few corrections, but did have some work to complete - the vines and the teeth he wanted to add, plus reworking the female model’s face. He didn’t rest on his laurels, and put the extra time to good effect by making an additional body piece. All of his corrections and additions really worked.

Rob had to basically rework everything. I don’t think he changed the cowl for the demon, but got rid of the nose and redid the face, made changes to the body by sculpting shoulder pieces, and reworked the possessed face completely. The changes to the demon were largely successful. I think everything he did was an improvement, and the end result was much more workable. The possessed changes were somewhat arguable. I thought what he had was great, but the director wanted something more subtle. The rework changed the texture and contours to smooth the lines of the face, which gave a different but also creepy look. The judges and director thought it was much better and really sold the creepy feeling.

All three films turned out well.

I’m still flummoxed by Rob winning. I thought Melissa made great improvements on hers, and I loved her unique cyclops. I thought Walter had a spectacular amount of stuff that all got applied and painted exceptionally well, and everything was great. I thought Rob made great improvements and the possessed was creepy, but ultimately I thought the demon wasn’t as impressive as either of the other two.

But for some reason, the judges went on about how great his was without mentioning his mistakes the first draft, and then they awarded him the victory. I can only think their assessment was affected by his full season record rather than his results on this one challenge. I could stand by last week, where the stuff he did was great but he had too much and it wasn’t complete, and I liked what he did better than Mel, even though hers was complete. But this week I can’t justify on its own merits.

Bad Judges! No Treat!

This was the first season of Face Off where they announced the winner and I was all WHAT?

I’m not so upset that I’m going to boycott Face Off or anything (it’s just a TV show) but this outcome didn’t sit well with me. And I like Rob, I think the quality of his work is generally excellent. But I’m just not seeing this win, and I think the show was more blatantly trying to set up a narrative of Rob becoming the winner this time around. I still think the judges should have held his uncompleted make-up in the semi-final against him more, and then the whole “the director hates my make-up, I have SO MUCH work to do to fix it!” was like foreshadowing that he was going to come from behind with this terrific finish.

Even though I think he did a perfectly fine job fixing the make-up (it was really weird and bad the first time around), I did not see all the things the judges were gushing over. I know they are the experts, but after watching the show this long, I usually get what they are talking about when they compliment or criticize specific elements of a design. With this, I felt like their comments were effusive, yet vague, it didn’t even feel like they were talking about these actual make-ups in particular.

I thought both Walter’s and Melissa’s were better and more unique and creative. I would give the slight edge to Walter for the win – I felt his demon and the possessed character were very in keeping with one another, and the demon was both creepy and menacing. It looked like a complete package.

My wife and I waited until we had both to watch them in a row. Thanks again for summaries, Irishman!

I’m with you, delphica. When Rob was saved, I knew he would win. It’s like it was rigged from that point forward.

I thought Walter really stepped it up and Melissa’s cyclops was great. I was also thinking it’s too bad they won’t win.

I’m waiting to hear that Rob is working for Alchemy Studios.

As for the rest, I really like this idea for the finale and glad they came back to it. This is resume building for the finalists, win or lose. I was also surprised that they didn’t have to do a third character.

I was also happy that Robert was his normal goofy, or that they edited that part out. It was funny for a bit but got old, fast.

I’m looking forward to next season but still bummed at how this one felt rigged.

Good call on the editing of part 1/Rob winning it in part 2.

 My thoughts:

    Melissa was kneecapped from the start when the director asked for a cyclops.   A cyclops can't help but look goofy, because a single eye makes no sense and we're not used to interpreting faces with only one central eye.    So her demon's face was dominated by this puzzling gaping opening where the eyes should be, and a lot of stiffness below that.   It didn't look particularly scary to me.    I also didn't feel like the possessed character was particularly cohesive with the demon -- I didn't quite get the weird branch things.   The demon did have a good profile for the down-the-hall silhouette shots.

    Walter's swamp thing demon was pretty cool, but I was less impressed by the possessed.    Put a little CGI on the face vines so that they pulsed a bit and it would have been a lot creepier.   Still, it was all a very complete package and well executed.

    Rob's creature is probably a case of less-is-more.   They backed off on the prosthetics, slathered the characters with "oil", and it all looked pretty good.   Although the actors probably still haven't showered all that crap off yet.

    What was most significant to me was what short shrift each of the directors gave to the demon.    Three days of painstaking work by the makeup artists translated into between 0.5 seconds and three seconds of screen time.      I'll bet if the artists had known that in advance, they would have re-arranged their priorities a bit and made the possessed the showcase piece.    

    Also, while it's true that the directors were working on severe time constraints, the movies were kind of disappointing, if only because they all followed the formula: couple moves into house, weird things happen, couple gets dragged into hell.   Not much new going on there :-)    

    I do like the finales in which they make movies, though, as they give us a better idea of what being a makeup artist in the industry must be like.   Even if it's "I slaved for a week on that makeup and it got 0.45 seconds of screen time in a dark room!"

The cyclops was a confusing idea, because why a cyclops? But the doll they discovered, “Mr. Sticks”, was a stick cyclops doll. Thus the connection to the cyclops demon and the possessed growing sticks out of his body to turn into the new Mr. Sticks. I thought the demon looked pretty scary, especially after the chest fix, and the eye thing was a creatively different take on a cyclops. But the weakest part IMO was the demon’s connection to the doll and the possessed. Why “Mr. Sticks”, a stick doll? There was nothing sticklike about the demon, no connection. And the cyclops eye hole didn’t match the clear large eye on the doll.

Yeah, they did some other CGI effects, so motion on the vines should have been possible.

Yeah, the screen tests and shooting we saw didn’t give the full story by any means, but it did feel like the demons were barely visible at all. Even the possessed weren’t shown long. All that painstaking detail for 2 seconds of screen time. Oh well, that’s the biz.

That was the conceit for the episode. They took one basic story idea from the book compilation, and then each director made a slight variation on the details. The previous season finale used three different story scenes. They didn’t do that this time.