Zomance: Zombie Makeup Tips from my New Zombie Short

zombiemakeupthumbMarc did Patricia, Patricia did Tyler, Samantha did Stefan and I did Denice and Andy but not at the same time. Get your mind out of the gutter, I am talking about the makeup from Murena Films’ newest film “Chip and Bernie’s Dating Guide for the Zombie Apocalypse”. This was our first endeavor into the world of zombie makeup, we did this as a test to be prepared for our upcoming production of “Chip and Bernie’s Zomance”.

Before we jumped into the makeup we all got together and decided the best way to highlight the following elements we had in our film.

Our groundbreaking, braces wearing zombie

Our groundbreaking, braces wearing zombie

1. This is the first zombie film you will see braces on a zombie. Not only do we find this to be scary we find this to be very funny. There is something about blood and flesh dripping from shiny teeth that makes us giggle.

2. All of our zombies have a disorder called strabismus, more popularly known as having crossed eyes. The fear you feel as a zombie’s one good eye stares at you is traumatic. This is an on going theme you will see in all of our zombie films and we are proud to say that we are the first to do this also.

3. Zombies fall in love and have their hearts broken. It is a sad fact of life but zombies do love and there are times others don’t love them back. We bring a new meaning to the phrase “love bites.”

When it came to makeup effects we all looked up to Marc Robert because of his knowledge in theater makeup and because he was on a taller chair than us. He came up with the color scheme of the zombies and explained to us why it would be this way. Let me share with you what he taught us.

All of our zombies have a light tint of green over their gray skin to give them more of a rotting appearance. Once you die you turn grey and in 24 hours you turn greenish-blue on the head and neck then it slowly continues to the rest of your body.

We darkened their eyes with dark blue and black to make them look sunken in and to highlight their strabismus disorder. After 30 minutes of death your eyes start to sink in. For an extra effect we added a red line around the eyelids and this adds a bloodshot look to the eyes.

Around the lips, fingernails and scars we added a hint of a blue to show the beginning stages of cyanosis. Luckily this helped to bring attention to the braces. Four hours after your death “pooling of the blood” begins.

On the finger tips and nails we added brown so it looked like dirt and finally we added blood to everything. 3 days after your death blood will drip from your mouth, nose, eyes, ears and other holes that we will not mention.

Strangely we all chewed down fried chicken while doing this and had a lot of fun. We look forward to killing more of our actors in the future.

Marc applies makeup to Zombie Patricia

Marc applies makeup to Zombie Patricia

Zombie Patricia "sleeps" as we set up the crane shot

Zombie Patricia “sleeps” as we set up the crane shot

If you would like to see Pasquale Murena’s “Chip and Bernie’s Dating Guide for the Zombie Apocalypse” click here.

One Comment on “Zomance: Zombie Makeup Tips from my New Zombie Short”

  1. The makeup is not the best I have seen but for your first time it came out pretty good. Keep up the handwork.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *