The Beauty of Aging Backwards
After the success of the 2009 film, Orphan, the prequel Orphan: First Kill was highly-anticipated to see the next steps for Esther’s journey. Besides learning more about her story, fans and many makeup artists worldwide are curious to learn more about the creativity that went behind transforming actress Isabelle Fuhrman into a 9-year-old girl. Thank you to the fabulous team at Paramount for bringing this story to life! Check out the movie here!
In our recent podcast episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to Orphan: First Kill‘s Makeup Designer Doug Morrow, and Lead Actress Isabelle Fuhrman to dig deeper into the development of Esther and how the team was able to portray her role as a child with special effects, makeup, and wardrobe choices.
According to Morrow, “One of the hardest things to do in makeup is to make somebody look younger than they are, especially now with digital technology because it shows everything.” To achieve the child’s look while utilizing common makeup tools, Morrow used heavy airbrush makeup, highlighter, shadow, and contour. “I would take a highlight color and put it on to make her face look rounder and I would do it on her jawline to give the emphasis that her jawline is not sharpened, which is what happens to a lot of people when they get older,”
In any film, the goal is to allow the audience to connect with the characters as they come to life, and the way that they look is a huge factor in how and if we connect with characters. Their style and makeup are typically designed to represent an aspect of their character, or purposely mislead us. For example, in HBO’s Euphoria, lead makeup artist Donni Davy uses makeup on the characters to affect both visuals and characters. Each character in the show has their style and personality.
By using different colors of makeup and tones, the audience can visually understand their personalities and notice the representations that follow. A character may get shorter hair as they get more serious or more glamorous style as they get more attractive, and the colors and hues that are used are typically a symbolic representation of a character. According to Davy, “If they’re experiencing different emotions and circumstances in all these scenes, then the makeup has to be different.”
Makeup artists on set must get creative with their skills when applying makeup or prosthetics to properly enhance or change a character’s appearance. We did not want to limit the CGI. There was a real effort to not use CGI in terms of Isabelle’s look and to try and use every other technique possible to give the effect that she is 9,” said Morrow.
Thanks to professional makeup artists and all the crew behind the scenes of films and television shows, achieving the look of a particular character not only helps improve and enhance the film, but also communicates the character’s personality to the viewer. If looks could kill, Esther’s certainly would!
Check out Paramount Plus and watch Orphan: First Kill today!