Practical task- Slasher horror masks

Mise-en-scene for a slasher horror

I decided to produce the mise-en-scene for a slasher horror genre. A conventional feature of slasher horrors are creepy masks that are usually worn by psychotic killers, to hide their true identity. I made two different masks and I got my inspiration from the films ‘Saw’ and ‘The Purge’.

The ‘Saw’ mask is worn by the character Jigsaw, a psychotic and extremely violent killer. I used the circles on the masks cheeks as inspiration. The Jigsaw mask has a wide and creepy smile, which I thought was intimidating and patronising, so I decided to use that too.

The masks from ‘The Purge’ are also worn by the people that are wanting to kill. Again, the masks have an intimidating smile, and this mask is used so the killers hide their identities and to scare their victims further.

I purchased two plain white masks, with mouth, eyes and nose holes from a shop called Harlequins I Maidstone. I also bought two large tubes of fake blood, from Pound land, I chose this kind of fake blood as I thought it was very good quality and reasonably realistic and a very cheap price.

To make my two masks, I used fake blood, two different make up brushes, a black marker, a pencil, dark purple, brown and grey eyeshadow, translucent powder, red/pink cream blusher and kitchen roll. The makeup brushes were to apply the fake blood, and to then dry the fake blood up and to apply the eyeshadows, to create a burnt or charcoaled effect.

How I made the first mask-

First, I drew out the creepy smile and used a pencil at first to get the shape I wanted, then filled the whole thing in with a black marker, and left that to dry. Then, I drew round the eyebrows with a pencil, getting the desired shape. I then filled them in with black marker too. I let both dry out so I didn’t smudge them. I then got kitchen roll and tore up the sheets into small strips, to resemble the texture of ripped flesh. I placed small drops of the fake blood on the masks to hold down the first piece of tissue and then dabbed the fake blood onto the kitchen roll to hold it down and to make it look more like flesh.

I did this until the entire mask was covered in the fake blood kitchen roll and I then set it to side to let that dry a little. Then I used translucent face powder to make the fake blood dry up and look matt. Then I applied purple, grey and brown eye shadow in different areas, which gave a charred effect to the flesh.  

How I made the second mask-

I wanted to keep this mask more simple as I thought this would be just as or possibly more effective than the bloody mask. Firstly, I drew two equal sized circles on the cheeks of the mask in pencil and then drew two stars in the middle of them. These are known as pentagrams, which are used to represent Satanism and witch craft, which involves religion and beliefs which is a huge convention of the horror genre. I then drew round the pentagrams in black marker to make them stand out on top of the white background. Then I drew two stiches for eyebrows in pencil and then black marker as I thought this was effective and looked creepy.

Evaluation

Overall, I think the masks look very effective and tie in well with the slasher horror conventions. A negative of the blood faced mask is that the eyebrows aren't very defined and i think they need to be blacker. I don't think the eyebrows look realistic and they bring down the effectiveness of the mask. On the other hand, i think that the 'bloody' part of the mask looks very realistic and looks like exactly what it's meant to; charred flesh on a face. A negative of the second mask could be that some of the pen drawings are quite sloppy and some of the black pen has smudged onto the white areas which makes it look less professional. However, the simplicity and the black pen against the white face of the mask is a good contrast and makes the mask very effective, it fits in well with the slasher horror conventions too.