Week 6 Reflection - HNC

This week in our theory session, Unit 22 - Stage Craft was delivered. We disucssed the assignment before elaborating on parts of Unit 25 as we were struggling with the portfolio section of the brief.

Once these discussed had taken place and we were all on the same page, we moved back to Unit 22: looking through the learning objectives and mark scheme. The feedback comments provided to me from my first 2 essay drafts were very positive hence I felt I would understand what I needed to do more this time - not to mention, it was very similar to Unit 1. As we didn't have too much more to learn/be delivered within this session, we were set with the task of completing the first learning objective and handing it by in the next day. I did my preliminary research by reading a book that we had at college before then making a start on my essay. Unfortunately didn't get it finished by the Thursday before our afternoon session, however I did get it completed by the following morning.

This week in our practical session, I thought that I would work a little more on my clay flat mould. Unfortunately, the sculpting tools I had purchased hadn't arrived yet so I couldn't do any sculpting outside of college. For this sculpture, I decided that I wanted to do a bullet entry wound as I wanted to start off easy - due ot the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, I hadn't done any prosthetic sculpting for a fair few months. I started out by taking a mound of clay and smoothing the edges to the base plate before then hollowing out a crater in the centre. I constructed this to look somewhat lopsided intentionally to give it some realism. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any photos of the sculpting process and only realised once we had started pouring the silicone later on.

From this point, I then used a metal toothbrush to add texture by cross hatching this across the clay before then powdering it with baby powder to seal it. I then used a clay extruder to create a cutting edge for my piece. I am planning to cast this prosthtic out of silicone using cap plastic and melt the edges ot the model. The next step I followed was cleaning down the baseplate with lighter fluid before covering the whole thing with Vaseline ready for casting.

Now that the piece itself was prepared, I then adhered a yoghurt pot to the baseplaye to act as the wall for my prosthetic. We then, as a group, prepared the silicone mixture of A and B in a ratio of 1:1 to be mixed and poured onto the pieces.

In total we made the mixture 120g (meaning 60g of part A and B); we found that this was fairly successful for 3 moulds with a tiny bit left over however nothing in which could have been used for anything.

After pouring a small portion in each of the cups we then pressed the silicone onto the piece to make sure that it has sunken into all the small nooks and crannies before then pouring the rest of the mixture into the cups from a height. We then left this for 20 minutes to set throughly before demoulding them.

Using a large powder brush and baby power, we powdered the tops of our pieces before then peeling them up from the tiles and powdering the bottom of the piece which contained the casted negative. After this, we then used a craft knife to cut round the edge of the piece release it from the cup before then powering that edge too.

I think to work on in future, it would be beneficial for me to get involved with the pouring and application of certain special effects products. I think because I am more inexperienced with SFX, I am very intimidated by it all and can easily let people mix, apply or pour mixtures while I watch. Next time, I will ensure to be first in line to pour and get more hands-on with the practicalities of SFX.