Hair and Make-up Designer

What they do

The designer breaks the script down for hair, make-up and prosthetics at every point in the story, works out the stock the show will consume in wigs, hairpieces, facial hair and consumables, and identifies prosthetic needs when there is no separate prosthetics department. They meet the director, producers, costume designer and production designer to settle the overall look, research the period and style, and produce mood boards for the production and for individual characters. Specialist appointments are booked early because their lead times do not compress: dental, optical, life casts, bespoke wigs and appliances. Tests matter as much as designs, so hair and make-up tests and camera tests get scheduled to see the work under the show's light. Cast are contacted in advance about allergies and product requirements, each performer is assigned to a team member, and continuity folders and fittings sheets are prepared with photographs and notes logging haircuts, colour, wig hire numbers, facial hair references and tattoos. They review the shooting schedule with the supervisor and first assistant director to check the planned changes are physically achievable and flag the ones that are not. Administration is a real part of it: purchase orders, petty cash, timesheets, and negotiating make-up trucks and rooms with the line producer. On the floor they are among the first in, and continuity across the production is theirs, with any change agreed with the director.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• The designed look for every character, agreed with the director
• Hair, make-up and prosthetics continuity across the whole production, and any change to it
• Which specialist work goes out to suppliers, and how early it has to be ordered
• Which artist is assigned to which performer
• Whether the schedule's planned changes are achievable in the time allowed; raised with the first assistant director, who schedules
• Team size, grades and daily crew, agreed with the line producer

Principles of the craft

• Design for the light and the lens, not for the mirror: work judged at truck-light distance can fall apart on a long lens under a hard key, which is why ScreenSkills puts hair, make-up and camera tests inside the designer's own responsibilities. The test is the approval.
• Continuity is a document, not a memory: haircuts, colour formulas, wig hire numbers, facial hair references, tattoos, all logged with photographs per look. Films shoot out of order and a haircut is irreversible, so the folder is what makes the schedule survivable.
• Change needs a curve, not a state: if a character deteriorates across the story, decide the steps in advance and map them onto the shooting schedule, or the middle of the film will look like whichever week it happened to be shot in.
• The chair is the first performance space of the day: an hour with an actor before the crew arrives is where nerves and character get negotiated. Designers who treat it as a technical slot lose information that would have improved the work.
• Order the slow things first: life casts, dental, contact lenses, bespoke wigs and appliances have supplier lead times that no amount of goodwill shortens. A design that is right and late is wrong.

Common mistakes

• Approving a look in the truck and never under the show's key light
• Continuity notes without photographs, or photographs without notes
• Cutting an actor's hair before checking every scene already shot and every scene still to come
• The experienced version: a technically excellent prosthetic that restricts the performance the director needs, because a face that cannot quite smile is a story problem
• Not reading the shooting schedule for changes that cannot physically be done in the gap allowed for them
• Leaving allergies and product sensitivities to the first shooting day, when the alternative needed ordering weeks earlier

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Photograph one face with the same make-up under a hard key at 35mm and at 85mm. Note what the long lens hides and the wide lens exposes, adjust the work, and shoot it again.
• Build a real continuity folder for a short film you shoot yourself: every look from three angles, products and hair state noted, filed by scene and story day. Shoot the scenes deliberately out of order and find out whether your folder was enough.
• Age one face in five steps using make-up only, photographing each. Then try to reproduce step three consistently across three separate sessions a week apart.
• Design one character's look from a single script page, present it as a mood board, and compare it with what a costume designer would have chosen for the same page. Where you disagree is the conversation this job is made of.
• Time yourself doing a full look to camera-ready standard, then do it again inside the slot a real call sheet would have given you.