AS Media 'Burlap Mask' Practical

Burlap Mask Practical

Research and Planning

Within the horror genre, especially 'slashers', there are conventions of the villain wearing a mask. In "American Horror Story: Freak Show" one of the most well known masked villain is "Twisty the Clown". The mask is incredibly creepy due to the artificial wide smile that covers his missing jaw from a suicide attempt.

This crooked protruding smile with yellow teeth is painted in murky, greyish colours to show its wear, and is contrasted with red to highlight the blood from the cut like clown stripes over his eyes and the hat part of the costume, which is meant to be a removed scalp. Immediately this blood red displays his murderous behaviour.

I really thought the smile was incredibly effective as it is so eye drawing. However, this mask was incredibly fitting in with the theme of 'freak shows', which we will not use for our opening scene. Although I liked the idea of using a blatantly fake smile, which made it more creepy as the character was in fact far from the happy connotations of a smiley clown, I would not like to use a clown theme.

Above: Mid shot.

Therefore, I looked into another masked villain from the TV series. Due to the scalp idea used in "Twisty's" mask, it influenced me to look at "Bloody face" in "American Horror Story: Asylum". This is the main antagonist that the story mainly revolves around. His mask is made out of skin and hair collected from victims. Wearing a mutilated second skin is incredibly disturbing, as the character is obviously so troubled that he literally harvests people and manipulates their skin to flaunt his murders.

Above: Mid shot.

This clearly shows the mind set of the killer and, despite the excessive gore of the mask, conforms to conventions of psychological horrors, where the killer is complex and deemed 'insane'.
This is similar to the manipulation of the killer's own Bible in "SE7EN". From this stitching idea I decided to look into the 'skin masks' and 'burlap sack masks' produced by one of the most famous and professional production company of masks, the "Grim Stitch Factory". I gathered ideas from their website. They produce highly detailed masks, as shown below. 

I really like the idea of giving the mask a lot of structure for prominent characteristics like a smile, like "Twisty the Clown", or folds in the fabric. From this, I found a video for ideas on how to structure the mask without latex or complicated methods. This is documented below:

This uses a pre made mask to structure the mask from sewing. Instead, I had the idea of using clay.

Production

First I cut the burlap sack we got given around the pre made mask I will use.

To manipulate the burlap sack to create folds and a face shape influenced by the above inspiration, I used modelling clay and applied it over a pre made mask. To stop the clay from sticking to the actual mask I used cling film, however, the clay kept slipping from the mask. I built up a large amount of clay around the sockets of the eyes and cheekbones to make the mask look gaunt and skull like. This was inspired by the video above, where the person used a polystyrene mask as a model for the structure. Inspired by the smile of the clown mask from "American Horror Story: Freak Show" and the mask from the "Grim Stitch Factory", I attempted at including some sort of abnormally wide crooked smile. However, the smile I wanted was really wide and one side of it didn't fit on the mask, therefore, influenced by "Two Face" from "The Dark Knight", I planned on using rope to separate the planned gore side with a gaping smile.

In order for the clay to dry I used a hairdryer so it can keep its form when I put the burlap fabric on top. I cut the seams of the burlap sack to remove the original sack like shape and secured the material to the clay with a hot glue gun. Sadly, I put the end of the material too close to the clay face so that when I came to sew a hem, it wasn't able to cover the head. So later I had to use scrap pieces of burlap to 'patch' up the hole. I used a lining of white fabric to help cover this clay. The hot glue was also very fiddly and messy and I failed to manage to get the detail of cheekbones and mouth etc.

Here is a video of the process, sadly the camera I was filming with ran out of battery to capture the end product, but below documents the fundamental structure:

The video doesn't show but I continued to sew up the back of the mask messily to create folds and a chaotic shape. I used a mixture of black thread and some of the burlap sack's thread to blend into the fabric. Then using fake blood, brown ink and black paint I stained the mask accordingly. The brown and black paint helped create a singed effect as when I tried burning the fabric it burnt quickly and didn't provide an effect. With remaining glue I used metal chains to emphasise the mouth. This was inspired by the staples and pins used in some of the masks I researched.

Outcome

Below is the final product.

Personal Comments

I felt that the mask wasn't exactly professional due to some spots of glue, messy stitching, fraying etc. however, this was somewhat effective and if used for filming where the camera won't be so close to the mistakes of the mask, it will create a chilling effect.

Audience Feedback

Many of my class found the mask very impressive and liked my use of changing the shape produced by the clay. This, however, made the mask sag due to its flexibility and heaviness. This made it hard to wear and maintain the shape.

On the other hand, the structure was admired with the idea of 'two faces'. They even thought the sagging and disfiguration of the face was intentional and influenced by old horrors like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", where people with disabilities were villainized. Furthermore, the heavy decoration was seen as creative and works well.