It's October, which means all things spooky, scary and creepy for Halloween month!
I seem to have developed this habit of dying in films. In fact I've made three feature films so far and I've died all three times, four times if you include short films as well (although technically I was already dead at the start of that one). This is becoming such a habit that some of my friends have even nicknamed me "Sian" Bean, and yes they do think that they are hilariously clever for this ! To be fair, I think it's pretty funny too.
I seem to have developed this habit of dying in films. In fact I've made three feature films so far and I've died all three times, four times if you include short films as well (although technically I was already dead at the start of that one). This is becoming such a habit that some of my friends have even nicknamed me "Sian" Bean, and yes they do think that they are hilariously clever for this ! To be fair, I think it's pretty funny too.
Dying is actually really good fun, well fake-dying for a movie is. Real dying not so much. Thankfully I only do the former. I've been strangled, stabbed in the head, half-zombified, beaten to death, and had my throat ripped out. Yes, all that in THREE films! But it is good fun, you really get to play with the intensity of the moment and as mine were all rather gory deaths I got to wear the most disgustingly awesome makeup too!
Fake-dying is a messy job, I'm not kidding! I've left showers looking like a scene from 'Psycho', I've had so much fake blood in my mouth that I've had to hold my breath for fear of drowning in it before the director said "Action" and I could spit it out in a spectacularly dramatic fashion, and I've had a bone sticking out of my leg that was so realistic looking it freaked out the rest of the cast and crew! (Especially when I ran at them with it. I couldn't help myself.)
It's a fun challenge dying convincingly, but the real challenge comes when trying to get the makeup OFF at the end! And that stuff does not want to come off! The blood stains, your hair will be so sticky that you just try not to think about it, removing black eye makeup brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "panda eyes", you'll keep finding little bits of liquid latex on yourself for days to come, and you'll wonder if your nails will ever look clean again.
Fake-dying is a messy job, I'm not kidding! I've left showers looking like a scene from 'Psycho', I've had so much fake blood in my mouth that I've had to hold my breath for fear of drowning in it before the director said "Action" and I could spit it out in a spectacularly dramatic fashion, and I've had a bone sticking out of my leg that was so realistic looking it freaked out the rest of the cast and crew! (Especially when I ran at them with it. I couldn't help myself.)
It's a fun challenge dying convincingly, but the real challenge comes when trying to get the makeup OFF at the end! And that stuff does not want to come off! The blood stains, your hair will be so sticky that you just try not to think about it, removing black eye makeup brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "panda eyes", you'll keep finding little bits of liquid latex on yourself for days to come, and you'll wonder if your nails will ever look clean again.
But you know what? I love it all! When we were kids we loved the chance to get really messy and it's great to be able to do it for work now as an adult! It can definitely be hard work sometimes but for me that's part of the fun and I'm happy to give it my all when filming these scenes, when filming all scenes. While there are some issues with dying all the time - like never being in the sequel - if Sean Bean can win an Oscar from doing it then I'm quite happy to continue enjoying my death scenes. Although it would would be good to start surviving a few in the future!
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