Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds: Behind the Scenes

Life's a Blur chatted up our friends at Kanebo's SENSAI line who introduced us to Heba Thor, the department head of makeup for the upcoming film. Below is our first excerpt directly from the SENSAI brand Advisor.

The SENSAI Adivsor from Kanebo had a chance to catch up to the busy Heba Thorisdottir, the Department Head for Quentin Tarantino’s much anticipated  Inglourious Basterds as she was catching up after working on the film’s LA premiere this week. Heba has worked with innumerable film actors, directors, musicians and stars during her career. Most recently her work has included, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, He’s Just Not That Into You, The Spirit, The Other Boylen Girl and The Nannie Diaries. She is often Scarlett Johansson’s personal makeup artist on her films as well.

A little about the film,   From Sky Movies: Inspired by the Dirty Dozen movies, Quentin Tarantino's latest features a Jewish girl whose family has perished in the Holocaust. She finds sanctuary in a Parisian cinema run by a kindly Frenchwoman. At the same time a group of Jewish-American soldiers - "The Basterds" - are terrorising the Nazis behind enemy lines. When a German war hero seeks to screen a propaganda film at the cinema it offers the perfect chance for vengeance....

SENSAI Advisor: Tell us about your experience on Inglourious Basterds—it looks like it is going to be another unique Quentin Tarantino film!

Heba Thorisdottir: I’ve worked with Quentin previously on Kill Bill (Volume 1 and 2), with Quentin I don’t prep a lot—I just know to be prepared for anything! We shot for four months mostly in Babelsberg Studios just outside of  Berlin—then we were a week in the countryside which was beautiful! There were some locations in Berlin as well and we shot a couple days in Paris.  Quentin creates a family like atmosphere and on the last shooting day of the week he picks a bar we all go to to wind down. That way, we get to know each other on a social level as well as professional. Quentin knows everyone who works on his sets. And I mean everyone and what they do! If he needs anything, he'll go to the right person and ask for it and doesn't have to be asking someone else to go and get something.

I got the script over the Fourth of July weekend last year. I went to Germany a month before shooting began to do makeup tests. I met all the actors and had to decide if the actors were wearing any facial hair and they got haircuts and got fitted for their costumes. Inglourious Basterds is a WWII film and we have to follow that period as closely as possible. Quentin uses KNB Creations on special effects makeup on all the true life figures such as Hitler, Goebbles and Churchill. Anything gory that involved more than throwing blood and dirt on---they took care of that.

SENSAI Advisor: There are two strong female characters in the film, tell us about their looks.

 

Heba Thorisdottir: Yes, there is no one lead, except for Brad and there are so many actors who have really important roles in the film, I loved working with all of them! The two main female characters are played by Melanie Laurent who plays Shoshanna Dreyfus and Diane Kruger’s character Bridget von Hammersmark two women who are very different characters.

The character Shoshanna Dreyfus—played by Melanie Laurent—is a theater owner—her character is in hiding from the Nazis, she doesn’t want to be noticed, we down played her beauty, she kinda wears men’s makeup, she doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to her.

 

 

 

We have a scene at the end where she’s applying her own makeup—she would apply on camera and we would fix it—it was layers upon layers of lipstick. I wanted to be clear that her character did it!

 

http://melanielaurent.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=243&pos=0

 

PART II on Thursday: Diane Kruger is Bridget von Hammersmark

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