The Witches production meeting 2

 The Witches production meeting 2:

22/09/2021

To start off this meeting, we watched a couple videos on how to make bald caps out of latex. This is important to know as we will have to make many bald caps for The Witches production as during a couple scenes, the witches take off their wigs to reveal their bald heads. Therefore, to achieve this onstage, the actors will need to wear bald caps along with a wig.

Once we had finished watching the video, we began practicing making bald caps. I started off by getting the red head I will be working on and giving it a good clean (this included scraping off clay that was previously used on it, washing the head using a bowl of soap and water with a rough sponge and drying it off). Then, I set up the base I will be working at.

The image above shows my base after I had set it up and organised the products I will be using. This included: Vaseline, powder, a powder brush, a tub of latex, a sponge, string, a pencil and a hairdryer layer out over two pieces of bedroll. It is important to use more than one layer of bedroll as, since it is only thin material, if I spill any latex it will go through the bedroll and stick to the surface. 

Once I had set my base up, I used the string to measure how big the bald cap needed to be. To do this, I placed the end of the string at the bottom of my forehead and pulled it over my head to the bottom of my neck. I then placed this length of sting onto the red head and marked out each end of the thing using a pencil and connected the lines which left me with a guide as to where the latex needed to go. Then, I prepped the red head by applying Vaseline onto it to make it easier to peel the cap off when finished as it will help prevent splitting.  Next, I used the sponge to apply thick layers of latex, making sure to use the hairdryer to dry in between each layer. I got to 10 layers and decided that that should be thick enough.

The image above show what the bald cap looked like on the red head after 10 dried layers of latex.

Finally, I applied the powder to the bald cap and began peeling it off, starting around the edges, carefully peeling them upwards and powdering underneath to make it easier to pull the rest off as I go along. Once the bald cap was off the head, I powdered the inside of it to get rid of the Vaseline. This will come in handy when we need to apply them.

The image above shows the finished bald cap. 

Overall, the process went really smooth as there was no splitting when I peeled it off and the edges came off flat (rather than rolling up) which will help blend the edges when it comes to applying them. Using 10 layers was also a good outcome as it made the bald cap more durable and stretchy, which will help to prevent splitting in the future as well as good coverage over the hair.