Courtsy | Emily Brickey
“You need to wear makeup to be like a real girl.”
These words left an imprint on junior Emily Brickey and inspired her to take the stereotype of women needing to wear makeup in a completely different route.
Brickey is self-taught in special effects makeup. She specializes in the different injury, gore, and Halloween elements of movie makeup. Her work mainly focuses on makeup wounds, such as bruising, swelling, intense contusion, and battle scars, aiding the narratives told through her art.
Brickey herself doesn’t wear much makeup, and that’s exactly what started her journey toward special-effects makeup. She didn’t want this choice to define her.
“I used to show horses, and my trainer’s wife at the time said, ‘You need to wear makeup like a real girl,’” Brickey said. “She said the real girls that show horses wear makeup, and they win. I didn’t think I fit in because I wasn’t wearing makeup.”
That was the moment Brickey decided to try and wear makeup to see if this would help her win her horse shows. Instead, she stumbled upon DIY Halloween makeup videos.
“I tried the DIY video at home one night after a volleyball game, and I just absolutely fell in love with it,” Brickey said.
It wasn’t just the makeup aspect that fueled her new interest. Her passion for scary movies and all the special effects that go into a movie also influenced her new interest in special effects makeup. To better grasp special effects makeup, Brickey began watching more scary, action-packed movies in order to attempt the special effects looks on herself.
“I sent a picture of myself dressed as a zombie to my horse trainer’s wife, and asked, ‘Is this what you meant?’” Brickey said. “I just really proved her wrong, because I ended up never wearing any makeup at my horse shows.”
Brickey has also done special effects makeup on her friends during the Halloween season. Brickey recreated Achilles’ heel on junior Elena Naborowski, designing a bloody arrow wound to go at the heel of Naborowski’s foot to parallel the mythical story.
“Emily wanted to practice, and I was an enthusiastic subject,” Naborowski said. “It just seemed like a fun thing to do during a spooky time of year.”
Even though Brickey is self-taught, Naborowski affirmed the professional and artistic look of Brickey’s work.
“Her work is very artful,” Naborowski said. “The wounds she makes look very realistic, but she also does other special effects looks that aren’t just wounds, but are incredibly artful.”
Brickey did more than just try special effects makeup on herself or her friends, and has also helped with a movie that will soon be released at her local film festival. She is also part of the Film Club on campus, and has been working with the club on their current spy movie project.
“We’ve started filming a spy movie this year,” Brickey said. “We had an action scene where somebody is sitting in a hallway hiding that she’s been hurt from her partner, and so I did the makeup on that. I designed her hand to be bloody where it was stabbed.”
Junior and film club vice president Sebastian Pestritto has worked with theater productions numerous times, and said he could not tell that Brickley was self-taught.
“I would describe her work as efficient and professional,” Pestritto said. “Time is valuable when you’re on set, so it was really nice to have someone who could work efficiently while still doing an excellent job.”
Brickey is going to continue working on the spy movie, designing different bruises and cuts for the multiple action scenes that they plan to film and reaffirming her role as “an integral part of the club moving forward,” Pestritto said.
“I’ve never taken a class and I’ve never been taught how to do makeup like this,” Brickey said. “A lot of the injuries I do are inspired from the movies I’ve watched. I watch movies with makeup that tends to be action or horror-based.”
Brickey hopes to continue the injury recreations, especially if she is able to work on more feature films in the future.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work on lots of injuries, and I’ll hopefully have an opportunity to work on more in the future,” Brickey said.
Although Brickey does not plan to pursue special effects makeup as a professional career, Brickey said she still plans to practice as much as she can in her free time.
“I have never really thought about doing it professionally,” Brickey said. “But if an opportunity fell into my lap, and I was able to pursue it I absolutely would.”
