Melanie Jansen

About Melanie Jansen

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Blog 4

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Pearl had me from the moment we looked at her creators’ sheet in the online presentation. Relating to the theme of personal identity, the graphic description of Lyndsay Myhal’s character made it easy to illustrate a vivid picture of the 50-year old south-side woman, whose identity revolves around trying to keep a youthful appearance in my head. Reinforcing said image with the fact that Pearl is located in Florida, US: The city that embodies sun-kissed beach goddesses and plastic surgery in order to achieve a certain beauty ideal. Lyndsay also describes how her characters’ wacky, rather self-indulgent lifestyle has affected her physical health as well as her distorted perception of herself. The leathered out, sun-bronzed skin, deformed breast implants, her throaty smoking-voice and the failure to accept her own age clearly express Lyndsay’s intentions she successfully visualized in her concept.  

In today’s day and age and especially in a westernized, capitalist country like most of Europe and the US, keeping up with beauty ideals for most women is, sadly, a big part of their identity. This is attributable to modern-day media that depicts women in a specific way, portraying beauty on a small frame. The inside struggle Pearl faces is one that countless women encounter, trying to fix internal doubts and dissatisfaction through external alternations and living pretentiously lying to oneself in the hopes to achieve emotional satisfaction. Plastic surgery has become more accessible and more common than ever, seeming like the solution for low self-confidence, however, it is often a cover-up for the real social issue.  

As Steven Solomon pointed out when looking at Lyndsay’s sheet, if she was to read her description of Pearl to an actor, he would on the spot know how to perform. I think it would have been exciting to see how Pearl could be put into practice, creating her over-plumped lips and wrinkly skin. Perhaps one of the first lessons we had could be useful in terms of achieving the look of loose skin and dark under eye circles. Regardless of which technique would have been the most suitable, Pearl would have been a believable and effective character.  

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Blog 3

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Due to the current global pandemic that is occurring, my project outcome and the way I approached the coursework happened to be different from what I’ve expected, however, not being able to access all the materials and the prosthetics allowed me to conceptualize a character without limitation of our acquired knowledge and materials.  

I choose the Better Lives Theme Personal Identity, as I wanted to link the experimental handwork to fundamental communication principles. I found that exploring my characters social and environmental context contributed to the way I address different people when operating as a journalist and communicator in the fashion industry, reinforcing my own sense of empathy and responsibility as in how to view a whole audience as individuals.  

I named my final character Ted. Inspired by a number of standard male protagonists in movies he’s your average, younger-looking but middle aged, skinny office man who must hide a mouth-shaped scar on his neck that talks to him whenever his mental health suffers. The scar is a visual representation of the internal voice many individuals diagnosed with mental health disorders describe their disorder with. When doing my research on how intense these voices are perceived, a significant number of sufferers describe their voice as loud, nasty or threatening voices that tell them to do dangerous and unacceptable things or try to control them. However, I believe that everyone at some point struggles with mental health and therefore, consciously or unconsciously hears someone talking to them inside their head that they can’t sympathize with. Also, I chose my character to be male to underline the long-gone unrecognized issue of men’s mental health due to social norms. He in fact looks what the western standardization of the average man would comprise to exemplify the stereotypical beliefs around men’s mental health issues. 

To put this concept into practice I thought of working with silicone to mold the scar and to shape it like a mouth. From a former blogpost I’ve read that it dries very slowly so you would be able to cut through it just before it dries and shape it the preferred way. 

Working towards a final character was a challenge for me. Although I find a lot of joy in leaving free run for my creativity and create a personality from scratch, everything about it must be linked together to make actual sense. Only then my character has enough power of persuasion to convey a message.  

This Unit really inspired me to learn more about special effects with makeup, wanting to explore how characters in movies are being made and how their appearance contributes to their whole context.   

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  1. Bethany Griffiths: Personally, I love the way in which Melanie Jansen has used her own perspective of being a person who communicates…

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Blog 2

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Choosing Makeup Prosthetics for Performance has influenced and enhanced my creative practice on different levels. I’ve chosen this project coming from a theater and show dance background myself, as I’ve performed and worked on makeup looks and developing storylines for our performances. Therefore, Makeup prosthetics allowed me to refine my hands-on skills and to tell a story by focusing on a person’s physical features, whereas on my current course (Fashion Journalism) I focus on creating imagery primarily through writing. 

However, there are links between both areas of expertise, especially when it comes to fashion as an industry where visuals are a key element in communicating with an audience.  

From scratch, learning about the various types of prosthetics and special effects such as wounds, burns and facial deconstructions from a professional who works in this industry helped me understand how crucial these features are in terms of creating a persona that stands in her own context and how to tell an authentic story. As a communicator in the fashion world, imagery and storytelling is crucial to keep an audience’s attention and to bring my point across a diverse group of people. Stories are remembered and listened to when people can identify with it or when they are controversial or unusual.  

I found particularly interesting how theatrical makeup must be packed onto the actors face in order to unfold the overall effect. With skillful arrangement of the brushstrokes we played with lights and shadows of the face and created wrinkles and facial expressions. This reminded me of my previous work with my dance team and I was able to infiltrate my work with some of my knowledge. The image below shows a look I’ve created on my classmate’s face which is supposed to resemble a (surgically) lifted face. 

To sum up, even though one might think first that there are few to no links to Fashion Journalism, developing a character and analyzing the different meanings of special effects and how it contributes to the context of a story allowed me to transfer these skills into my creative writing and also helped me to create more interesting imageries in my stories. I find that as a young person who’s trying to enter the fashion industry it is important to explore how all these areas link together and how they all fall in line with each other. 

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Blogpost 1

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When visiting the Better Lives Lectures, I found that two of the lectures made a lasting impression in my mind and reflecting back on them, I have let some of the values and aspects from these lectures flow into my creative work. The first lecture that shaped my thinking afterwards was named “Empathy”, held by Lorrain Gamman and the second lecture was “Power” from Julia Crew. 

As a SMC student I aim to integrate the audience I engage with as much as possible and to make everyone feel part of the conversation. In her presentation about empathy, Gamman introduced the importance of empathy in both, our society and as a significant component in the fashion industry. When approaching work emphatically the most important aspect is to be actively involved in the area that one wants to design for or to communicate in. I also find that the most authentic outcome of creative communication comes from actual engagement and own experience, hence empathy in terms of feeling into other individuals is a key factor for good communication. 

In today’s media landscape probably the most important factor for a public person is to be a relatable representation of their audience. This is crucial to getting people’s attention, to communicate with them and to start the conversation about a certain topic. For example, social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are highly trending and even developed into a source of capital for some. Successful social media Influencers and public figures have shifted from being unattainable celebrity-like figures to obtaining their fans sympathy through highly relatable content and even through speaking for those who are underrepresented in the media and in the fashion world.  

Fashion, as in textile fashion, but also in everything that’s trending at the moment has the potential to unite us as people and break boundaries and stigmas. Marginalized groups and minorities but also other individuals often feel left out from the fashion conversation, through lack of representation which can be contributed to the fact that fashion, even though it is a creative industry, is directly linked to capitalist powers, which usually don’t intend to display and represent every group of people equally. In the lecture “Power”, Crew explains that the controlling power over the clothing industry relies in the hands of a very specific type of businessmen: male, pale and stale. 

One way of putting diversity into practice is to objectify empathy, which describes social innovation as in creating systems or services that can improve empathy. These systems often create objects, in terms of fashion that can be fashion in magazines, fashion on screen and fashion in real-life spaces such as runway shows. These “fashion-objects” can be heavily improved by putting more empathetic practices into place and therefore lead to a more welcoming and inclusive space.  

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