The Millennium Centre Cardiff during the Convention © Sophie Brown
Last week I wrote about the three main theater panel sessions at the Official Doctor Who convention in March. Today I’ll be focusing on some of the smaller panels and talks that were given throughout the day. There were two presentations outside of those in the main theater along with a third fifteen minute talk and several other events happening throughout the day.
The Millennium FX team demonstrate prosthetics casting © Sophie Brown
The first of the smaller panels I attended was run by Millennium FX, the team that produces the prosthetics and special effects makeup for the show.
The prosthetics team creates the masks worn by actors playing the countless alien species on Doctor Who and the company also produces prosthetics for other productions, recently including one for Lady GaGa. The prosthetics sessions ran repeatedly throughout the day with four different demonstrations rotating to allow attendees to watch multiple processes.
The session I attended had the team creating a mold from the hand of an audience volunteer who was allowed to take the rubber fingers produced at the end home with him. They also made a face cast of one of their own crew members before using biscuit foam (what the Mythbusters referred to as “AB Foam” in the “Plane on a Conveyor Belt” episode) to form a replica of her face.
