The problem for me is not that he had bad makeup. It's an issue with HD digital filming that is not much talked about but has become a major issue for makeup artists. One of the things I learned first from make-up for film class in college is that, traditionally, make-up application is approached with the foreknowledge that filming with film naturally obscures, to an extent, the appearance of make-up on film. The make-up is applied with the understanding that, more than just the effect of lighting, the visual translation of the appearance of make-up is affected by the medium of film as well. Focus, a lack there of, soft focus, the film speed of the stock being used; each has an obscuring affect on how the appearance of applied make-up translates to the screen on film.
HD Digital cinematography affects both the lighting and definition of the image being translated to the screen. Lighting is more difficult to control, harsher and maintains a higher light to dark contrast to film stock. Lighter areas in digital filming tend to blow out much more easily than on film. The increasing level of megapixel resolution in digital cinematography makes every imperfection and detail in a frame more difficult to obscure and infinitely more easily defined. Both of these aspects of HD Digital cinematography have made the traditional approach to make-up in filmmaking that much more difficult to utilize as a make-up artist can no longer assume that the image translation to film will hide imperfections in the application of make-up or any possible perceptable "fakeness" in the apperance of a make-up job.
In the case of Weyland as an old man, these images of the make-up job DO NOT appear nearly as fake or objectionable to what we saw on the big screen as the resoultion of the images is not the same. Granted, these pics were likely digital, but the principle applies; the higher the resolution and quality of the image, the harder it is to hide that "fake" quality we all detect in this make-up job.
For those who are unaware, this is the meaning of Film Speed (Wikipedia):
"Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. Upon exposure, the amount of light energy that reaches the film determines the effect upon the emulsion. The size of silver halide grains in the emulsion affect film sensitivity; which is related to granularity because larger grains give film greater sensitivity to light. Fine-grain film, such as film designed for portraiture or copying original camera negatives, is relatively insensitive, or "slow", because it requires brighter light or a longer exposure than a "fast" film. Fast films, used for photographing in low light or capturing high-speed motion, produce comparatively grainy images. Relatively insensitive film, with a correspondingly lower speed index requires more exposure to light to produce the same image density as a more sensitive film, and is thus commonly termed a slow film. Highly sensitive films are correspondingly termed fast films. In both digital and film photography, the reduction of exposure corresponding to use of higher sensitivities generally leads to reduced image quality (via coarser film grain or higher image noise of other types). In short, the higher the sensitivity, the grainier the image will be."
All of this effects and obscures the appearance of applied make-up in an image on film negative. Make-up artists have known and worked with this understanding of how to make that make-up application look as real as possible on proccessed film negative. Digital cinematography eliminates that affect and more literally records the image it is filming. Hence, Guy Pearce looks to us to be sporting an awful make-up job in theaters, when it would likely have looked far better on film stock.
