Tag: moulage

A bloody good time

I don’t have a lot of time to put in a big post, because I will be moulaging a bunch of high schoolers for the high school docudrama. This means that I look at a card detailing injuries and recreate it on a volunteer using makeup.

The docudrama exists as a way to scare teens out of drunk driving, distracted driving, and various other jerky things teens do while driving that will get them and others killed. The woman who runs it encourages us to get severe and bloody with our casualty simulation because they will be seeing it from a distance (unlike Missouri Hope, where people will see it close up). 

It’s a fun time. 

ENDEX (as they say at the end of a preparedness training exercise)

Another New York Hope in the books; I think the numbers go like this:

Three moulage artists

Ninety distinct moulage applications

Scenarios: Urban search and rescue, rural search and rescue, wilderness search and rescue, cityscape active shooter, swiftwater rescue

Injuries ranging from pneumothorax to head injuries minor and deadly, to impalements, open fractures, burns, intestinal evisceration, scrapes and bruises, and throw in a couple heart attacks and mentally disturbed roles.

Staff members — a surprising number I haven’t counted, but categories are coordinating staff, logistics, lane CEs (who run the scenarios), team CEs (who manage the student teams), safety staff, transportation and moulage. 
******

I slept for 12 hours last night. I’m hoping to get some brain cells free to write today as I wait for the train back home — and on the train back home, as I’ll have a lot of free time. 

Right back to first day of classes.

Let me know, though, if you want to see more moulage pics.

Day 2 moulage

Day 2 of moulage: I’m already tired, and I’ll be here till at least 9 PM.

This is such a great opportunity, though, because we’re under the supervision of Will Lanfear, who does moulage for a living (ok, among other things). We talk shop, and I learn all sorts of new things to try out at home. 

The Hope exercises, of which there are currently three (Missouri, Florida, and New York), were created to train college students in emergency and disaster management majors to use their skills in as realistic learning environment as possible. The exercises aim for the optimal amount of stress for learning — too little, and it comes off as frivolous; too much and the learner shuts down. Now others take an opportunity to train, especially at Missouri Hope, where we have nurses, emergency personnel, and the National Guard both creating the learning opportunities and learning themselves.

This is where moulage comes in — we exist to make the disaster scenarios as realistic as possible. You saw a couple of our pieces yesterday. Moulage is 3/4 knowing your materials — skin and bone wax (theatrical products), gel blood and paste blood (not really blood, but theatrical products again), gelatin, latex, and greasepaint; and 1/4 looking at gory pictures and saying “I want to learn to do that!”

So that’s what I do, and that’s how I’m spending my last week of freedom before the fall semester starts.

Time to Go

I’m heading out today for my moulage stint at New York Hope, housed at the New York State Preparedness Training Center, otherwise known as Disaster Disneyland. This is a wonderful opportunity to take a working vacation, as my husband and I take the train (California Zephyr; Lake Shore Limited) and get a sleeper car.

I will try to post on the trip, at least a little. Maybe some photographs. You’ve been on this trip with me before.

Summer’s End

My summer’s winding down. This might be the reason I feel so lazy right now, knowing that in less than a month I will be back to work. 

I work as an associate professor at Northwest Missouri State University. I don’t know how professors are regarded in Europe (where some of my more regular readers reside), but in the US they’re widely regarded as suspicious characters who subject their students to arcane knowledge such as how to think critically and use unbiased data to draw conclusions from. 

I have one last hurrah before I go back to work (which has the added bonus of keeping me out of beginning of semester meetings) — my annual gig at New York Hope moulaging. This also includes train travel with a sleeper car and hanging out to write in the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station (waiting for my connector train). 

But I have a couple weeks before then, working on classes before the semester starts and writing (I need motivation!) and resting before things get crazy.

Recovery

“Here, this won’t hurt a bit.”

This is my favorite picture from Missouri Hope’s moulage headquarters. Here I’m demonstrating various techniques on one of our moulage artists who was kind enough to let me bruise and cut her up pretty badly.

I estimated from yesterday’s stats — 180 roleplayers in three shifts, 4-6 moulage artists per shift — that boils down to 7-10 roleplayer moulages per person per hour.

I haven’t totally recovered yet. I feel like I have jet lag although I haven’t gone anywhere — except to the mythical country of Atlantica, torn by tensions between north and south, crippled by an earthquake and its aftermath. A country I helped create.

Life will be back to normal, back to writing, in a day or so, when I find my feet on firm ground and arrive home again.

Another year of Missouri Hope in the books.

Role players: 185

Amateur moulage artists: 6

Scenarios: Earthquake, car bomb, refugee camp, water rescue, beatings by marauding gangs.
Injuries: impalements, burns, disembowelments, cuts, scrapes, plucked out eye, bruises, lacerations, broken bones, drowning, cholera, old injuries badly treated.

Real world emergencies at the moulage headquarters: 0

I’d say we had a successful Missouri Hope at the moulage building.

Moulage mode

I can’t talk about writing today, because my brain is completely into Moulage Mode.

I walk around the house looking for random objects that look like they’d make good impalements.

I have a gallon and a half of fresh fake blood by the basement door and I wonder if it’s enough.

I have gone through two and a half pounds of powdered plain gelatin and I wish I had more.

I was told to prepare for lots of impalements. I have prepared 28 impalement prosthetics thus far.

Unflavored gelatin smells like burnt hair. My house smells like burnt hair.

I am dreaming third-degree burns.

I love this.

I’ll write when I get time. It’s going to be an intense couple of days moulaging for the biggest exercise that Consortium for Humanitarian Service in Education holds.

The Art of Gorifying

Last night, I made shrapnel. Lots of shrapnel.

Missouri Hope is this weekend, and all my creative brain cells are occupied in making prosthetic plant-ons for casualty simulation. These are used to simulate impalements, and can be glued on someone’s skin with spirit gum. I learned this from Will Lanfear, who is a professional moulage artist in New York state.

I made a quart of special effects gelatin — 2 cups each of water and unflavored gelatin, 1/4 cup each of sorbitol and glycerin. It’s actually fun and soothing to make, and it can be frozen.

The loops of intestines are ready, and all they need are fake blood  (1 jug liquid starch, 1/4 cup red food coloring, 1 teaspoon blue food coloring).

Yes, moulage (casualty simulation) is gory. It’s a lot of sitting around the dinner table talking about the color of day-old bruises and how laminating plastic makes good glass debris. It’s googling pictures of hand deglovings (this is exactly what it sounds like) and third-degree burns, and then figuring out how to recreate those injuries. It’s buying a large wheeled toolkit to bring supplies in to the site.

It’s being nicknamed “The Queen of Gore” by a retired Army brigadier general.

Yes, it’s creativity.