If you’ve ever seen a horror movie, then you’re probably familiar with some of the amazingly realistic special effects makeup featured in these films. Giuliana DeCunto, a sophomore here at Mendham, practices this intricate art of special effects makeup right in her house.

She started about three or four years ago. “I’ve always been interested in art,” she says, detailing how she started thinking about art on a more professional level when she was about five or six. When she became interested in makeup, she realized regular makeup was not the path for her. “Regular makeup is just more basic and I’m really interested in all things spooky.” Thus, special effects makeup and art was the perfect road for Giuliana.

Giuliana is self taught and figures a lot out by herself. Most of the time, her only model is herself, but when she gets the chance to work on someone else, she cherishes it as it is a lot easier to work on someone else because there is more mobility and can use both of her hands. Overtime, her methods have differed, “mostly the materials I use or how long I take.” Practice makes perfect!

The largest SFX projects Giuliana has done are bone exposures, where it looks like bones are being seen on someone’s unexposed flesh. More specifically, she has created an exposed knee which took a lot of time and effort.

For school, she would definitely to pursue a career in some type of art. For special effects art, she would love to go to “New York, or some type of city. Or if I study abroad, I would love to go somewhere in Italy because I love the architecture there.” One of her long term goals is also to learn Italian. “I’m already bilingual and would love to learn another one,” Giuliana says, in reference to learning Italian. Now, aside from English, she also speaks Spanish fluently.

As for pursuing a career in SFX makeup, Giuliana says that she would like to work on horror films. While there are other opportunities in other industries to do SFX makeup, such as the fashion industry, Giuliana says, “What I do, that’s more for movies and film. [In] horror movies, within special effects makeup there’s more prosthetics.” Giuliana said that, within the field of SFX makeup, she mainly focuses of prosthetics, such as bone exposures.

She describes her art style as naturally darker and somber, even when she tries to make more positive images. Of her conscious efforts, “I like my style to be very raw, I feel like that’s what makes it more realistic.” She more specifically aims to expose what is on the inside, the essence of an idea: “what you would actually see [rather than] what you want everyone else to see. That’s what I like to do.” This stylization is inspired by Giuliana’s interest in post-eras and darker eras.
Giuliana’s art style is similar to that of her actual style in both clothing and how she is. “I don’t like to be like everyone else, like the way I dress,” she starts, “I do my own thing, I do what I like to do, and it doesn’t really go with social standards.”

And Giuliana definitely stays true to that self-definition: between her personal style and her skills in SFX makeup, she’s far from being an average teenager.

Photo credit to Giuliana DeCunto.