While this year’s awards season has been anything but standard, when the big show airs this Sunday night, there will be one tried-and-tested BTS secret to help presenters go from back stage to the big stage to our living room—complete with some guaranteed glowing skin and perfect makeup.
“Every celebrity wants to look flawless at the Oscars,” says celeb makeup artist Bruce Grayson, department head of makeup for the Oscars. “Glamcor is my must-have, behind-the-scenes beauty tool. It provides me with amazing light, so the presenters look perfect when they hit the stage. As a professional celebrity makeup artist, I find myself working on faces under less-than-favorable lighting conditions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve struggled applying makeup in darkly lit hotel rooms or backstage venues. The Glamcor Elite X ($255) light provides adjustable LED panels that mirror natural light and allow me to position them to perfectly frame the face—it is a game-changing tool and has become an essential part of all of my makeup kits.”
Grayson says that the Multimedia X ($370), which will also be backstage this weekend, is a similar-working device that takes his work to the next level. “It has a remote, which makes it easy to adjust the panels light temperature from cool to warm light and anywhere in between. It’s a great feature to precisely match makeup application area light to the light temperature on stage, in front of camera, indoors or outdoors. The memory set is one my favorite features, it makes matching lighting conditions a breeze, a tool that is incomparable for professional makeup application continuity. It takes all guess work out of reproducing lighting conditions from the set to the makeup room. The smartphone holder is also a great feature that allows the artist to record application technique for production archives, makeup reference or social media.”
“One thing most people don’t realize is that the lighting where you apply makeup often differs from camera, stage or red-carpet lighting,” he adds. “Foundation, concealer colors, lipsticks and skin tone don’t always look as good on stage as they did in the makeup room—so the ability to reproduce stage or photography lighting helps take the guesswork out of it.”
Plus, he says, there’s not a whole lot of time to think during live television.
“A show like the Oscars is no joke, you have to be fast and nimble. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to do a last-second makeup touchup on a celebrity in a dark dressing room or some remote area of the theater with no light. Both the Glamcor Elite X and the Multimedia X can be assembled in a minute, which is about the same amount of time that I am given to fix makeup on talent before they hit the stage.”
