Starting the Unit: Make-up in Motion
In this unit we have been given a
task to research into a chosen novel from the 19th century and then
recreate one of these characters in our own interpretation whilst still
relating it to its time period. I have chosen the story of ‘Dr.Jekyll and
Mr.Hyde’ as explained in the previous blog is a novel about a scientist who
wishes to separate his bad side from his good by creating another form of
himself which he portrays as Mr.Hyde to the outside world. This plan of separation
has its ups and down and eventually goes terribly wrong when his evil outer ego
takes over his body forever causing a death by suicide. To kit start this unit
I had to prepare my own set of research to present to the class in a five
minute presentation.
In the story/novel and in mood board I have stated that in some aspects the reader of the book could interepret that the characters are of course the same human (as we know towards the end of the novel) but almost acting as a split personality. The characters are shown as good and evil but again to the readers they may believe that the author Stevenson could have interpreted them as having some sort of mental illness like bipolar and schizophrenia (explain in bipolar blog). Stevenson also uses these characters to show a type of representation in humans that every human has an alter-ego that hides within them, while most of us portray a more polite outer side to the outside world and that different people can control this more than others. The reason for choosing these characters is that in the book at the introduction we are shown to believe that they are two different people but at the end of the novel we find out that they are one person. I found this concept very interesting and I liked that they were both complete opposite ends too each other and I believe when recreating these characters I will do it as one. As we will be studying more special effects I wanted to choose the part of the novel when Mr.Hyde takes over Dr. Jekyll's body without his control and also has some sort of flesh/monster half taking over his body, like bipolar does. The last aspect that I have written on my mood board is the characters descriptions which I have included in another blog.
Dr Henry Jekyll:
Dr Jekyll is a doctor who is highly respected in his community and friend with Lanyon (physician) and Utterson (lawyer). He is also a man of a good finical income, known for his decency and charitable nature, however not living up to personality as much as Mr. Hyde embodies evil. However, Jekyll has always engaged in corrupt behavior therefore through experiments’, trying to separate his good from evil creates Mr. Hyde.
Mr. Edward Hyde:
Hyde is violent and cruel man compared to Dr. Jekyll and is seen as an image of pure evil in some sort of ‘human’ form. He is seen by others as an ugly and deformed man but everyone cannot explain why he is like this. Mr. Hyde really represents the dark side and has a pure hate for anything and everything which was first shown when he is seen running over the young girl. Overall, he represents evil and creates fear for everyone that encounters him.
In this part of my mood board I am writing about parts of the novel where I have captured more in depth meanings in the novel which I believe will help me with my character design and give me a better understanding of the book. I first found that Dr.Jekyll created Mr.Hyde to separate his bad from his good as to control it or do bad acts without feeling guilty about his actions. He is also trying to hide this bad part of himself from society making me believe why he has called his other self Mr.Hyde (like hide meaning hiding from society). This quote I found from SparkNotes :'Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a “fiend,” each struggling for mastery'. states that Jekyll believes that your body is fighting against itself and contains an angel (the good) and its fiend (the bad) but as we know at the end of the story that Hyde takes over his body does this mean that his angel has been destroyed and that evil conquers over evil. When Mr. Utterson first see Mr.Hyde for the first time he describes Mr.Hyde as 'Undeniably, ugly the man seems deformed' I found this shows how people in the nineteenth century were very judgmental. In the novel I understand that Mr. Hyde is meant to be seen as a ugly monster but this reminded me of other illnesses like human deformities. As many people in the 19th century did not really understand deformities and what they were many would judge and call them freaks of nature because they did not understand. From this quote this wanted to make me research into deformities like the famous film the 'Elephant Man' which could hep me get a better understanding of how people felt about this. As well the deformities could be really interesting to research into to see how I could included this aspect of deformed parts of the body and how to recreate them with make-up, as I believe this could be very interesting as a concept. Overall, the mood of the whole story is very dark but also very psychological due to the two characters and how they are portrayed.
Story line:
In the mood board I have included the story line as to explain the great story of 'Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde' but I have included the full story as well from the another blog post. In the story there where so many interesting interpretations that I have found for example again the signs of mental illness portrayed through Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. Many people may believe that the main characters are Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde but I believe that Mr.Utterson is as with out him in the story we would not know the secrets of the scientist, as well as Mr. Utterson narrates the whole novel and is the main character in the aspect as he is the story teller.
‘On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however, that one of Utterson’s clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure stalks through a nightmarish version of London.
Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekyll’s research, which Lanyon calls “unscientific balderdash.” Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visits—which, it turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekyll’s home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say exactly how. Much to Utterson’s surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. Jekyll tells Utterson not to concern himself with the matter of Hyde.
A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to Hyde’s apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather—the morning is dark and wreathed in fog. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson’s clerk points out that Hyde’s handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll’s own.
For a few months, Jekyll acts especially friendly and sociable, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. But then Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Lanyon dies from some kind of shock he received in connection with Jekyll. Before dying, however, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll’s death. Meanwhile, Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekyll’s face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctor’s. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll’s house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll’s laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll’s clothes and apparently dead by suicide—and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything.
Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon’s letter; it reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscience—Mr. Hyde. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful; one day, however, while sitting in a park, he suddenly turned into Hyde, the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened while he was awake.
The letter continues describing Jekyll’s cry for help. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon’s help to get his potions and become Jekyll again—but when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon’s presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon’s deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close.’ – (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/jekyll/summary.html)
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