Opened up my mould this morning, and was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. It wasn't great, but this is the first time I've ever done it so was happy. After looking at these results, and working what I could do to improve on it, I had to mix up another batch and hope this'll come out better. I'll find out tomorrow. The rest of the day was again spent practicing appliances. I managed a pretty decent piece, but the colours were a bit off. I'm working at it though.

This evening was going to be pretty exciting, as I was going to watch a special screening of 'The Exorcist', a digitally remastered version featuring scenes cut from the original version. It was in recognition of d*** Smith's make-up work for the past 60 odd years, as he'll be receiving an honorary award for his achievements and influence. Before the film began, there was a short slide reel of him working in his basement/lab, and on set, as well as letters from an 18 year old to d*** explaining his admiration for his work. The kid's name was Rick Baker, who after brief speeches from Leonard Engelman (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0257255/) and Alec Gillis (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0319266/), gave an introduction to the man himself, who was sitting just a few rows behind me. I like to think I got better seats than him, though I'm not sure he stayed throughout the whole film. To be fair, it's 38 years old, so he's probably seen it once or twice before.

The remastered version is excellent, and was good fun to watch it with so many other aspiring make-up artists, mostly from the school. I'd not seen it for a number of years now, but it all came streaming back, apart from a new scene where Regan "backwards-crab-walks" down the stairs with blood dribbling down her head. I only found out afterwards the reason it was cut from the original, was due to visible wires holding her up that they can now hide with today's technology. Maybe I'll accept that there's always room for a little CGI...