Many beginning filmmakers overlook makeup and get by for a long time without it. Thought makeup is not a requisite for fine filmmaking, it is a tool you should be familiar with. In real life we are used to makeup being use for one purpose and mostly by women: to look more attractive. In filmmaking the focus of makeup is to help an actor come across on camera the way looking like the character they are playing, which often has nothing to do with looking "good".

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Change Age Or Type

If your pool of available actors is small, you will find yourself using makeup to turn them into something they are not. Your story may call for someone with a unibrow but you can find no such person, so you paint one on their face. You may need a 46-year old woman but only have a 19-year old. So you draw laugh lines, wrinkles and blotches on her face to make her look older.

Special Effects

This is the most visible and celebrated part of the makeup community. When most people say they want to do movie makeup, this is what they are talking about. It can be anything from making a human look like an alien all the way to making someone look dead. Fake gashes or bruises, minor facial feature changes (like a more prominent nose) or even making someone look bald all are part of special effects makeup.

Facial Features More Visible

Not only would you need makeup to create a unibrow where your actor has none, you will likely need a little makeup no matter what kind of facial hair. Many men have thinning hair when their character does not, which would require a little brown penciling along their hairline to make it appear fuller. People with lighter color facial hair may require anything from some pencil on their eyebrow to putting mascara on their eyelashes. Without this little bit of help many people would appear to have no eyebrows or facial hair at all, which may not be the look you want.

Ruddy Complexions, Freckles

People with natural rouge on their cheeks are adorable in person, and freckled faces are cute, too. Unfortunately, on camera freckles come across as acne and the red in your actor's cheeks often make them look sick. This is where foundation comes in handy. Depending on your actor's face it may take more makeup than others and how prominent their face is in any particular shot.

Makeup can be your friend if you know what it does best. Just like in life it is best to have the makeup enhance or modify the features an actor has instead of relying on it to make them into what they are not. For those with limited actor pools makeup can be a boon, helping them achieve realism they otherwise could not. For the more style-conscious filmmaker it can take a film to another level of expressiveness.