Lernert & Sander: Natural Beauty

Cheeky directors Lernert & Sander embrace the urge for cosmetic overkill in their surreal short Natural Beauty. Makeup artist Ferry van der Nat and his assistant Vanessa Chan helped to execute the vision, slathering a host of Ellis Faas products on  Belgian beauty Hannelore Knuts, who was recently named the new face of Swiss fashion house Akris. Lernert & Sander began collaborating in 2006; since then they've done everything from melt a chocolate bunny with a hairdryer to repurpose household appliances as sex toys in the name of video art. We asked the co-conspirators to break down the shoot in detail.

STATS FROM ON SET

Mission Statement: We wanted to apply 365 layers of makeup in one day to see how much is needed to go from a natural look to an outrageous one. 

Production time: It was a relaxed shoot but it took us nearly nine hours non-stop to apply all the layers to Hannelore’s face.

Magic ingredients: Seven bottles of Foundation S103; two bottles of Creamy Eyes E107; three Milky Lips L205 pens; and two bottles of Blush S301. All together 228.40ml of makeup. 

Lunch menu: Hannelore was fixed between panels for the whole shoot, so everything she ate or drank came from a straw: juice, and a granola and yogurt mix. I think she had sushi on her train back to Brussels.

Soundtrack: No music on our shoots! Unless we do a music video and the artists need to lip-sync. But we don't like lip-syncing, so that never happens in our videos. Music distracts.

Prep work: We tested a 100-layer session a few days before on our intern, who is a man. We wanted to make sure that this amount of makeup wouldn't kill a person. It didn't kill our intern so we trusted everything would be fine on Hannelore.

Crisis averted: There was always the “we've run out of makeup” stress. But Ellis Faas has her office right around the corner so we could call and get more [Foundation] S103. 

Souvenirs: We saved the white construction for Hannelore's face, so if we plan to do a “two years of makeup” we already have the perfect face frame. 

For further insight into what happened on set visit our Facebook page for an album of behind-the-scenes images.