Great question! Sometimes it’s easier to tell than others. A lot of movie and TV wigs are outstanding–think Game of Thrones. But the giveaways are when someone’s hairline looks just a bit too full at the front, or the part is too severe and/or perfect, or again, looks just slightly too full, or their overall hair is just very dense. Most people have sparse or uneven hairlines that are hard to fake, even with an excellent lace-front wig. (And this goes, too, for people with naturally thick hair. The hairline is always the thinnest part, and the part of your hair will always look a little thinner along the edges, rather than going from a knife-straight part to boom, dense hair.)
Of course, the biggest giveaway is if the shape of the person’s head at the back or top looks not quite right, although that’s often hidden in post through the wonders of movie magic. But I’ve worn many a wig in my day and can recognize one when I see it!
The two most common and effective methods of installing a wig or hairpiece are either to glue it down and use makeup to hide the lace, or set the wig slightly behind the natural hairline so the front is the person’s actual hair. From there you line up the part of your hair with that of the wig, then use makeup or temporary colour to match the wig. The method all depends on what kind of hairstyle it is, or if it’s a closeup shot, etc. Hair without a part automatically has to be glued down in front, for instance, because there’s nothing you can blend it with to make it look natural, and no part to line up.
In TWS you can see they used both methods on Scarlett:
The wig is behind her natural hairline here. The front of her hair is slightly lighter in colour (because she’s naturally blonde, and they coloured the front bits of her hair copper) and less dense, and you can see the line where the wig is darker and fuller. It also looks really full toward the back of the crown where most people’s hair tends to naturally lie more flat unless they’ve backcombed the shit out of it.
In this picture you can see the slight line of the lace at the hairline, if you look closely. I’m certain they glued the wig down here because her hair matches more uniformly in colour, and it looks more dense at the hairline than in the first picture.
For comparison, here’s Scarlett’s natural hairline:
It’s more uneven and has some sparse areas, not because she’s losing hair, but because people just don’t tend to have the hairline a wig creates. Especially people who use a lot of styling tools on their hair–mechanical damage can often thin the hair in front, or leave more baby hairs.
But the most telling giveaway is in the BTS shots, like this one.
The colour and shape of it just don’t look natural at all, especially at the back. It’s too full and kind of sticks out farther than the line of her skull because her natural hair is stuffed underneath, creating a bump. That is obviously a wig.
You can see it’s a wig in Ultron as well. Almost identical hairstyle to what she had in Avengers 1, above, but the hairline is totally different–too perfect, too uniformly dense where it should be uneven and wispy in places. She was pregnant here, so it makes sense that she wouldn’t be dyeing her hair.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s totally reasonable for Scarlett to have switched to wearing wigs for her MCU films. Red is a bitch to get out of blonde hair (I speak from experience), and I wouldn’t want to deal with having to bleach it out four times after every film. That’s hard on the hair.
And another thing: if you thought Chris Evans wasn’t wearing a frontal (wig) in Infinity War… think again. Cap’s mad flow was more unnatural than the CGI they did for Proxima Midnight. It suited him, but Chris Evans does NOT have that hairline. Girlfriend only wishes she did.
Even when he’s wearing a similar longer hairstyle, you can see his hairline comes to more of a gentle point and is slightly more sparse. Men’s hair especially tends to do this more as they age, going thinner at the temples first and creating a more pronounced shape at the front of the hair.
The H&MU team almost nailed it, but not quite (and they nailed it on some days more than others, because his hairline changes in the movie, going from natural looking at times, with that gentle peak, to too-straight and fake). It also shortens his forehead a little. Not that he’s got a fivehead, but it’s not that small, and his hair isn’t as thick at the temples like in the photo below:
They gave him a fake beard for reshoots too, but that’s another post entirely.
Hope that answered your question and gave you some insight! There are some really fantastic YouTube videos out there about applying lace-front wigs to make them look more natural. It’s a fascinating process and some people are mind-blowingly good at it. I am not one of those people. The first time I met @formerlyfebricant I got loudly called out by a drag queen for wearing a wig (I was going through a tough hair transition period, okay), and it haunts me to this day. She literally called me Wig all night in front of a packed bar. And that’s the story of how I know about what gives away a bad hairpiece.
I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts.
May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.
I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.
Yesterday I heard a retail worker at my local smoke/leather/lace/head shop describe Steampunk as “what happens when goth kids discover brown” and I just.
I really just want to let fanfic authors know that you don’t actually have to put smut in your story for it to be good.
And that’s not me saying this bc I have any problem with sex in fic but bc I feel like there’s a lot of pressure to escalate ratings to ‘Mature’ or ‘Explicit’ status in fandom.
I see so many people who are clearly not cool with writing smut doing so anyway bc they feel like it’s an obligation for quality stories, and I just want you to know that you don’t have to. I honestly love my OTPs for their relationships, not just bc I want to see them bang.
just as I promised in one of the previous posts, this is somewhat of a relaxation project where I don’t go into too much details, just having lots of fun.
here’s a Cerberus, he’s a good boy(s) :p
here’s some of Hades/Persephone chemistry, like I stated on twitter, this is why I can’t write romance. I just can’t help myself not to make silly jokes XDDD
When I was 18 I took a ballet class at college and every morning our beginner adult class started just as the Ballet Majors in the studio next door took a mid-class break.
Many mornings they would gather in the doorway of my classroom and watch us struggle through our bar warmups or jumble up a new technique while they smiled and whispered to each other.
And every morning I dreaded seeing them there because I knew they were making fun of me.
I had other classes with some of them, and I was always embarrassed when ballet came up, and it always did, them being ballet majors, because I loved to talk about it but knew they’d seen me dance, and I was sure they thought I didn’t belong in the conversation.
At the end of the semester, our instructor announced that she’d like to invite the dancers from the next door studio to sit in on our final performance as an audience, and everyone in my class hesitated. We’d worked so hard, we wanted to celebrate our progress during our final without being judged. Most of us left class that day suddenly more anxious about the final than we’d ever been.
The next morning, in one of my other classes I had with the ballet majors, one of them approached me, and as if she’d been reading our minds the entire semester, she said
“Hey. I just wanted to say that I know we watch you guys dance a lot, and I wanted to make sure you know we’re never laughing at you. When we watch you guys learn the basics…..it reminds us of when we first started when we were younger. It’s like…looking at ourselves when we first fell in love with dancing. That’s why we love watching you guys.”
It shocked me. I felt awash with relief and utterly stupid all at once.
Here I had spent an entire semester assuming the worst of people who had otherwise been nothing but nice to me in every other setting, and I had no one to blame for that but my own insecurities that I’d allowed to rule me for months.
I’d been so unfair to these girls, because I was self conscious. I was so worried about being judged that I’d judged all of them.
Here I was worried they were laughing at me, and all along they were looking at me with nothing but absolute delight, even envy for what I was getting to experience.
This encounter changed my entire attitude, permanently.
It made me realize that, yeah sometimes people are jerks for no reason, but more often than not, people really are just….Good.
Since that day, I’ve started giving everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove me wrong, for their sake and for my own.
And I’ve learned that the world becomes a lot better and life becomes a lot easier when you accept that maybe not everyone is judging you. Maybe you’re the one who’s hardest on yourself.
Let yourself be. Let yourself exist and breathe and be happy.
even just in the platonic sense the steve bucky dynamic has so untapped potential that marvel continuously lets go to waste by letting them say one line to each other per movie. srsly tho!!!! these bitches are early childhood friends. they legitimately know everything about each other. they’ve seen each other at high points low points what the fuck pal??? points, they know every embarrassing story by heart, they must have so many inside jokes, nothing is weird for them. they can be brutally horribly rudely honest with one another & get away with it. They fight , physically and verbally, and will knock sense into each other. or!! on the flip side they come up with the stupidest shit and get each other in trouble on purpose. the interactions are endless and unique and marvel is ridiculous to not make use of this. their default emotion/friendship setting is not pain!!!!
jinlinli 