One of the most memorable scenes from The Last Dance, the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in Hong Kong, unfolds with funeral director played by Dayo Wong Tze-wah injecting a pocket of air into the eyelid of a dead woman, causing her half-opened eye to finally close.
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The sunken face with its darkened lips is not the visage of an actress, but an expertly crafted prosthetic head with movable eyelids, created with 3D scanning and printing technology by special effects make-up artist Wilfred Wan Chi-kit.
“The character died of cancer, leaving her a bit gaunt. I manipulated the data from the 3D scan of the actress to create a thinner version of her,” the 39-year-old told the Post.
“I then designed the scaffolding and mechanism for the 3D-printed head, which is made from resin.”
Wan concealed himself beneath the faux corpse during the filming of the scene, deftly activating a trigger attached to the back of the prosthetic head while the actor performed the scene.
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Wan is one of the top practitioners among a small handful of special effects make-up artists in the Hong Kong film industry.