“I need two severed arms. One right and one left,” asks a customer, confidently, the moment he walks in to Glamour Cine World in Vadapalani. One look around and no one is startled. In Glamour, such requests are a part of a daily routine. “Do you have a severed leg to go with it, preferably a right leg?,” the customer goes on to ask, introducing himself as an assistant to an art director and showing a list of must-haves for an approaching film shoot.
The severed limbs and arms, all packed and ready to go, look a bit pale. The ‘Made in China’ sticker, pasted on its packaging, better explains the fairer skin tone. “That doesn’t matter,” justifies Khader, who has been working in Glamour for ‘a really long time’. “We have makeup that can easily match any actor’s skin tone.”
Originally opened in 1986 by SMS Hameed, as a specialist providing imported makeup to the various film industries that operated in and around Kodambakkam, the store later expanded to include products that are unique to the film industry. These include clap boards, masks, green screens, special ropes, filters, spray paints, wigs, thermocol bags and more. “All the cinematographers, starting right from PC Sreeram, buy what they need for cinematography from here,” adds Khader, pointing to a red filter cloth that he says is nailed onto windows to make a scene look “rich and red like Bahubali .”
From Kamal Haasan to Rajnikanth, every South Indian star has come to use make up from the store insists, Ismael, who works at the store’s older Kodambakkam branch. Bringing in makeup from brands such as Max Factor, Kryolan and Mac from Singapore and Malaysia, long before they entered the Indian market, he goes on to describe the store as a favourite among most makeup artistes of the 80’s and 90’s. “We were also one of the first companies to deal in three different types of fake blood,” Ismail adds. “Magic blood, a powder-based solution for scenes where an actor slits his wrist. Fix blood, for smaller bruises and scratches. And gel blood, the costliest, to shoot burns and explosion wounds. We also have collodion to make scars and wounds, usually for villain characters.”
Though the store has moved on, more successfully, from makeup alone, a look at its shelves shows changes that have affected the shift from film to digital cinema. “The requirement of makeup has reduced a bit with digital technology. Even the sale of white cotton gloves, which used to sell in hundreds, have completely stopped as an editor doesn’t need them to handle film anymore,”adds Khader.
So has been the case with halogen lights, post production media tapes and a few special makeup products. “We don’t just rely on customers from the film and television industry alone. We’ve diversified to include products for students and short filmmakers too. Everybody wants to make films now.”
