Heads Up, soldiers

Make-up on this movie will basically be dirt and sweat, and you’ll be here long enough to need at least one trim in mid-shoot. I’m hoping actors can shave the night before or before leaving the comfort and light of the hotel (very early in many cases) as we’ll be in tents on the location. You don’t see stubble in any of the old photos, not even the more candid ones, except one I’ve found of troopers just off a week hustling after Aguinaldo in the boondocks (Filipino word). So I assume guys got their razors out every morning, maybe right after mess, and trimmed up. You see the enlisted men in various states of uniform when outside off-duty- unbuttoned blouses, shirtsleeves rolled up, sometimes even just in their prospector undershirts with suspenders dangling, but the officers are always very buttoned up. We’ll be using the accurate material for the uniforms- pretty heavy stuff. Having shot on the Tex-Mex border, actors look appropriately moist but tend to short out the body mikes. As the method actors say, use it-
John Sayles