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cimoreneThe most baffling thing about the production of Good Omens to me is still their hair, honestly.
And they obviously were trying to save money somewhat in some areas to make sure they had enough for all the CGI they needed. A lot of other people have talked about the fact that both the hair colors looked fake, and I wonder if the thinking was that 'not found in nature' colors would help to suggest their supernatural natures - although I think it doesn't really work since in both cases it looks dyed, and both are pretty common colors of dyed hair (enough so that you can do them with a box, although in the case of Michael Sheen, you have to be pretty good at it to successfully achieve that platinum on your own from a natural color like his). Maybe multiple really good and convincing lace-front wigs were simply too expensive? (I know from![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
wigwurq that obtaining good and convincing male wigs is even more difficult than I would have thought, so...?) (And I also know from RuPaul's Drag Race that even a lacefront of the quality RuPaul uses needs extensive makeup when it's put on to make the hairline look good, if you can see it at all.)
ALSO, if you WERE going to make Sheen platinum, his eyebrows should have been platinum too! People with that natural haircolor have facial hair to match. The women tend to put makeup on, but I've spotted at least 2 men with that color of hair out and about (it happens all the time in Finland - world capital of colorless blonds no doubt) since watching Good Omens and taken note of how obtrusive their lashes and eyebrows are from a distance. I know lightening eyebrows is evidently controversial in film, and doing it to eyelashes is probably out of the question, but the thing is, Sheen's eyebrows are actually lightened... they're just not lightened enough. They're sort of medium blond, like Lena Headey's at the beginning of Game of Thrones. But you don't have silvery white blond hair and soft medium gold eyebrows, dudes. The silvery white eyebrows stand out almost as shockingly from the face as bold dark brows, and it gives the face a completely different aspect. Quite apart from how good or bad they thought it would look on him, the wrong eyebrow color is an obvious and instant tell that the color is artificial! Furthermore, if that was too extreme, they could've just given him... any other color of hair? It doesn't even say in canon that Aziraphale is blond, although to be fair, everyone has tended to assume as much from the beginning (but if anything wouldn't a more medium yellow or golden shade be more expected than platinum?)
Anyway, as someone else said somewhere, the hair issue became less significant the more I watched because they both really acted their way out of it: they probably could do a costumeless, settingless scene on an empty stage and do enough acting to make me forget at least temporarily. (They're both such physical actors that their characters often look different from how they do out of character. I was watching a press tour interview and thinking that Sheen looks bigger than Aziraphale and Tennant looks smaller than Crowley.)
But is that a good excuse...?
Ahem.
The most important pieces of set, like the Bentley, their respective lairs, and the small-town idyll of Tadfield, all looked wonderful. The Them's forest headquarters was enchanting, and all the historical flashbacks had great settings.
But Heaven and Hell both sort of looked like they were running low on funds and decided to just pour in more light and shadow respectively and hope it'd cover up for any lacks. And it's not that Heaven shouldn't have looked like a huge empty gleaming white office building or that Hell shouldn't have looked crowded and grimy - the set design was good there; it was just some of the details of execution that weren't quite as meticulously examined. The most obvious are the wide shots in Heaven, several of which I noticed could have probably gotten a stronger effect of the kind they were going for simply by finding a slightly better extant modern functionalist building to film in, and the rendering of Beelzebub. Brilliantly acted, but... the costume... it looked like the spider costumes some of the children wore in the community theater production of Babes in Toyland I was in at age 9! It was just like a fake fur fly head hat! I burst out laughing.
(I don't suggest that these things are huge errors, but superficial things that are distracting are, well, distracting, and you'd never see that kind of thing in... say... a Fuller show. I bring this up to compare it to the visuals of American Gods s1, not to suggest Fuller should have been on this project. The showrunner doesn't have to have Fuller's genius for aesthetic to make sure the aesthetic bases are covered, though: you just have to hire good people!)
And they obviously were trying to save money somewhat in some areas to make sure they had enough for all the CGI they needed. A lot of other people have talked about the fact that both the hair colors looked fake, and I wonder if the thinking was that 'not found in nature' colors would help to suggest their supernatural natures - although I think it doesn't really work since in both cases it looks dyed, and both are pretty common colors of dyed hair (enough so that you can do them with a box, although in the case of Michael Sheen, you have to be pretty good at it to successfully achieve that platinum on your own from a natural color like his). Maybe multiple really good and convincing lace-front wigs were simply too expensive? (I know from
ALSO, if you WERE going to make Sheen platinum, his eyebrows should have been platinum too! People with that natural haircolor have facial hair to match. The women tend to put makeup on, but I've spotted at least 2 men with that color of hair out and about (it happens all the time in Finland - world capital of colorless blonds no doubt) since watching Good Omens and taken note of how obtrusive their lashes and eyebrows are from a distance. I know lightening eyebrows is evidently controversial in film, and doing it to eyelashes is probably out of the question, but the thing is, Sheen's eyebrows are actually lightened... they're just not lightened enough. They're sort of medium blond, like Lena Headey's at the beginning of Game of Thrones. But you don't have silvery white blond hair and soft medium gold eyebrows, dudes. The silvery white eyebrows stand out almost as shockingly from the face as bold dark brows, and it gives the face a completely different aspect. Quite apart from how good or bad they thought it would look on him, the wrong eyebrow color is an obvious and instant tell that the color is artificial! Furthermore, if that was too extreme, they could've just given him... any other color of hair? It doesn't even say in canon that Aziraphale is blond, although to be fair, everyone has tended to assume as much from the beginning (but if anything wouldn't a more medium yellow or golden shade be more expected than platinum?)
Anyway, as someone else said somewhere, the hair issue became less significant the more I watched because they both really acted their way out of it: they probably could do a costumeless, settingless scene on an empty stage and do enough acting to make me forget at least temporarily. (They're both such physical actors that their characters often look different from how they do out of character. I was watching a press tour interview and thinking that Sheen looks bigger than Aziraphale and Tennant looks smaller than Crowley.)
But is that a good excuse...?
Ahem.
The most important pieces of set, like the Bentley, their respective lairs, and the small-town idyll of Tadfield, all looked wonderful. The Them's forest headquarters was enchanting, and all the historical flashbacks had great settings.
But Heaven and Hell both sort of looked like they were running low on funds and decided to just pour in more light and shadow respectively and hope it'd cover up for any lacks. And it's not that Heaven shouldn't have looked like a huge empty gleaming white office building or that Hell shouldn't have looked crowded and grimy - the set design was good there; it was just some of the details of execution that weren't quite as meticulously examined. The most obvious are the wide shots in Heaven, several of which I noticed could have probably gotten a stronger effect of the kind they were going for simply by finding a slightly better extant modern functionalist building to film in, and the rendering of Beelzebub. Brilliantly acted, but... the costume... it looked like the spider costumes some of the children wore in the community theater production of Babes in Toyland I was in at age 9! It was just like a fake fur fly head hat! I burst out laughing.
(I don't suggest that these things are huge errors, but superficial things that are distracting are, well, distracting, and you'd never see that kind of thing in... say... a Fuller show. I bring this up to compare it to the visuals of American Gods s1, not to suggest Fuller should have been on this project. The showrunner doesn't have to have Fuller's genius for aesthetic to make sure the aesthetic bases are covered, though: you just have to hire good people!)
