If you are passionate about filmmaking, fashion and media production, this is the course for you! Completion of this intensive training will provideyou with the skills to excel as a free-lance make-up artist for catwalk, studio, advertising, film and television. You will have the added advantage of model-making, prosthetics, costume and props skills – which will give you a competitive edge in the production workplace.

CREATIVITY CAN BE TAUGHT………

A KEEN SUPPORTER OF THE WARRIORS, CUT ABOVE DIRECTOR EARL THOMPSON HAS COMMISSIONED INTERNATIONAL FX SCULPTOR NORI HONDA TO CAST THE HEADS OF THEIR STAR PLAYERS IN BRONZE.

Cut Above Academy is proud to share the artistic talent of Nori Honda with students in its FX Make-up and Sculpting Diploma and leading players in NZ sport.  It’s not often that FX make-up trainees get to learn from a talented FX sculptor with such impressive credentials.  Nori’s background in design and sculpting for the film industry is awesome.  He learned his craft in Hollywood with Steve Johnson FX Inc, the FX workshop responsible for blockbusters such as Outer Limits, Innocent Blood, Species, and Poltergeist:  The Legacy, Anaconda, and Alien Autopsy.  He was part of their FX team who designed and sculpted prosthetic and robotic effects, including an animatronic Jelly Fish creature for Men in Black and the prototype suit for Bicentennial Man.

After coming to New Zealand Nori worked as a Weta Workshop sculptor on the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  He fell in love with our NZ lifestyle, so his dream was always to return.  After three years creating movie villains like Godzilla, the Mummy and Mothra Larvae for Tokyo FX workshop Monsters Inc, he applied for the position of Special Effects tutor with Cut Above Academy.  Richard Taylor’s glowing recommendation conviced the directors to employ him as HOD in their FX programme.  Now in his fifth year teaching special make-up effects, life-casting, moulding, sculpting and creature production in the Cut Above Creature Shop, Nori has embraced the NZ way of life – fishing, raising his two young sons, and creating sculptures of sports celebrities like Logan Swann, Ma’a Nonu and Reuben Wiki.

Students in the Cut Above Diploma of FX Make-up and Production Design spend a full-time year learning to create make-up effects and prosthetics for a film, stage or TV production and to cast, mold, sculpt a creature.  In addiction they gain a firm foundation of make-up techniques for stage and screen – and get to test their skills on a host of exciting shows, including the 2009 production of Cats at Auckland’s Civic theatre, Beauty and the Beast, and The Producers, which has been nominated for Best Make-up in the 2009 NAPTA Awards.  They appreciate the talent, energy and dedication Nori and his team brings to their teaching roles, inspiring them to try their own luck in the exciting world of movie making and theatre.