Some of professor Susan Watanabe’s beginning and advanced makeup students entered a warehouse with mannequin heads, holding prosthetics of monster faces, scent of alchohol palettes, and hearing the sound of blow dryers and laughter on Thursday.

The warehouse is located Knott’s Scary Farm’s Halloween Haunt where the students had the chance to shadow professional Halloween Haunt makeup artists preparing actors for their transformation.

After looking over and getting to know how the artist is adding makeup, students took hold of either a sponge, airbrush, or makeup brush to take part in process.

Theater arts major Mardell Becerra was one of the students who helped apply makeup.

“This was fabulous,” Becerra said “It was motivating, it shows that you can more. It was so worth coming.”

Makeup artists get up to nine actors a day to put on their scare application and have fifteen to thirty minutes to complete the process.

“They (makeup artists) were just their on task, doing what they’re supposed to do, get their monsters out on time and that was good to see,” Watanabe said.

When Watanabe was a student herself, her makeup teacher took her to Knott’s Scary Farm as well.

“It was such a thrill,” Watanabe said.

She first started bringing students one by one but eventually brought an entire class. “They get to see how it is out there in the professional world.”

Getting more than the makeup experience, communications major John Martin learned how to get into the professional makeup industry after coming to the backstage experience for the first time.

“A lot what I did here was meeting people, networking, trying to make connections,” Martin said.

He continued, “The industry is built around who you know, you want to make as many friends as possible. I got a lot of phone numbers.”

A former student from Watanabe’s 1996 makeup class is professional makeup artist Alma Griffin.

Griffin was once like the students who came to Knott’s Scary Farm for the experience and has been working there since.

“It made me want to work here,” Griffin said.

“Students to get see the hands-on experience, get to see the outside environment from the classroom,” Griffin continued to say while she was putting on a prosthetic mask of a eagle monster for her actor that scared at Knott’s Ghost Town scare zone.

Learning from the experience, theater major Candace Montgomery said she learned different makeup applying techniques.

“They’re not all the same,” Montgomery said about the techniques and will try to use them in makeup class.

Prior to arriving to Knott’s Scary Farm, Watanabe showed her makeup class a woochie lab where she taught students how to apply prosthetics that have the visual effect of life-like injuries.

Her advanced makeup class will have an upcoming air brush lab. The equipment will be kept plugged in for the beginning makeup class to have the chance to use the airbrushes as well.

Watanabe’s advanced makeup students are working on their own prosthetic masks for class.