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It took a pandemic for Dina Chiovetta “to make up” her mind what she wanted to do with her life. The Saddle Brook native spent much her time when the world shut down in 2020 preparing for her “brush” with greatness by teaching herself how to do special effects makeup.

Chiovetta, 28, practiced creating spooky and scary looks on herself as a way to pass the time and ease the boredom of being essentially housebound during COVID-19’s early stages. She read up on how to go after certain looks, studied techniques and is now preparing to embark on a professional career as a makeup and special effects artist.

She will begin taking classes at The School of Makeup Effects in Totowa at the end of October. The program runs through the spring and when Chiovetta finishes she can head out into the world of television, film and other entertainment avenues, creating the looks and effects that have had audiences oohing and aahing for decades. “I kind of just fell into it randomly,” Chiovetta said. “My sister [Lisa] had taken a special effects makeup class at East Stroudsburg [University] as just sort of a [schedule] filler. She had her kit from the class left over and I found it. I wanted to play around with it. I was super bored from quarantining and it just kind of snowballed from there. The kit had some fake blood, some stuff to make fake cuts, all very standard stuff, nothing crazy. I started playing around with it and then started looking at Instagram and Pinterest [to get some ideas].

“It’s not that I wasn’t interested in doing something like this. It just wasn’t something I had thought about. I don’t do regular everyday makeup and stuff like brides; I’m not good at it. I do better at the weirder stuff.”

That Chiovetta is interested in the special effects makeup field as a career choice is not out of the ordinary for her. She says she has “a lot of different” lives, has tried many things and all that searching has led her to where she is now.

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It’s a career path that didn’t seem so likely a decade ago, though, when she graduated from Saddle Brook High

School and headed to The University of West Virginia. She originally wanted to study dietetics and needed to go to an accredited school in order to take a licensing test. Her parents don’t like to fly so she also had to find a school that Summer 2021Fall 2021 Late Spring 2022Summer 2022 was close enough for them to drive and Publishers West Virginia fit the bill on both counts.Publishers Sharon & Steven Goldstein “I did graduate, and I got a degree in food Sharon & Steven Goldstein science and I had two or three relevant Associate Publisher jobs for my major since I graduated,” said Associate Publisher Brandon Goldstein Chiovetta, who is currently bartending. Brandon Goldstein

“I’d be in a job for a bit, but I was still kind of bored. As I was sitting at a previous job, I realized I just started hating every job I get. So, I started Googling and I found there was a school right in

Totowa. I thought I should do it and that it would be something I would like.”

Chiovetta ran track for 10 years as she was going through the Saddle Brook

School System, using the cross-country season in the fall to stay in shape for sprinting in the winter and spring seasons. But she admits that her views on nutrition weren’t all that great when she was a teenager, and her eating habits were not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.

So, she began on the first of what would be many journeys, all of which led her to where she is now.

“I started getting into body building just as I was graduating high school, until I was maybe 20,” said Chiovetta, who also works as an assistant track coach each spring at Immaculate Conception High

School in Lodi. “I really enjoyed it from a nutrition standpoint and that’s why I went to school for dietetics. But I lost my motivation [for body building] and went the artsy route. I do like artsy things, that crafty type of stuff. It was a little up my alley, so this is not much of a surprise.

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“It’s almost like a self-expression sort of thing. Sometimes I just sit at the makeup desk and grab random paints and then go from there, see what happens.”

Chiovetta said it takes about two hours for her get herself made up while looking in a mirror. She is eager to work on someone other than herself, though, and added that she is always looking for new techniques in addition to expanding her knowledge of special effects makeup once classes begin. For now, it’s mostly been put the makeup on, take some pictures of her work and then take it off.

She draws some inspiration from horror movies, which she says she looks at with a more critical eye now. Trying to figure out how someone put together the makeups and effects she is seeing on screen is one particular aspect of watching a horror film that she enjoys.

“You think, ‘How did they get that to be so realistic?’,” she said. “Now that I am into it, I definitely have more of an interest when I am watching. One of my favorites is Edward Scissorhands. It’s not too crazy a mask, it’s just one of my favorites in general.

“I’m just excited to see where all this is going. I’ll kind of take it as it goes when I finish school. The woman I spoke with at school said most graduates do TV and movies. But they have other connections that they have partnered up with. They do the Halloween horror nights at Universal. So, there are a lot of projects because obviously a movie doesn’t take years to make, and I’d be open to traveling to different spots for said projects.”

So, while Chiovetta now spends her time creating faces and images designed to scare and entertain she has also discovered that in putting on another face, she may have found herself.

THE HERMITAGE 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

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