Creepy peepers

With its Gothic sets, bizarre costumes and nonstop parade of grotesqueries, it takes a lot to stand out in “Repo! The Genetic Opera.” But singer Sarah Brightman’s eerie, genetically enhanced eyes do the trick. As Blind Mag, the opera singer with a fresh set of peepers, Brightman wore a pair of specially made contact lenses designed to resemble the iris of a camera. But the lenses were tough on Brightman’s eyes, and she could wear them for only an hour at a time. “It was hard for your eyes not to water looking at her,” director Darren Lynn Bousman said. “I couldn’t look her straight in the face.” To enhance the effect, Bausman mixed the digital -- Switch VFX added a spinning and flashing effect to the eyes -- with the old-fashioned -- black makeup was applied around Brightman’s eyes to make them the focal point. But it was Brightman who made it all work. “She came in with a whole act where she blinks very fast and rapidly,” Bausman said. “When you see it all together, it looks like it came naturally to her.”

-- Patrick Kevin Day