MYTHBUSTERS 4/6: Mission Impossible Mask

[Trekker4747]

I rewatched the episode tonight with a buddy of mine and noticed that in the M:I clips they showed of the masks being made/use they very much were of the skin-to-mask contact type and not just a "pull over" Halloween mask like what Jamie and Adam had made.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, like I said, you could find clips in M:I to support any interpretation of how the masks were done, because they were depicted very inconsistently.

 

[Trekker4747]

^Well, like I said, you could find clips in M:I to support any interpretation of how the masks were done, because they were depicted very inconsistently.

Yeah, but in the very clips Mythbusters showed it was a glue-on skin-to-mask contact style.

 

[Christopher]

So... you're saying they should've picked a clip that was a better fit for what they were testing?

 

[Trekker4747]

So... you're saying they should've picked a clip that was a better fit for what they were testing?

I suppose, that or have tested the "myth" they were presenting to test. The clips show the guy making a mask that'll go directly onto his own face and skin and as you said, the show wasn't consistant on how the masks were potrayed but the Mythbusters pretty much made halloween masks. Something the guys in "Point Break" would have worn in their heists. This isn't exactly what they showed they were testing. Hell even their graphics guys made the "stretchy/sticky" sounding nose when the animated Jamie and Adam pulled off the masks suggesting these were "supposed to be" stick on skin-to-mask contact masks.

The masks they had made were very good, don't get me wrong, but they were pull-over Halloween masks not "disguize masks." Given the two's experience in special effects it'd be interesting to see them culminate their knowledge of it and actually make real make-up prosthetics and body suits (which Adam would need to pull off Jamie's body type) to make a real, full, disguise. What they did here was little more than "side of the eye fool you" semi-disguises.

 

[Christopher]

So... you're saying they should've picked a clip that was a better fit for what they were testing?

I suppose, that or have tested the "myth" they were presenting to test.

But that's what they did. They weren't just testing what was shown in a single film clip, they were testing the iconic version of the myth, the way it's most widely thought of in popular culture. That's what makes something a myth -- the fact that it resides in the imaginations of a great number of people. Ask people what they think of when they think of Mission: Impossible or similar "mask disguise" stories, and the first image that comes to most of their minds will probably be a perfectly convincing mask that the hero (or villain) then pulls off in a single, dramatic reveal. That's the iconic version that overrides all the others, so it's perfectly logical that that's the version they tested. You're putting far too much weight on the single film clip they happened to select. Keep in mind that the clip was probably chosen well after Adam and Jamie tested the myth. So it's getting it backward to say that the test should've conformed to that particular film clip. Rather, they should've picked a film clip that better represented the myth that had already been tested.

The masks they had made were very good, don't get me wrong, but they were pull-over Halloween masks not "disguize masks." Given the two's experience in special effects it'd be interesting to see them culminate their knowledge of it and actually make real make-up prosthetics and body suits (which Adam would need to pull off Jamie's body type) to make a real, full, disguise. What they did here was little more than "side of the eye fool you" semi-disguises.

Yes, but what you're talking about there is the second stage of the process, replicating the results. The iconic myth isn't about elaborate prosthetics that take hours to apply and remove. The iconic myth is about a one-piece full-head mask that can be perfectly convincing and be pulled off intact in a matter of seconds. So that's the myth they tested: Can an easily removable full-head mask be a convincing disguise? And the answer is no, that myth is busted, except in very limited conditions. So that's when you go on to phase two and figure out what it would actually take to replicate the results. That's where the revisit will come in. And it doesn't bother me in the least if they need two or more separate episodes to cover this myth, because it's one of the coolest myths they've done in ages.

 

[Trekker4747]

On your last point I agree, it's one of the best myths they've done in a long time and I too look forward to how it's "supersized" in a re-visit.

 

[mizerock]

I thought the merry-go-round had no chance of working from the start, but mainly because it looked too small. If the diameter was much bigger, shooting it on the outer rim would increase the torque applied by the bullet.

Was the one in the movie actually a lot bigger than the one they used, or did it just look that way to me because there was only a tiny baby on it? Well, given how little the first bullet moved it (1/8"?), that wouldn't have mattered much, a wider merry-go-round still would have failed. The segment was indeed a time-filler from that point on, but that 50 caliber gun they used at the end was pretty impressive looking, so there's that.

 

[Christopher]

By the way, to clarify the earlier discussion, I caught the beginning of this episode again, and Adam did say right off the bat that the myth they were testing was about the efficacy of a single-piece full-head mask that could be pulled off quickly. As for the M:I clips they showed, they included two different masks; one was a full-head mask that Martin Landau pulled off, and the other was a one-piece full-face mask (complete with closed eyelids and lips, which would never have worked) which he placed over his own face. Both are consistent with the version of the myth they tested, the idea of a single-piece appliance.

I thought the merry-go-round had no chance of working from the start, but mainly because it looked too small. If the diameter was much bigger, shooting it on the outer rim would increase the torque applied by the bullet.

That would never work. Think about it. If you double the radius of the merry-go-round, then yes, you double the torque applied by the bullet... but you quadruple the surface area (pi r squared), which means that -- assuming you use materials of the same density and thickness and keep the height unchanged -- the merry-go-round will be four times as massive. So increasing the radius would make it harder to turn, not easier.

Anyway, the merry-go-round they used looked the same as the one in the myth. I'm sure that, as usual, they tried to replicate it as closely as possible.

 

[Trekker4747]

There's still the mass/energy thing.

The guns being moved by a bullet makes sense the bullet being fired has enough power to push the firing gun back thus it'd have enough power to move a stationary gun.

However, a merry-go-round is going to have a heck of a lot more mass to overcome, more mass than a tiny bullet can exert. Consider this, if a 150lb man gets on a merry-go-round and pushes off the ground once with his foot how many revolutions do you think the ride will make?

Maybe two?

Put another way: Merry-go-Rounds do not work that way!