To me, a justification for why peripheral vamps are always in vamp face is along the lines of why you can see vampire breath condensed in certain scenes -- it slides right past my metafilter.

Right, usually if they bothered with the morphing on a miniony-vamp, it was for dramatic effect.

Also, one of the main reasons for the "game face" was because Joss wanted it very clear to viewers that these were monsters Buffy was beating up and killing, not people. If random Joe Schmoe vamp is going to get staked before he has time to react to the fact the Slayer is even there, he's going to have to be wandering around in game face.

Yeah, no I was thinking more of recurrings, like Dalton. Or the episode where Harmony had minions.

The breathing meta is of a different sort to me. I do not need to be told the reason I can see the breath. I know on my own the actors are human, so it's more accessible meta for me, somehow. What decisions were made because of costs is different for me, because of the nature of it.

I don't think Darla talks about how siring works, beyond trying to instruct Shempy in how to do it.

What decisions were made because of costs is different for me, because of the nature of it.

I'm firmly in the overthinking camp, because I do hypothesise things like cost as the show rolls along. Every effect dings a cash register in one part of my brain. Some things don't occur to me until they're mentioned, but avoiding the SFX of the vamp was something I figured on before hearing about it.

Cost-wise for morphing, I can see that. But for a vamp like Dalton, it's not just that we didn't see him morph, we didn't see him in unbumpy face, ever. He were always bumpy faced (again and okay, Dalton's the only one I'm sure of, right now).

Didn't the vamp face makeup take hours to put on (and take off)? I think that's what drove costs up. It's one thing to shoot 90% of the scene, yell Cut!, "David (or James/Julie/Juliet), get into/out of makeup," and then come back x hours later to finish shooting, but that's unlikely to happen for an everyday vamp unless it's critical to the scene.

As far as non-meta reasons for why newer vamps are scene w/ game face, I thought it was that they couldn't really control it yet, whereas a more experienced one, e.g., Spike or Angel, could use human face as another tool in his/her arsenal. Much easier to blend in -- whether for hunting or partying or picking someone up -- non-vamp mode. The Master, of course, had grown past the need. That part's canonical. The rest? Don't remember & don't have time to research it since I'm still at work.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Limited Edition Complete Series Box Set!

Thanks P-C! I'm one of those cheap patient people who prefers to wait until hell freezes over the entire series gets released before buying them.

Looks like you'll be saving money, Wolfram. I'm pretty sure it cost me $100 more than that to buy them piecemeal

Yeah, that's actually kind of appealing.