Symposium, film collaboration…

Wednesday 26th February: So today was the day to get involved with a film! The film collaboration group were given pitches by the 4th year or masters graduate students. From this we could decide which production(s) we wanted to work for. Myself and Ruth Rae (another costume student) chose to work with Mario Cruzado, a 4th year student, who’s making a fiction film named ‘Ceremony’.

Thursday 27th February: This morning we met with Mario to discuss the ideas he had for costumes and what we need to supply before the film shooting (starting Mach 6th).

Mario told us that he was greatly inspired by Gregory Crewdson, who is a photographer. His works are very stylised, being very subdued and muted in colour scheme, lots of blues, browns and greens used to create surreal photos. Another aspect of his work which influenced Marios ideas was the use of natural light, the plan is for the only light in the film to be natural as to give quite a raw, earthy look, artificial light can look quite garish. He also showed us clips from ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Cries and Whispers’, which was really helpful to see examples of lighting and camera angles he is aiming for.

In the afternoon we were lucky enough to have a masterclass with actor Gary Lewis, these were some notes made during the talk:

He began by saying that he enjoys working on small budgeted films, as often they are more creative.

Motivation?- Joined a film society in secondary school, they watched ‘Kez’ by Ken Loach. It was the first production he seen were the character had a strong regional accent, he felt very passionate about this, being from Glasgow, wanted to create/be part of works including his own accent. ‘Making the local, universal’.

‘Nothing human is alien to me.’

He began his acting career working in theatres then went onto films.The relationship between the director and actor is really important, Lewis and Peter Mullens worked on a number of films together, they went through the lines and directions on location without any of the crew, before it was shot. Gives the two the opportunity to develop ideas, finalise directions see how actions and sound/voices fit together.

Assembling a good team is key! Everything needs to connect together, team needs to be in tune with each other. Positive attitudes contribute to a good atmosphere.

Costume really supports an actor, costume department need to have great attention to detail, adding really specific detail in order to contribute to the characters personality, showing their ambitions/fears/loves/likes/dislikes. When Lewis worked on Billy Elliot the costume designer sourced a scottish miners badge, Lewis’ character being scottish and having been a miner there previously to becoming a miner in Newcastle (the films setting), this gives the audience a little bit of a background story to the character. The audience find out and can possibly relate more to the character. Gives them some emotional background. Viewers will pity/feel happy for the character, you are emotionally involved. Minute detail is essential.

Actors must know the characters emotions/life journey because you may not film chronologically. For the purpose of location the most emotional scene may be filmed first.

Not only is being part of a team beneficial for the production but also because all members  of the team read the script, each person will interprate the storyline differently, contributes to the discovery of new ideas and develop ideas for location/costume/props/acting style or  way of saying a line.

It was really great listening to Garys experiences in the industry as well as informing us about the different roles included in the film crew and the importance of team work throughout!

Symposium, semester two, film collaboration…

Tuesday 25th February: Today we started our second symposium project of the year. This time the symposium project is to last three weeks and we had a choice of what we could do over the three weeks. I chose to be part of a film collaboration, this is something that I really wanted to get experience in as it’s not only something I’ve ever been involved in but also I see the film industry as a really exciting work environment.

We started the project by hearing from a current film and TV student at the college. He spoke about his most recent experience of being a producer for a film, which is currently being entered into different film festivals.

In the afternoon, we then had a talk from film and TV lecturer Daivd Cains, he screened one of his most famous works to us, being ‘Cry for Bobo’, which was made in 2001.

I thought this was great to see; especially being from a costume background, not only just to see the style of a member of staffs work but also after we’d watched the film David went through the credits explaining each role as well as some of the creative decisions made: set design, lighting, camera angles.

With me being a costume student I found it particularly interesting seeing how many people made up the costume/art departments for the production. For example the costume department consisted of six people; costume supervisor, costume cutter, maker, assistant and two trainees. Other aspects of the art department included props, hair and make-up, art director, construction.

Symposium, semester one…

The word symposium is formally defined as;

1. a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject.

    
2. a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (and notable as the title of a work by Plato).
   (From Google)

In the way of the project, the university is referring to 1. For these projects the school of design within the college is mixed up and put into groups of approximately six people. These groups contain people for all different specialisms, the idea being that we are not only improving our teamwork skills but are also all able to listen to each other, all of us having different ways of thinking creatively.

The brief was ‘beyond spaces’, each group was given a different area of the college in order to respond to and therefore make work to be exhibited in that area. My group got the North Staircase within Evolution House and the buzz word, History. This proved as quite a challenge to begin with as Evolution House is a very modern building, history isn’t really a word that would be associated with the area.

We came up with the idea of creating history, our idea involved the documentation of people using the staircase, we documented the history of the two week project.

Here is my sketchbook work:

We came up with the idea of using a media on the stairs so that when people walked on the stairs their foot prints would be the historical documentation. We decided to use paper, allowing the dirtiness of peoples shoes to create markings on the paper. The project went further and also involved colour. After researching into color theory and theorists, we chose contrasting colours to divide the stairs in half, then within the different flights of stairs we asked the audience/walker ‘what colour are you feeling today?’ next according to each colour we had buzz words that are associated with the chosen colours. Lastly the walker was asked ‘changed your mind?’. From the footprints at the end of the week we could identify that people were more attracted to the positive and bright colours.

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Photoshop montage of final work:

Aliens…

Unlike other projects, in which we are given a story as the basis, the ‘Alien’ project differed as we could write a story book. As advised by Vivien French, the story book could contain a minimal amount of words as images and drawings are just as effective to convey the story particularly with the books being aimed at children who may be prior to the self-reading stage. I used minimal words as well as the story having a repetitive aspect.

When thinking about a main character (later named Heidi) I used basic shapes to form the body. I firstly came up with a series of circles, from this I thought of how this character would move. Not wanting to and legs to the character I decided that the character would float. This triggered the idea of the Heidi being light weight like a gas.

The characters within my childrens book from then on were primarily based on elements. The main characters are Heidi and Harry, Harry being the opposite of Heidi and being really heavy like a metal. The story shows the two characters first visit to a park. But on getting there they realise that they have a problem, not being able to play on the park activities. After attempting to play at the park they are laughed at by the bullies (the remaining three characters).

The story is resolved by Heidi and Harry helping each other out and playing at the park together as their element characteristics are balanced out by their differences in weight. The bullies are then prevented from laughing at the pair from then on.

For the designs of the characters, with them being based on elements I used different shapes according to their qualities. Heidi; being a gas is bubble-like and rounded as to convey her light weight quality as well as her shy personality, Harry on the other hand is a metal character like two of the bullies but is silver and shiny. In comparison the metal element based bullies are dull and rusted as to communicate the differences in their personalities. Rust having connotations of nastiness and ugliness, as like their traits. The third bully is based on rubber. This being chosen as like Heidi, due to their transport method, bouncing. As well as this the character is black rubber like that of a tyre, the colour having connotations of badness.

The characters were generally like this in the book as to visually identify their differences but were further developed for the making of the costume to fit around the body. Within my fabric samples I manipulated materials according to the characters colours and textures, the bullies having undesirable textures and colours whereas fabric samples for Heidi and Harry were shiny/glittery and attractive particularly for the eye of a child.

 I am looking forward to transforming one of the designs from 2D to 3D, conveying the characters personality through the costume.

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A Christmas Carol, pantomime!…

As well as starting my degree this year I had the opportunity to work for a pantomime in Edinburgh. It was a version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with the Balerno Theatre Company.

I worked for the company in the way of front of house, selling programmes before the show and during the interval. As well as this I helped out with some quick changes backstage with the dame characters and made some costumes for the show.

Myself and two other girls from my course (Lauren Peters and Patte Amatriain) all contributed to making humbug costumes for a dance scene within the show, making six humbug costumes for children and one adult sizes humbug. I enjoyed making these costumes the most because we saw them from designing through the thought process of how to make, purchasing the fabric and materials needed for the costumes to the final making and it was fantastic seeing them on stage during the show!

Each child costume was made with two meters of coloured polycotton, a meter for the front and a meter for the back of the garment. Before the construction of the costumes each meter length of fabric had stripes added to them, we used black gaffa tape for the stripes, approximately 20cm apart, tape being used as the stripes would be very easily seen by the audience, in order to identify the costume as a humbug. Once all the fabric had stripes the side seams were sewn leaving 13 inches unstitched for the use of arm holes. After the seems were sewn, the raw edges were sewn with a lapped seam. For the bottom hem of the garment, elastic was threaded through and stitched into place, the costumes were to be danced in therefore needed to be easy to move in. The top hems differed, ribbon was used for these hems so the children could adjust the neckline accordingly. Both the top and the bottom of the costumes had clear PVC sewn, this was to give the humbug it’s sweet look, the PVC acting as the sweet wrapping.

We also helped out with one of the dames finale costumes, for this Patte embellished the finale wig, which was fantastic! It really did look great and fit really well with the british theme. The costume consisted of a pre made dress, made from union jack printed fabric, which we were asked to embellish, we did this firstly by adding red tinsel around the skirts hem and around the neckline. We then created an over skirt out of clear PVC and a large British flag, this was on a large waistband so that it could be tied in a large bow. As additional detail to the skirt we hand stitched large red pockets to the skirt, which then had tea bags sewn in and around the pockets as if to look like they were overflowing. Again all to contribute to the British theme. Altogether the costume and accessories came together really well and was totally over the top was like pantomime dame style.

Here are some photos of our progress:

Peter Grimes…

I realise that my plan of posting a blog entry monthly has failed… but I’ve been quite busy. Peter Grimes was the first project I was assigned here at University.

Although the original story in the poem The Borough by George Crabbe was set in 1810 and Benjamin Britten’s opera was set in the 1880’s I wanted to change the setting. For me I felt that thinking of other eras that the story could be set in would increase my understanding of the story in general, identifying the stories events and similarities within different time settings. I also enjoyed thinking about how a different time period setting could potentially affect the characters thoughts and attitudes towards the events that happen within the story of Peter Grimes as well as their behaviour towards the character Peter.

When thinking of a different time setting my main ideas included; ancient Greece, post-world war one and post-world war two. All ideas being sourced from different aspects from the opera. Ancient Greece for example due to the pathetic fallacy of the operas storm, I thought of this in the way of Greek gods punishing the villages due to their treatment towards Peter.

I decided for my project to be set in post-world war one, keeping the original location setting of Suffolk. The time and location fitted well with the operas narrative. Peter is frequently being accused of his violent ways by the villagers but this is also clear to the audience, such as when he slaps Ellen. For this character trait my explanation was that Peter suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Post world war one I felt fitted the story better than that on post-world war two as after the first world war the condition was so little understood in comparison with later than 1918. Symptoms of the condition include feeling cut off from society, numb from emotion, not being able to express emotion towards others and violent behaviour. These being feelings/character traits of Peter. Also particularly at the time, many people (especially British soldiers) committed suicide because of their sufferings, which is how the story ends for Peter. British soldiers in particular as the trauma was considered as cowardly by British generals.

Another reason for the characters depressed state of mind, within my setting of the opera is due to keeping the location setting. Peter after being in the war has to go back to being a fisherman. The fishing industry after 1918 was very poor, so much fish was caught after the war due to more workers being available the value of fish decreased dramatically, therefore fishermen would have to catch and sell a lot more fish in order to gain a profit. This I thought linked into the story well, particularly when one thinks of the act two, scene two in which Peter is determined to go fishing with his apprentice John when a storm is brewing. Regardless of the bad weather he needs the profit from selling the fish.

Overall post-world war one fit into the story most in comparison to my other ideas. Equal to this I thought I would enjoy researching into the styles of the time in order to design costumes for the characters as well as thinking about the location in the post war setting.

Here are some costume designs:

We were also asked to design theatre sets along with the costume designs and make one of the designs at a 1:25 scale model, heres my process:

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