Masking!

Recently, I did some costume workshops for the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton - if you have never been before it is a fantastic venue, a wonderful producing theatre with a fantastic programme of shows!

For one of the two workshops, I had my workshop group create a mood board from images I provided and, working from it, make a dragon mask. The most important part of the task was that, as it is a costume, they needed to characterise their mask - happy, sad, angry, comical, it needed to communicate a personality as well as being a practical, wearable mask. I found and printed 40 different research images for them to draw inspiration from, a wide variety of masks from different cultures and era's, shapes and purposes, from a variety of different designers. The idea was to give them as many options as possible to design and create from. They were on a strict time limit for it due to the length of the session, and in order to make sure they could do their mood board and mask in time, I decided to make a prototype in the same amount of time I was giving them.

I gave myself 15 minutes for the mood board, and then an hour and ten minutes for the mask, making sure I had exactly the same materials as I was giving them. I had selected two different mask shapes for the workshop, a full face mask and a Venetian style bird shape - very similar in shape to the Venetian Scaramouche mask! I chose to use a scaramouche shape.

The idea of a mood board is to be an inspiration and communication tool, to hold idea's to work from. Bypassing the drawn design stage and working straight from a mood board was, I felt, the best way to communicate their inspiration for their masks in the time frame we had to work with.

Selecting my inspiration photographs and making small notes on personality and design aspects to communicate, I quickly got started on my prototype - I wanted to make an angry dragon, but more sinister, and not to use red but green and gold instead. I wanted to get a lot of texture onto my dragon, and to try and create horns.

To start, I used hot glue to form spikes to add base surface texture. I selected my fabric, a muted green stretch fabric, then added more hot glue to the hardened spikes and pinched the fabric around them to add wrinkles and contour

To create the horns I rolled sugar paper into a thin tube and then twisted it into the shape that I wanted - very much taking inspiration from Maleficent in the horn shape - then using hot glue I twisted and formed the fabric around and onto the horns

To get the more prominent, sunken eyed look I used paper the same way as I did to make the horns, and stuck it onto the mask at the eyebrows before putting the fabric over it. Here is the mask before I dry-brushed a mixture of black and red acrylic paint onto the horns, snout, and into the eye sockets and onto the raised sections of fabric to make the contours stand out more, and then added gold organza underneath to further disguise and distort the performer adding to the characterisation. I felt gold also added to the 'fiery' and 'magical' impression of my dragon.

Here's the finished mask after it was painted, as you can see the paint has really added to the contouring and make it a much more visually impressive mask 

So there we have it! My dragon prototype mask, an angry, green and gold dragon with horns - taking exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes! 

The Princess and the Queen!

Apologies for being so quiet over the past few months it has been a very busy time, but rest assured I am still designing and making away!

I have been commissioned to design and make two dresses for a local company, a 'princess' dress in specific colours chosen by the company, and a Snow Queen dress. For this I have had company head Diana with me every step of the way. I began designing a few months ago, and after a very productive sourcing trip around some local fabric suppliers - I cannot recommend Hansons in Sturminster Newton highly enough, they have an the best range of fabrics that I have found outside of London and incredibly helpful, friendly staff - we sourced the fabric that we wanted.

The first to be made is the princess dress, and we have gone with a lilac tinted silver crepe back satin, to have organza gathered cap sleeves that sweep across the front, to be decorated with clear hot fix rhinestones. The deadline for this dress is in flux and is currently not required until early next year. 

While I am fast at hand stitching, it will never be as fast as machine stitching! However, the best way to get the pleats in the skirt accurate and stable before stitching to the bodice was hand stitching them in place and so that is what I did. The other hand sewing was slip stitching the bias binding - yes, once again it is the return of the slip stitching!

In the mean time, here is a photo of the dress as it stands now - please bear in mind that it will have embellishment, the sleeves and the neckline have to wait until the dress has had at least its first fitting. The skirt will also have structuring under it to give it more volume!

Goodbye to the 50's for now!

Last of the posts about the 50's teapot skirt! I was sent a photo of the lady at the roller disco hen party in her full outfit and makeup that she was more then happy for me to share, so here it is! I an really proud of how it turned out (and how much she loved it!)

Anyone out there looking for someone to design or make a 50's skirt or anything at all, just let me know!

Back to the 50's!

So yesterday I met with the lady I had made the skirt for (last post, making a 1950's style skirt from fabric chosen by the woman I made it for, for a 1950's hen party roller disco!) and handed it  over. It fit! The biggest hurdle, it fit her beautifully and she loved it, and better yet she immediately went and put it on and posed for some 50's style photo's for me at the bandstand nearby!

Fingers crossed I will also be being sent a photo of her in full 1950's attire at the roller disco, skates and all! Always nice to have a happy customer.

A Bit of the 50's!

On Sunday night, my friend asked me the best place to get a circle skirt, 50's style, for a hen party at the weekend. There is nowhere about where we are to get one in person on any kind of budget and online the delivery was more likely to be some time next week, so I offered to make it! So off to the fabric shop yesterday afternoon.

Quirky as she is, in the very best way, this was the fabric chosen! She still wanted to go with the polka dot 'traditional' element but have it in a more fun way. And who doesn't love a good teapot?

The pieces ready to be made into a skirt!

This was a brilliant way to discover that I can make a full 50's style circle skirt to measurements in an afternoon! I decided to make the best use of the sunshine and hand sew the zip in and do the slipstitching to finish the waistband in the sun! Something about the 50's styles is very summery, or at least I think it is.

One of the things I find interesting about this type of skirt is the combination of hand and machine stitching, and how simple it is to make very effectively.

Pre-shortening

The finished skirt!

Hopefully she will be able to model it for me later this week before I hand it over. Fingers crossed!

Goodbye to 'Oliver!'

So Saturday was the last day, a matinee and an evening show, followed by the get-out! I decided to work from the studio, as there were only two jobs to do before the first show started - the matinee show was for the understudies of Oliver and Dodger to have their chance and the Dodger coat for the understudy needed a pocket added to the inside, and another set of trousers needed to be patched, and had the standard assisting one of the ladies into her costume (corset training coming into play again) so it was a fairly relaxed run up to the show.! During the shows the standard issues and quick changes arose but nothing that couldn't be quickly fixed. The cast were all revved up and excited, and the audience reception was fantastic.

Between the two shows there were actually no repairs that needed to be done, but I had one job in preparation for the get out - costume designer Lisa had assembled the wardrobe and knew what belonged to where, but getting everything collected for cleaning/returning with such a large cast could have proven very time consuming at the end, so Lisa devised the idea of setting out bin liners on chairs in the studio (backstage) with signs for the type of garment for each bag, so I set about laying out the chairs, bags, and signs. With the costume changes that many of the cast had they finished with certain costumes and costume pieces at various points through the show and could then place them in the bin liners without taking extra time. This worked really well, and as there were several points during the show where I was without repairs or quick changes I spent the rest of the show folding the costume pieces in the bags to make sure they would pack down more neatly and smaller so that they could be transported more easily!

At the end of the show things got really busy for myself and Lisa, with the cast out of their finishing costumes, they were delivered to myself and Lisa, with the exception of the childrens costumes which one of the chaperones very kindly folded and sorted into piles and left them for us outside the dressing rooms (thank you again so much for that!). The adults dresses and coats were not put in bags, instead I asked the cast to lay them over the back of one of the chairs and they needed to go on coat hangers to be transported flat.
The get out for costume was relatively short due to the organisation - only just over an hour - but I stayed to try and help out with the get out of the set and equipment though there wasn't very much I could do the crew had it very much in hand!  

We managed the whole of the get out before midnight and all of us were pretty much ready to collapse by then but it was a really fantastic day, and a fantastic week with a wonderful show and cast and the songs are still stuck in my head! Bournemouth Musical Theatre are a brilliant company and definitely one to watch, if you're in the area when they're doing a show they are worth coming to see!

Second show down, three to go! And a tribute.

Tonight' show was another triumph! There were very few costume problems, only a few of the standard rips and tears (primarily trousers and skirts) all easily fixed, using my corset training, and assisting on the same quick changes as last night and it all went off perfectly.

 

Today also marks another event, the passing of THE Fagin, Ron Moody, that so many of us grew up watching in the original musical film that made Fagin such a beloved character and lovable rogue, so Bournemouth Musical Theatre dedicated tonight's show to him.

 

It was strange being in a theatre during a heat wave, the last three years I have been on outdoor productions, in 2012 for the Olympic opening ceremony at Weymouth, the year before last it was Romeo and Juliet, and last year for Landance! It is interesting how quickly and how much the theatre heated up, and concerning for those in the cast with thick layers of costume, but thankfully with everyone keeping hydrated and being sensible about it there were no incidents.

Final Run!

Tonight was the last run before opening night, and as to be expected was full of last minute breaks and adjustments! The majority of my time was spent repairing last minute tears, holes and issues (tripping hazards and failing buttons), ironing, and myself and costume designer Lisa 'dirtied' the workhouse costumes predominantly with black and grey eye shadow.

 

The next job will be to repair the adults costumes that were damaged during the second act of the run, for which I have a to-do list for tomorrow! The cast is sounding fantastic and the set looks incredible, it is a brilliant show.

Oliver continues!

Today was the start of the final week, that's right, the final seven days of the show have arrived! The tech is tomorrow, the dress run on Tuesday, and then we're into the show, so its an exciting, stressful and very busy time.

Today was all about the last minute issues with costumes, all entirely the usual last minute tweaks and problem solving, primarily adjusting fastenings and assigning the last of the costumes. One of the biggest jobs today was making 'false' pockets for the front of a waistcoat, as it was noticed in last weeks rehearsal that the false pocket on the current jacket needs to have a pocket watch fit into it and it wouldn't fit. So today I was in charge of making larger false pockets out of black satin fabric provided by the costume designer Lisa. I made them to fit over the current false pocket top to create a clean and professional effect.

To make the false pocket I cut the black satin to double over, measuring the width against the current pocket tops, with a seam allowance on all sides. As satin is difficult to work with (due to being a slippery fabric with a tendency to fray) I left a large seam allowance. I turned in the seam allowance, pinned, and slip stitched round the edged to make sure it was a neat edge and clean lines, then slip stitched the pocket tops on, with the base flush to the original pocket and extending upwards.

They need a good press, which they are having tonight, but they are the right size for the pocket watch now and that is one of the more time consuming jobs ticked off the list. I have it on good authority that we will be dirtying up the workhouse costumes on Tuesday, a fun aspect of breaking down.



Its a fine life with 'Oliver!'

Yes, I included a pun in the title of this post. I am delighted to be on board as wardrobe mistress for Bournemouth Musical Theatre Production's latest production - Lionel Bart's 'Oliver!' at the Regent Centre in Christchurch!

I attended the first dress run on Sunday, a staggered run as this was the first time with all the costumes and my first chance to meet the cast, crew, and get to know the costumes as well. The show is wonderful, the cast very talented and I am very excited to see the shows reception next week on the stage.

The costumes were all assembled on Sunday, though and most assigned with the exception of some of the accessories and the childrens workhouse costumes. Sunday's tasks - aside from learning the show and the costumes - were assisting with last minute alterations, assigning the workhouse costumes, and sewing in labels - a must in any costume department with a large cast and a number of virtually identical costumes. There is little in the way of quick changes, mostly it will just be making sure everyone has what they need, dealing with any last minute repairs or alterations and packing things down at the end - but we shall see what the show brings!

Landance - Revisited!

Last year, I worked as Visuals Assistant with Landance under Artistic Director Ella Huhne on their show for the Inside Out Dorset Festival, and I have been emailed a two minute video, created by Richard Tomlinson, of the promenade show!

 

https://vimeo.com/126885876

 

Enjoy, and feel free to comment what you think!

Sleep - the reveal!

A few weeks ago I designed, made and altered the costumes for the graduate film 'Sleep', directed by Iona Smith, a short horror about a young woman suffering from insomnia. It has now been edited, and I am delighted to announce that the first version has just been released! They were a fantastic team to work with, both the crew and the performers.

 

PLEASE NOTE - THIS IS A SHORT HORROR FILM. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE HORROR FILMS, ARE EASILY SCARED OR ARE A SENSITIVE SOUL, PLEASE EITHER DO NOT WATCH OR NOTE THE ABOVE BEFORE YOU DO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQaHh9U8GI

Also I would like to throw a shout out of thanks out there and announce that astonishingly due to getting 157 page views in the space of two hours today - and 167 overall today - I have now well and truly passed 5000 page views, so thank you all to all the people out there viewing my blog! Its been a very eventful three years. Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think, and again, thank you.

The Finished Shirt!

In the last few posts, I have been rhinestoning a replacement shirt for Remix Gold's show 'Touched', and at last, as of Tuesday, it is finally finished! The change I have made this time is the placement of the rhinestones. As last time, I wanted to keep the rhinestone 'braces', as they were incredibly visually effective both up close and from a distance, but with the rigours of the show the rhinestones have an unfortunate habit of coming off and with two simple lines of rhinestones each side it was regrettably obvious when some were missing.

So, to counteract this I have found that doing three rows, one solid and two more staggered, if and when some of the rhinestones do inevitably come off, the staggered placement will make it far less obvious while still being just as visually effective!



Rhinestoning again!

Yes, it is back to rhinestoning! I'm redoing one of the shirts for Remix Gold, one of the boys that needs the rhinestone 'braces' on. The task of the next few days is to finish putting the rhinestone 'braces' on the shirt. I've found that one of the reasons that the rhinestones didn't stay on as well as they could is because there is a finish on the shirts when they arrive. After a first wash the finish comes off which helps the rhinestones find better purchase in fusing to the fabric.

So, rhinestoning away! I want to do something a little different with the braces this time, make sure that if and when a few of the rhinestones do come off in the general wear and tear during the performances its not as obvious, by staggering the placement of the rhinestones and putting more on.

THE SHOW!

Last night, at Meyrick Hall in Bournemouth, was the Remix Gold show! This was part of the 10 year anniversary show for the larger company that Remix Gold is part of, Diverse City, and alongside the Remix Gold performance there were screenings of films of Diverse City and Remix show, and films and poems from David Young, the resident Poet and Activist with the company. Among the screenings in a blast from the past was a video of the Breathe and Battle of the Winds performance from the Weymouth venue's 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony! It was odd and nice to watch each part of the film and remember where I was backstage at each point.

But enough nostalgia, and on to the show!

Remix Gold's performance was in the second half, and with the five new performers is till being progressed and modified to be performed again in April.



The backstage area was a large café style room, with comfortable sofa's and plenty of tables and space, which made it a nice space for the performers to hang around in during breaks and while preparing to go on stage.

Having had limited time to fit the costumes on a couple of the performers, it turned out that one of the performers costumes was too big. This was the purple skirt and the shortened black shirt. Thankfully it was a relatively easy job to alter them by hand and I made sure that I got to the venue before the performers to get everything set out well in advance to devote as much time as possible to alterations and repairs should they be required. Above is the hand altered shirt where it was taken in.

As with the show at the Southbank Centre, I was assisting with hair and make-up backstage.

THE NEW PERFORMERS

 Before the performers went on, I got a photo of each of the new cast members in their costume. I'm particularly happy with how Becca's rhinestones have come out, from the audience and on camera they are very effective!

The fundraiser was organised by AUB Arts and Events Management students, and as part of the set up they had blackboards placed by the doors for people to leave their comments and the feedback was fantastic! Their were pledges made to the company and the performers had an incredible time and loved their costumes. There are a few costume maintenance tasks to be done, where they have gotten dirty, damaged or some of the embellishement has come off during the performaces, its hard to believe that I first gave them the costumes last September at the Southbank Centre for their 'Unlimited' festival and since then Remix Gold have performed the show at the Lighthouse Poole and for the Inside Out Festival! With the next performance booked for April, I can't wait to see where they're headed next!

Last of the prep work!

With the show tomorrow, the last of the prep work is finally done! Tomorrow morning it will be a last minute iron of everything and packing the costumes up before heading over to the venue to get there for 1, an hour before the performers arrive so that I can set up the backstage space for costume, hair and make-up.

The last jobs were making and finishing the purple skirt, and rhinestoning the pink shirt and blue shirt

No matter how prepared you are, I've always found that the last night before the show is always one of the latest. There's always something to check (and double check) extra embellishments that you can add! But the show is tomorrow (well today now) and its time to say that its all finished!
Until tomorrow if there are any problems or extra fitting alterations to be done.

Its been two and a bit weeks, and with the show tomorrow the 5 costume turn around is nearly complete.

REMIX GOLD UPDATE!

With two days before the show its all steam ahead, and now I'm ahead of the schedule ever so slightly I've decided to take 10 minutes out to update you all on how the costumes are going for Remix Gold! It has been a busy and incredibly productive few days steaming ahead with rhinestoning and alterations! With two days left to go, and this morning spent finishing rhinestoning the last of the shirts, this afternoon is for making the purple skirt.

And then after that more rhinestoning...

With limited time to write this, I've decided that adding photos taken over the course of the last few days is probably the most effective way to show what I've been up to!

Emily and Jessica's Skirts

Rhinestoning and alterations



Becca's Shirt

Rhinestoning

There was an issue with the rhinestones for this shirt as in terms of getting purple rhinestones, to get a vibrant, clear purple is incredibly difficult. I'm sure in the future I'll be able to find some but after finding three different sets online that all looked purple, all called themselves purple, and all, when they arrived, were let just say NOT purple, I have decided to improvise. Making an almost mosaic like pattern of the three 'purple' rhinestones has formed a beautiful and interesting effect on the shirt collar. It is a small area so it will not be glaringly out of place amongst the other costumes, while still be visually interesting and pleasing.

Ben and Kierans Shirts

While this may seem like the quickest and easiest of rhinestone tasks, these rhinestones are the smallest I have used and so a lot more of them were required. The reason I went for the smaller rhinestones was, I knew that in terms of ordering in bulk if I had gone for the larger rhinestones I still would have ordered the same amount, being that there is a company online that you can order 1440 rhinestones of a single colour and they are of excellent quality. They were not as expensive as the larger ones as, even 1mm smaller, the glue became workable a lot faster then the larger rhinestones, and because of the lengths that I needed to cover even a second per rhinestone makes a very big difference!

The to do list is now shrinking rapidly and its wonderful to see the wardrobe of finished costumes expanding!

Alterations and Customisations

With the arrival of the last shirt (though sadly not the trousers) today I started on the alterations and customisation of the costumes for Remix Gold!

The jobs for today;

-Altering the blue shirt that arrived yesterday

-Removing the sleeves from the black shirt

-Rhinestoning the black skirts - the larger skirt with blue rhinestones and the smaller with pink

The alterations to the shirts were straightforward. After cutting the sleeves of the blue shirt to equal lengths it was just a case of keeping them the same length while finishing them and creating a sort of mock 'cuff' which will be rhinestoned in black. For the black shirt, I simply removed the sleeves.

 Rhinestoning in process

Finished Rhinestoning- Pink

                     

In process Rhinestoning - Blue

Rhinestoning is a simple but incredibly time consuming job. I have managed to get all of the pink rhinestones (est. 350 in total) and half of the blue rhinestones also completed. I'm using 3.9mm hot fix rhinestones as I've found, personally, they're the best size to work with - smaller and you have to use vast amounts for any visible coverage from a distance, any larger and the glue takes so much longer to fix the extra time just isn't viable.

Usually I would keep going until I had completed the task before I called it a night but in this case, the rest of the alterations are fairly straightforward and the skirts are the largest rhinestoning tasks. The last time I did the Remix Gold costume, I ordered some slightly darker blue rhinestones then the ones I ordered for the costumes this time and I never used them, they ended up being unnecessary last time. This time however I believe I will be incorporating some of them onto one of the costumes this time around.

Filming Day!

Today was the day for 'Sleep', the first of four days of filming! With this as the only day to film all the office scenes, we were on a very strict schedule! With it being the office scenes, only one of our three main performers was required - our 'Ruth'. Thankfully for me, director Iona Smith had the scenes being filmed in order, which made things a lot simpler in terms of knowing which changes were needed when as in the office scenes there are eight changes. It did still, however, present multiple opportunities to gain experience in costume and set continuity. It went incredibly well, the scenes ran mostly to time, everyone was in good spirits!

The call time was 8:45 to be taken to the site, with my two bags of costumes - I arrived a little early and used the time (and a cheese grater) to finish breaking down the shoes for 'Seduction'. At 9 we headed to the site and our actress went straight into make-up while the technical people went about setting up the lighting and filming equipment and I laid out the wardrobe.



With the first scenes filmed, we had another last minute addition arrive! The extra to play 'Ruth's boss, when he arrived I requested a couple of changes to make him look a little more like an office professional (removing a wristband, not wearing the jumper over his white shirt and not doing up the very top button of the shirt) and with that done, we were all set to start filming again.

After getting 'Ruth' into her first costume, it became apparent there was a minor hitch in an extra arriving, and a stand in was needed - yes, I have a very small cameo appearance near the beginning of the film! The director requested that I fill in.



It was fascinating to watch the difference between interior and exterior filming. Considering lighting, ambient deflect and direct, with shadows in odd places because of it, sound levels, the minutae of shot continuity and costume continuity it was a busy day, with every scene shot and reshot for angles and for a better take for either sound or visuals.

The idea of the costume changes between scenes that all followed on from each other by action and purpose was to be to show her progression through the week getting more and more dishevelled, exhausted and haggard as her insomnia progresses. This was the third costume change, where 'Ruth' has started to go from being just rumpled to uncaring about her appearance - she's not checked her shirt and there's a button gapping, her shoes are sThis was the team filming the dropping of the handbag in close up. The problem with this shot was that in order to get it to focus properly it had to be dropped to a precise point, but as the shot was being done close to the ground in close up using tape to mark the spot wasn't an option, so a penny was used as a more subtle, commonplace marker.

After this scene we moved into the kitchen, where a more immediate action was to take place that directly involved costume! There needed to be a spillage, done to an exact location and way to the dress that 'Ruth' was to be wearing. Due to budget, I had three dresses for this, one pre-stained for the accommodation shots to be done the following day, and two for the action shot today - one and a spare in case it went wrong. Due to the fact that there were only the two dresses and so two chances to get the take right, I will admit I was nervous.  

The spillage was meant to be red fruit tea, very symbolic, needed to be spilled and soak into the dress at a certain point. The first time this was tried, the tea was not only too weak, but it failed to soak into the dress at all but instead glanced off and onto the floor. This meant that while the take was unsuccessful, the dress was unmarked and therefore good for a second take! This time myself and director Iona mixed in a cross between multiple fruit tea bags and fruit squash to try and get the colour strong enough to be effective.
The second take was attempted, and once again failed to soak into the dress. This called for more drastic measures as we were now at risk of seriously running over time. I took the pre-stained dress and re-wet over the stain to try and make it look fresh, but other then making it look wet, the stain did not look fresh. Because of this, while the actress was wearing the costume I had to use one of the fruit tea bag to make the stain fresh.
This worked to not only make the stain more authentic but will mean that it will match perfectly in continuity when they continue the filming with it tomorrow as it will, in fact, be the same dress! The stain, despite looking more pink then I would perhaps have preferred, did look incredibly effective on camera.

Now the costumes are all handed over, with all the rest of the costumes self explanatory and requiring a minimum of costume changes, and its back on to Remix Gold with exactly one week to go until the show!