Making Marvel Studios' Moon Knight Costume!

hey everybody Adam Savage at fbfx along with the head of soft costume here Bex how are you good thank you you're right and we are joined by one of this Department's Creations this is clearly Moon night I can't believe how beautiful this thing is but it's also way more detailed than I even imagined watching the show can we talk about it this looks like an absolute bear of a costume to build I mean it's it was really a labor of love Alden in lockdown the original Moon night concept was by Marvel's head of visual development Ryan minerding and we were actually collaborating with the costume designer Megan caspalek Urban Zoom to create the suits one of the things I'm used to seeing on superhero costumes is the illusion of layers what I see here is layers first of all the men remit was bandages how do we make something look like a bandage and it can't take a million years for them to dress and we went through various iterations various different methods until we realized the way to do it is with individual strips you're imitating the bandage and you're imitating this wrapping over through all these individual pieces and once we'd made that realization through all our tests then we started to build the whole thing so you're doing that there's no seam around here where you're making a pattern and then sewing it together so does that mean that every single piece is custom fit to that part of the body yes exactly um so and we want to do things like you don't want a visible underarm seam all those things which make it read as a sleeve yeah we had to get rid of all of these pieces there's a bonding technology that we use everything is bonded as well as sewn and glued so all the techniques into one costume really yeah how many separate pieces make up this costume we did I spend one day where we counted them all and it was a thousand and thirteen in total individually cut pieces and there's not just soft Parts I there's there's gold there's all this gold shielding underneath this is this means you're collaborating with other departments to get all this together yeah this is a wonderful thing about this costume it's like one of the projects where everyone's works so closely together and because all of these elements have to interact and have to look like we don't want it to look like it's just being placed on it wants to feel like this this was meant to feel like it was in with the wrapping that all of these pieces are attached in with this method and so this involved creating these pieces underneath here there's plenty of detail That You Don't See but there's hidden hieroglyphs so there's actually this is all detailed underneath here oh my God there's a Wing under here and here and on some of them we actually made it so that the moon around could come out and he could throw it and here if you look in the texture oh it's the actual the actual Moon I did just realize that oh that's amazing I can't believe I missed that it looks like it's all integrated but it can't be right I mean this isn't just put on his head how do you how does the actor breathe between takes so I mean what it actually comprises of is a pair of trousers yeah a tack vest which these parts are on oh okay a top a short top with the sleeves some gloves the van braces these parts are attached to the top vest there's the cape the hood this collar is separate as well okay and this mask is separate and in fact um mainly because it was during lockdown and we had to pay attention to covid regulations and we made sure that the actor would be able to have a break and they could have a curved safe version I'm curious about your experience of watching the show for the first time and seeing your costume in motion we were all very very excited yeah and all reporting back to each other that evening you know because and I think we were all we were all really really hyped and really excited when we saw it it's like all that work had come together yeah and also it was such a quick turnaround normally we wait up to a year maybe even more to see the thing that we've made sure but this was on a really tight schedule and it was only a few months after we'd made it really that this came out and so it was still quite fresh and that was also quite exciting to see it so soon right right the trauma is fresh in your memory I'm curious about the about the pants because they're slightly different than the top they yeah they've got this cartouches going on and everything tell me about the development of that um so we went with a tactical the idea of a tactical pan but then still harkening back to some of these design features so we've got this is echoing all of this detail and down the side here as well um we have oh yeah in there now when you're talking about echoing those details is that something that the production designer coming to you with or are they asking you for Solutions and you're giving options and showing them what's possible I mean sometimes it comes from comes from the actor sometimes it comes from the costume designer sometimes from production it's kind of like it was quite a fluid conversation that we were having about it all and um I think it was it was ultimately that they decided that we needed to integrate it but it not feel like one entire thing and so a bit of back and forth a few doing plenty of samples giving them a few options and this is what we all agreed upon was the best way to go and then just adding more interest like this is a higher build print so it's the same print but slightly more released yeah just so different textures once again echoing up here and then here and we want it to feel like it was like a real relief yeah and so we decided the best way to do it was to laser cut the hieroglyphs here and I I don't know if um anyone realizes what it says but oh what does it say it says uh rise and live again as my fist of Vengeance my beloved Moon Knights amazing narrative built right here yeah yeah oh that's fantastic okay um can I pick up the boot yeah oh the Footwear is always the hardest part for me in the replication do you have someone who specializes in Footwear there's a there's a fantastic man who's in Canada who's got he's called Jitterbug Jeff and he makes a lot of boots and shoes for film and he's the go-to guy really that's beautiful so you send do you send a pattern do you send uh drawings so we took extensive foot measurements for him that he sent us through the information he wanted and we sent those through to him and then he makes them amazing um I am really curious the gloves are super beautiful but I'm curious about this beautiful reduction pattern going on in the van braces yeah so this was we spent quite a few weeks deciding what the best method to make this was and we tried a few just purely fabric versions and we'd sort of started to work out the pattern of these decreasing rhombuses as such and then we did one sample and it took so long to make one we thought it was perhaps best and for it to look clean as well but these aren't fabric they're so they're not fabric at all so um najad and one of our digital artists um he this is all done in zbrush and then this is just an extra detail glued on over the top I totally couldn't tell bets you've described uh both a very collaborative but also an iterative process of solving these problems can I see some of the samples of that iteration yeah sure we've laid some out for you over here oh man I I mean every project ends up with a pile of stuff walk me through what some of what some of this is it looks like so much work this area here is initial trouser samples of how we wanted these details to look and as you can see these are every single possible version of a seam because we didn't want it to just be a normal scene we wanted to have different textures to different ideas of depth in there right um so we had all these done and then these details here they eventually ended up being a ribbed detail that these were all different ideas of how to do that oh man okay so this is one of the actual van braces oh it's actually I see nice and soft it just yeah it feels like it would be a comfortable costume to wear even though it's there's a lot of parts yeah exactly and this is quite you know very important for stunts as well because we really need to make sure that there's nothing brittle or sharp everything has to bend or you know allow for some compression and this is uh it's velcro yeah you can open it oh look it's dead wow okay so now we can see the inside where the pattern is that's amazing I really I was looking right at this and touching it not realizing it wasn't fabric it's a beautiful paint job on it as well in fact the the whole costume um was they went in every single seam and airbrushed into each little seam to create even more depth yeah so talk about these uh how these pieces start to meet so this was an initial sort of trying to get your head around the construction so we decided to start in a Calico first and um and this was a whole integrated sleeve and like kind of we were trying to work out what happens if you seem it here what happens if there's overlaps things like this we had to put to one side because you know stunts are going to get caught but when you're talking about the seam you mean you want it to look like it's actually a bandage not exactly so how do you create that illusion so this is so we went from this and then we started testing in our actual um final fabrics unprinted and we'd started working out how do we do these under laps with this one we're like well this is too much of a gap any kind of stretch you start to expose it so we were well we're nearly there we need to think about this a little a little more but by the time I mean this is a slightly different print by the time we got to this point we were actually um wonderlapping everything and there's a really tight point where you have to hit there and everything's caught in under here so you do actually have oh look at that it does have space in it but there's no room for it to move and show off the wow that is so much freaking work and there's a specific approach to each semen how how that sits exactly so these are all our seaming tests here as well just just purely for the bandage idea and um we tried it doing it with a pleat because we were thinking oh we can't possibly cut out that many pieces but in fact this was actually a longer way to do it oh fascinating and not as secure either there was a you know potential for it to pop too much like you see there oh right and if that if it stretches you don't want to see that that's exactly the actual okay yeah so then we were like okay let's have another little thing and these are all we came up eventually with we Bond a piece to it with our seam allowance net all around one side is two millimeters on the other side um is net and then as you sew it and then you glue it and you roll it and then that's what gives it the sense of the depth so oh man I think some of these are like really good examples of how that ended up that's crazy this feels like this like we all make our things that we are good at making with a category in the library in our heads but this looks like it added to your library significantly I mean that that's what that's what we love doing as well it's sort of you know it's like we'll we'll figure out a way to do it yeah you know that that is really the fun bit and the r d at the beginning just trying to decide how do we make this real yeah you know how many how many uh how many weeks was was this problem-solving process before you started to get to Construction it was probably a good month of um back and forth that doesn't sound like nearly enough time maybe like maybe maybe six weeks because we were sort of like as we could sign off one Technique we could start developing one part of it whilst we were waiting for another part of it so we get the trouser technique signed off we can start working on those get that make going or else we're still working on this so that we've got this constant flow of of work and you know there's progression happening with it all right and then at a certain point you're wheeling in some of the other parts of fbfx to do these other parts exactly and iterating different uh hardnesses different materials yes yeah what is the face shell so this is Mr Knight another one of his alter egas oh right right um and this this is a very early um vac form of his mask um and then we made a hood I mean this is about this is a very very simple first one right quite hilarious amazing um and the Fantastic Team over in Budapest made his suit okay and so yeah we did all the maths um I'm also noticing the beautiful neck cowl there yes so ultimately the reason for deciding to split this costume into all these separate pieces it's so that they've got as much as much Choice as possible in like all the different kind of like stunt soaps that they can do and also just to allow for so much movement it didn't want because of the techniques of how we did it you don't you get stretched but you don't get a lot of stretch so we didn't want any kind of like long tension across the neck that everything's free to move hence why it's attack vest with a separate top as well so all underarm movement it's like oh as free as possible so you're making sure that the return of this goes far enough under that no matter how they move it's not going to explode exactly and that we don't get that kind of like bridging between the body that it always looks like it's formed to the body instead and then um and then this is that's another one of the overlapping techniques and then we've got um all of them are sewn with uh stretch Zips as well stretch Zips yeah I didn't even know that was a thing yeah wow so you get 10 uh 10 out of them and they're they're great actually um have been very very useful I just learned a brand new thing that's yeah I didn't know I needed that in my life neither did we until we got them and they were like well this is it now so um it's all all hidden and then we had this little um underlap like it goes under on the light oh man so that you get it right yeah so I I'm really astounded it's a hard I think maybe for the camera to see just how thin this is this is like about as thin as a denim jacket and it's so many so many layers yeah the inside's quite a oh that's magnificent and you can see our hilarious labeling system oh right right so with the thousand and thirteen you had the number and letter some code for everything and we all sat down together and said what system makes the most sense to everybody so that we were all on board and all on the same page with it wow I mean a project like this requires you guys to all of you sort of be investing the whole structure into your heads yeah yeah because you sort of have everyone had their own kind of everyone had a go at making all parts of the costume but everyone had their kind of specialism within the costume to focus on yeah as well so that the technique would improve each time and I can see the airbrushing that you're talking about it's very very subtle but it really lends again it it looks much more dimensional than it is and I can see how great that would be for a stunt performer yeah yeah exactly just trying to just really try not to limit their movement at all or as much as possible did they send you some samples of how what the kinds of movements that would happen yeah we we saw some great um they did some quick blocking out of of some of these scenes as well and they were like really fascinating to see so we could we could see what was required there was one which required a full arm up as well who are like we need to make sure that he's not going to uh he's not after all of this problem solving I'm imagining I think to myself wow you guys are like you're building the most amazingly flexible superhero suits it's like this incredible knowledge base you're building but the next film will include problems you've never solved before yeah and everything everything's built on previous projects everything that we've learned things that we've learned to don't do that again you know like that that's also as important really like knowing what our constraints are and what and um so you don't go up the wrong path again it's the institutional knowledge exactly exactly like applying some constraints so you can like make sure you stay on the on the right path with it and but yeah everything everything that we've learned on previous projects really sort of came into effects in this one I think you know again I it's it's not the illusion of depth it is it's all there I cannot believe how much labor went into this it's really beautiful yeah and everyone came out of it the other side as well I mean some of my team are actually here today as well that I put them through this and they happily join me with it I've got poppy here who I uh gave the task of these sleeves yeah which normally you'd say a sleeve probably take you I'm really not that long to put together but um you had that and I mean everyone had a little go at this Amy you were you were the knee specialist I remember you're on the knees that was one thing we wanted to do was integrate the knee pads into the suit so it looked like the knee pad was over but there's all this pleating that I don't even know if you see it in the actual um series I mean we can have a quick look actually there's some pleating on the back of the knees so if you see here behind the knee yeah we wanted this to feel like it was over the trousers of course but it's actually all fully integrated in so all this is draped into into place it won't it won't move from this pleating Arrangement and then these These are another hard part and then this was glued over and wrapped around and then we stitched the knee pad on can I can I come here and Apprentice for a week is that something that could happen someday well I always look for what was it for that are we yeah it's unbelievable and this cape oh my goodness oh yeah there was right there was a lot of talk because it's so important that when it's open it creates that shape of course of course wow but we um so this is why we had to sort of seam it and then plate it so that we didn't have the bulk of the fabric up here but we've got oh right here because it comes up here it's almost like a curtain and then you have to remove all that and we couldn't do it like your standard sort of like like a circle Cape because this back wanted to look clean it was important that this looked flat and then all the pleats and drip came from this point and so the solution is the pleat and Drake comes from outside the center line that's fascinating if anything the custom is even more impressive now that I know it know how it was built it is really a masterpiece thank you I think we can I think we can say we are we are proud of it now now enough time but um it was um like I say it was a very interesting costume making process as well especially because of the lockdown factor and we spent a lot of time on Zoom speaking to the costume designer Megan and um she would say try this I'm going to send you this fabric we'll try this print it gets sent over to us we try out some versions get that sent back to her have every fitting that we had have her on on Zoom as well well whilst assistant men are doing their spinning kits she's there going okay great and then I remember one particular moment with the hood as well we tried to get as close to the camera as possible and just her guidance really on the fullness of the cape and especially like all around here this shape the Silhouettes and lines it was it was it was a very interesting experience to work with a designer like that in in those particular Connection in those conditions it's a really fascinating and then she'd go back to Marvel get Marvel approval come back to us it was very much like a constant back and forth have you have to like stay in constant communication really yeah well clearly it was worth it yeah amazing amazing work foreign [Music]

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 353,066

Keywords: tested, adam savage, costumes, costume, props, fbfx, mcu, moon knight, disney plus, behind the scenes, marc spector, moon knight cosplay, costume design, mr. knight, oscar isaac, visual development, marvel studios, moon knight mask, ryan meinerding, marvel studios moon knight, mr knight, moon knight transformation, fabrication, making of, marvel, moon knight show, moon knight props, moon knight trailer, moon knight explained

Id: TtiWTLSNihQ

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Realistic_Analyst_26]

Easily one of the best costumes in the MCU

[u/theSaltySolo]

These are works of art.

I hated how CGI is overused in certain films and the practical costumes get replaced by CGI completely when it wasn’t necessary.

I’m looking at you Spider-Man.

[u/TheBeyondor]

You can really see how some of this stuff is a labor of love, and you have to appreciate how Adam nerds out on this aspect of the business.

[u/Einhander_mk2]

specialty costumes are always so cool and unique. i work at the studio that did RDJ's Iron Man suit and while many of the iron man suits are just busts now instead of full suits, we still occasionally get to do full costumes.

our most recent Marvel one was Riri's Ironheart Mk1 suit in her college garage. that was a fully wearable suit that she could move around in and it barely got any practical screentime sadly

[u/Rising-Jay]

It looks so cool & yet very complicated to put together, I’d almost want to commission someone to make a suit for me I don’t think I could handle all the work lol

[u/darrylthedudeWayne]

Why can't they just use the actual one instead of covering it with cgi.