Who is to blame for *BAD* costume design? It's complicated! (I used to do costume for film)

[Music] so some of you might know i used to work as a costumier for film and tv both in the uk and in norway i have a degree in costume design from university of the arts london and i worked in the film industry doing costume for five years before i quit why am i telling you this well i personally am a huge fan of many of the costume vintage history channels here on youtube i am a subscriber i love them and i also really love the costume analysis videos that many of these creators do the amount of knowledge and just the presentation that these creators managed to put together for these videos it's amazing i love them having worked in film and tv is by no means a qualification that you need to be able to do these analysis videos or to create content that critiques and analyzes costume that's not a qualification that you need at all i am not saying that i just thought it would be interesting for anyone who likes these videos and who likes costume design who likes film who likes historical clothing to know what it's like to work in the costume department a bit about how my personal experience working in costume after university and my five years during my five years working with costume i was for the most part a stand by and supervisor and i did some design on smaller productions but for the most part my job was standby or supervising but what are these jobs so the costume designer is pretty self-explanatory the costume designer's job is to design the look for each character of the show each character depending on the film will have x amount of changes and you need to make sure that the character's personality shines through and aids the storytelling of the script to make the whole production believable through character design so it's less about fashion and more about character development the costume supervisor works tightly with both the costume designer and the production crew to make sure the needs of the production are met through the creative vision of the designer i'm going to generalize but not all designers are great planners logistically i think that kind of goes for a lot of creative people i'm not saying it's not possible there are many amazing designers who are super structured and many amazing designers who are not and so depending on that the job of the costume supervisor will vary in how much and what jobs they do but they will typically handle stuff like the logistics the budget giving jobs to the rest of the department all that stuff so take that logistic load off the designers shoulders a costume standby is the person on set when filming starts this person will be in charge of costume continuity so that means making sure that the scene that you are filming everyone in that scene is wearing the right thing and not just the right outfit for the scene but maybe there's been water in the scene they have to have maybe this is the dry scene maybe this is the wet sea and maybe there's blood if so has this person got blood on them what's happening in the next scene what's happening how did this person take their scarf off as they exited the cafe where how did they wear that stuff making sure all these things are as they should in collaboration with the script supervisor who works just generally with the whole continuity but the script supervisor is dependent on the standardized for the various departments costume hair makeup sets and props these people do their job properly and really nitpicks the continuity for their department the standby will also be in charge of any changes happening through the day films i assume most people know this but films are not shot chronologically the first scene on a production might well be the very last scene in the film and then you'll do one from the middle of the film and then you'll go back to the end and then you'll jump to the start and all this can happen within a day's work so there are usually quite a few changes during the day for both costume hair and makeup set and props all these people have to make sure they have everything with them and that they are on top of it all the time for smaller productions a costume standby will usually be in charge of all the actors and sometimes even the extras or the crowds for larger productions you might have one standby for the leads and then one for crowd and then for proper productions you will have standbys depending on the size of the cast who have their small group of actors that they are in charge of so i would be in charge of these five and then my colleague would be in charge of those five and we would have nothing to do with crowd at all for the largest productions large productions will also have a wardrobe mistress i know this is a very gender biased term i genuinely don't know what it's called if a man does the job because i've never worked with that but i'm sure there is a better word for it it's been a few years since i quit maybe this has changed but the wardrobe mistress will usually be in charge of if there is a costume truck if you are driving around and you have a truck with all the costumes we'll be in charge of the lineup making sure everything's clean making sure everything is in shape and just being in charge of the whole logistical thing of the actual shoot bits of making sure everything's ready sometimes the job of the supervisor and the wardrobe mistress kind of overlap and at least in norway wardrobe mistress is not a thing it's usually the job of the supervisor which has also become a relatively new job in norway whereas in the uk you could have both a supervisor and a wardrobe mistress or just a supervisor you also of course have costume assistants and these they will do whichever our job needs doing whether that's on set with sewing stuff mending stuff with the supervisor with the designer they kind of go around where they are needed i worked in london for one year after my degree i also did some work while at university on the side and then i moved back to oslo and continued my work with costume here so now that you know some about my background and why i wanted to do this video first of all let's i'm gonna talk a bit about both contemporary and periods costuming but for the most part this is going to be focused on period costuming because that's what most of these analysis videos focus on so with that in mind let's all disagree that when doing a period piece historical accuracy might not be the aesthetic goal of the video maybe they don't want historical accuracy at all and that's fine if that's not what the production wants to do let's use for instance bridgeton as an example it's clearly inspired by the regency era but it's pretty obvious they are not going for accuracy because it doesn't fit their aesthetic storytelling goal they have created costumes that are meant to aid the storyline and they do it really well even though it's not accurate we have to remember as consumers that productions are not required to make historically accurate costumes just because they are doing a period piece they are allowed to do whatever the heck they want regardless of how we as consumers feel about that of course they need to handle the brunt of our feelings because we will made it make we will make them known but it doesn't mean that we are entitled to historically accurate costuming now that we have established that historical accuracy is not a requirement for creating costumes for a period piece let's also take a minute to acknowledge that there is a difference between purposefully going off the beaten track making your own aesthetic doing it for storytelling purposes doing it knowing that it's not correct and just doing a lazy design job so if we can agree that the production was not purposefully doing a different aesthetic it's easy to assume that it's just the designer's fault this is lazy costuming and i agree that it's easy to think that but let's have a look at some reasons for why it's not that simple at the end of the day it is the costume designer who has their names stamped on the work they get the credit for the costume design they are the costume designer but that doesn't mean they are the sole deciders for the finished project so the very important fact is when it comes to deciding the costume design it's the budget it's the director the producers and the actor from my personal experience again for this whole video this is all based on my experience and the experience of people i have worked with and talked to other people in the industry might have a different experience at this and that's fine just full disclaimer but let's jump into first the budget the budget in my experience for both costume and the hair and makeup department tends to be severely under prioritized if you're doing a modern feature i have heard from the production team not the costume team but the production stuff like well why can't they just bring some stuff from home why can't the actors just bring some clothes well why can't you just borrow clothes from somewhere and this both of these things they are pretty much always asked at least in the norway they have this opinion of costume that just why can't they just wear whatever and my response to that would always be well then why am i here so that's but that's for the most part for modern clothing and then it's always a discussion of trying to get the production team to understand that spending money on character development is important for the finished results but for period pieces obviously the production aren't going to say well why can't you just bring stuff from home because people don't have that stuff lying around at home it is still for the most part a pretty under prioritized departments and budget discussions are always really really hard it's always really hard to make the production team understand that costumes cost a lot of money at grant is you can't put on a period piece and expect as their costume designer to have the budget to make everything for every actor and every it costs every extra that's never gonna happen usually you will have a small budget that you can make stuff that you where you can customize stuff obviously this is going to be the most expensive part of each costume is if you make it custom-made for the character but you also can rent how much you rent and how much you make depends on the budget obviously a designer with a massive budget who can hand make everything for their principal cast is gonna have an opportunity to do a better job than someone who has to rent costumes that are already made the director is the main visual decision maker for the whole production he or she will get final say in pretty much any visual decision that is made it doesn't matter which department you're in if you are in costumes in hair in cinematography in light the director gets final say and every department head works under the director's vision the director may or may not have any knowledge of the period they are doing at all and so a good director will listen to the heads of department they don't always do that and sometimes the director's vision is very headstrong they know what they want and even if that's not historically correct they don't care because they want more skin more boobs bigger hair whatever it is that they want i just said those are main examples of what they tend to want or at least they did and if that's what they want then that's what they get doesn't matter if the costume designer would prefer to have them in a proper shimmies under that pair of stairs the costume designer or someone the standby whoever it is that is dealing with the director at this point can of course try to convince the director and as i said a good director will listen when things are important and if the film is going for accuracy then it's very important that they listen if that's not what they're going for then maybe the director's vision is the most important it's a balance but sometimes it's really not it's just not up to the costume designer producers the producers are the money behind the whole production this gives them a lot of weight to throw around if they have an opinion about something i once worked with a producer who had a very strong opinion about what the lead actor should be wearing this was a contemporary production and i think this producer thought the main character was this he was really cool he thought this was a really cool really strong character and he obviously saw bits of himself in this character or he wanted to because he would not stop making us try putting the actor in a red leather jacket as they produced those trying to convince us to do this he was standing there in a red leather jacket telling us how only really really cool people wear red leather jackets it had nothing to do with the character nobody else saw this character as wearing a red leather jacket not the costume designer not me i was the supervisor not the director not the actor himself but this producer was so adamant that this is what he should be wearing it took all of the aforementioned people to convince the director that it just wasn't the right yes red leather jackets are cool fine whatever until he backed down and finally understood that the character design is more important than what you think is cool which leads us to the last major factor that plays a role in how the costume designer will be able to work and what to end up on screen and that is the actor him or herself in pre-production when the costume department has started building a wardrobe for each character the actors will come in for fittings how often how many they do depends on time of course the availability of the actor and also how invested the actor is in the costume design some actors they find they trust the designer 100 i will wear whatever you think i should wear costume designer because you know best and some actors are the complete opposite they wanted to say in everything from cut color style every single thing underwear because it's so important for them to feel that they are becoming this character that they are playing and i don't think one or the other is necessarily a better approach than the other obviously it's easier for the costume designer if they get the final say in everything but the most important thing at the end of the day is that each actor is able to portray their character and if that means you know what this coat it's not working i don't feel like this coat is this character you need to either convince the actor why it's the right coat or get another coat this is all fair and square as i said both are legitimate ways of working for the actors part in finding their character and this is all done in pre-production so there is time to figure everything out it's the job of the costume designer and the actors they're meant to collaborate so that's absolutely fine the one thing that is not fine is when actors and this happens don't come to fittings never ever and then if you don't come to a fitting you basically by not coming maybe it's your availability maybe you wanted to come i get it doesn't matter what your excuses if you can't come to any fittings you can't stand there on the first day on set and not want to wear anything because you're not happy with it and this genuinely happens it's infuriating because it undermines all the time the costume department has spent building up this wardrobe for your character and it delays the whole set it costs so much for a film set to be delayed and some actors do this so often it's just so infuriating if you have a really stubborn actor that has quite a big name and they won't go on set then you're gonna have to do some emergency costuming and that might not be what what's right for the character some actresses i i've actually never had this happen with any male actor but actresses again not all i can count on one hand the amount of times this has happened some of them are very it's very important that they look pretty it doesn't matter if the character's really not meant to be pretty but they just want to wear what they would want to wear on a personal basis why are you an actor then if you just want to be yourself and and so what you end up doing is they will just go well i have this really amazing gucci jacket can't i just wear that fine it's not right for the character but you have to get on set to wear that wear the gucci jacket that doesn't fit your character fine and so every decision that the designer has made is being undermined by a stubborn actor who didn't show up to fittings this does not happen often but even in just my five years it's happened a handful of times so to put it simply you could be an incredibly talented costume designer with a bad budget with a director who has a completely different vision than you a stubborn producer or a stubborn actor and all these things if you're very lucky you'll have all of them and the design that you want to do won't be anything like what you end up doing and the other way around you can be a very mediocre or even a bad designer but then all the stars align for you to do a really good job and that's where it's unforgivable to do a bad job obviously for very big productions and very big names really really famous costume designers sandy powell michael o'connor um colleen atwood all these really big names they are hired for their vision you don't hire colleen atwood and expect her to do something that's not clean that would so i think for the really big productions when you see bad costume design it's bad costume design so because they have all the resources available to them to do a good job there is no excuse but for any not super super super super fancy production the budget is the most limiting time constraint and even for the big productions the stubborn actors directors and producers can put a really big dent in how you would ideally do your work how do you get the costumes for contemporary pieces you go out shopping and you can rent that's just the basics of it it's modern clothing they're easy to get hold of but for period pieces you are seldom in a position where you can make everything from scratch for every principal character it happens that those jobs don't come around all that often for the most part you do have to rely on renting period costumes can be rented at big costume houses such as angels or the national theatre in london you have these big costume houses throughout most of the world and they will have costumes from pretty much all errors but summers more than others and renting the costume department with the costume designer in charge will go to for instance angels and pick rails of what they need for their production and that is why you often see costumes reused in several productions as well a very common way of getting slightly cheaper costumes if you are renting for long periods of time and you need loads of clothing is the production will sign a deal with the costume higher place that you will have a cheaper price for renting but for payment the costume house will get all the costumes that you made after the production has completely closed so that's why you will see a costume for the first time in the film for instance this gown from my glock on his design for the duchess it was made for the duchess then went back into the costume house has since been reused in several other productions now this is where it's easy and appropriate to blame a designer for bad work if all the variable variables mentioned earlier a line and the costume designer has the budget and all the things not stubborn other forces to work with then only have the designer to blame for picking bad costumes however there is still another factor the place in which period you're doing and the availability of a renting costume because even though these costume houses are huge the stock is not unlimited so if you are working in a very popular period and there are no other productions going at the time you will have so many wonderful pickings but if there are several than what you're gonna do that's gonna be really hard because the paintings are gonna be slim what's even worse if if you're working from a period that's hardly ever been done because then there's hardly anything to pick i was working on an 18th century production in london picking out angels and it became abundantly abundantly clear that the 18th century was really happening in during that time there were several productions happening at the same time and there were rails and rails of gorgeous 18th century costumes that were already taken that meant slim pickings for us what are you going to do luckily for that production we had the budget to design the clothing all the lead actors so that was fine we were mostly picking for supporting actors and extras so what you do then is you have to have you have to go with what you have some things are going to be 40 50 60 years off you just have to make sure that the actors look great the supporting actors look great and all the extras in the front that you can actually see in detail that they are correct luckily even though 18th century costumes were that there were a lot of productions happening set in that era at the time we still had enough to make it work it was then it's really important for the standard buys and the standbys for the crowd to do a good job placing correctly dressed actors and extras at the front some productions as i mentioned are not that lucky sometimes you will be working in an era that's not very popular and so there isn't all that much to pick from when picking costumes for set production at angels i was talking to someone in the question department on tulip fever fever is a 17th century period piece designed by michael o'connor and it's set in 17th century amsterdam so you have a very specific time and a very specific place 17th century has not been done to the same extent that say tudor or 18th century the pickings were so slim and this person was saying how that they just didn't have enough they had to go into their production crew to their production and get the budget to make everything for their lead actors that's a big baby job according to costume designer michael o'connor in an interview with s magazine the costume department made around 50 principal costumes that's a lot we're not talking 50 individual pieces we're talking 50 individual costumes i think for the production i was on at the time i can't be sure we made i don't know say we made 20 and we just made it in time for principal photography to start they had two months of pre-production which is hardly any time to make 50 principal costumes in such an opulent style as well as 17th century amsterdam they also not only did they have 50 principal costumes to make they had 25 nine costumes 35 orphan girls and they hired to dress around 500 extras as i said they had two months of reproduction which is not a lot but unfortunately not uncommon and they continued making the costumes into production they were still sewing as the production was going to make everything ready for whenever the costume had to be on set for the first time luckily for tulip fever as a whole michael iconic is an incredible costume designer who expertly worked with the limitations he was given in that he couldn't pick everything from the costume houses and he made the effort when designing to really look into the history of these clothing and make them as accurate as it could because that aided the story when designing clothing when you have that privilege you have the budget and the time to design and make the costumes for your characters then of course the only person to blame for bad design bad research is the designer however when the budget is smaller and you're limited to picking from costume houses you are your finished result will depend on of course your budget but also how much is available when talking about designers who have the opportunity to actually design and make clothing for their characters but didn't do a good job an example that comes to mind is the 2018 norwegian film sonia or sonia i think it was just called it's about the norwegian ice skater sonja genie and her life most of the film is set in the 30s although it starts when she's a child and then follows her but most of it is set during her peak in the 1930s an era which has abundant costumes available not only in oslo because i worked at the norwegian costume higher i'm and we had a decent amount so i can only imagine if they went to copenhagen if they went to london there is so much to pick from not to mention you can get actual vintage garments and use those this film has obviously pulled costumes because i don't think budget was all that big but you can tell they also made clothing the reason i use this as an example is that you now have an historical figure an actual person that you have documented imagery of you know what they wore you know what their style was she even had her own clothing brand and still they didn't take the opportunity to one which i would have loved to see recreate items from sonia's actual wardrobe or b take the opportunity to design a really really iconic 90s thing 30s thing 90s 1930s thing that sonia or an outfit that sonja would have loved to wear grant is sonia's skating and performing costumes in the film are really good i genuinely think they are very very nice but her sonia's clothes are so underwhelming the equivalent would be making a film about wallace simpson a person we have documented resources on known for her sense of fashion and doing a really mediocre job that's lazy designing imagine doing a film on my and then doing not recreating one of her gowns i just no that's the fault of the designer 100 but the reason i use these two examples both two fever and sonia is just it's so clear that one designer worked with the limitations they had and still made it did an amazing job because they really invested themselves in doing the proper research and then on the other hand you have a job that should be so much easier starting the 1930s compared to 17th century amsterdam even though sonia obviously had a smaller budget than tulip fever i mean this job should be so much easier you could do it the resources are literally out there for free and still you don't use them however we do not know how difficult the director the producers or the actors were to work with another aspect that we have to address when talking about costume design is practicality this will vary from production to production what is the goal the visual goal of the film if they're shooting an action film then perhaps the trousers and the jackets and all that stuff it's not as important as making sure the visual effects and the stunts and everything are really cool and so the costume design might have to pull back and make sure the costumes work with padding and you can make 12 doubles for stunts and all that stuff but if you're doing like a visual feast which is usually the case for period costumes why make a period piece if you're not going to do a great job visually just take autumn de wilds emma where it looks like everyone in the whole crew and the whole cast were synced they all agreed that the visuals for this film were just as important as all the other aspects of the film i feel like the reason they made emma was to just make a feast for our eyes and it's so apparent that the whole team agreed on the goal for the film and the fact is a role in when it comes to practicality is sound is the if the actor is wearing a metal disc dress that makes a lot of noise is it necessary is there is is the character wearing it for an important dialogue scene is it necessary in the dialogue scene could this person the character wear this crazy loud dress in another scene where it's not so much dialogue this will a good designer will work as a team with all the other departments and the sound department is very important you also have factors such as the weather are you going to be shooting in winter then maybe make sure the clothing is warm are you going to be shooting in norway maybe there's going to be a lot of rain and make sure you've taken that into account is there stunts happening if so which kind of stunts do you need how many doubles do you need is there going to be blood is the water involved do you need a wetsuit do you need to be able to wear a wetsuit and without it showing so maybe if those are factors that play into the character you might scale down the design or the costume to make sure you can get all the doubles that you need sometimes you need a ridiculous amount of doubles for your character again if there's a lot of stunts if there's a lot of units units are when you have different camera crews working in different places at the same time and you might be shooting one character there and then you have a stunt double all the way up in maybe some other country even doing something else for the same character also doing stunts so maybe you need a lot a lot of doubles and how many you have and how intricate you can make them all depend again on your budget and the production we know game of thrones has a ridiculous amount of doubles and units but they made it work because they had an incredibly good budget however i cannot begin to comprehend the logistical nightmare supervising that would have been lastly and this doesn't really apply to costume but i just want to touch briefly on the hair and the makeup department sometimes they are in the same departments for any big production they will not be and do never address them as such because they will not be happy and i agree they are different but as i've said films don't shoot chronologically they just don't most days on set you will jump between various scenes and thus various looks generally speaking location trumps story day or screw where you are in the script you will finish shooting production will rent a location for x amount of days however long you need to be there let's say you're there for four days and they will finish every scene they need to finish in that location before they move on maybe you have five different story days happening in that location there's a stairway in the castle so you film all the scenes that you need in the stairway in the castle before you move to the next scene which might be the bedroom and then you film all the scenes there and then you move to the kitchen the recent location trump's scene is because changing around and setting up camera and like it takes so much time and it's really heavy work and so it's easier to just change costumes and hair and makeup instead of always going back and forth with the camera and like it generally speaking you have to have hair and makeup looks that you can go back and forth with without it taking three hours this is where for period pieces wigs and hair pieces come in the reason i'm addressing this is because in the comment sections of a lot of these analysis videos i see comments like why can't they just set the actors hair the night before or it's obvious that they're using curling irons what are you gonna do you have time limitations and let me address the first comment first about setting the actor's hair that would never work for continuity some hair doesn't take carly and can you imagine an act has just been on set and not to mention the makeup crew who start first basically in the day they will start so early and they've already been that work for 12 to 14 hours and then you have to set this person's hair and they go home go to bed maybe they want to have a shower they've been working a long day maybe they sleep throwing themselves around a lot and they get back on set the next day and half the rollers are out it's just not a feasible way of doing period hair at least not for many characters it's just not gonna work and so wigs are the easiest way to do this a good wig designer obviously will make sure the wig looks period accurate if that's again the visual that you are going for in this production but expecting the hair department to manually set all the hair every day it's just never gonna happen it's no [Music] i'm not saying we can't criticize or critique or analyze these costume designs i love these videos as i stated at the very beginning go for it continue doing it it's such a fun conversation to have it's easy to blame the designer and always want historical accuracy and always want everything to be super nice and pretty and opulent we just have to recognize as consumers that we kind of have to take what we get and recognize that the working conditions to create a visual masterpiece such as emma or marie internet they're not always going to be there those conditions that seldom the hand you are dealt as a designer unless you are on a very big budget production in which case it is unforgivable little women the designer will be praised if they do a good job and they will of course be critiqued if they do a bad job as is absolutely fair don't get me wrong i think it's just important to recognize that there are it's not always the costume designer's fault or at least it's not 100 the costume designer's fault when things go badly unless everything was laid out for them to do a good job oh i'm just rambling on now i'm gonna finish maybe you've got a better glimpse into what it's like to work behind the scenes of a fun production at least in the costume department and with that enjoy your costume analysis videos i know i will continue to do so [Music] goodbye you

Channel: Fabel Knitwear

Views: 1,314

Rating: 4.9452057 out of 5

Keywords: costume design, costume review, costube, costume analysis, costume critique, emma review, emma costumes, marie antoinette costumes, marie antoinette review, tulip fever, tulip fever costumes, tulip fever review, little women, little women costumes, little women review, the tudors, the tudors costumes, the tudors review, bernadette banner review, mina lee review, bad costume design, film crew, working in film, behind the scenes film, costume department, costume standby

Id: d8p5f9pK2eQ

Length: 39min 44sec (2384 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021