"The Plan" directed by Betty Thomas
Sunday, May 8, 2011
"The Plan" - An upcoming movie
And now comes your way a movie that portrays fashion in films really well!
Iconic Fashion Film Nombre 5
5. Desperately Seeking Susan
The film's costume designer Santo Loquasto designed Madonna's character, Susan's leather pyramid jacket. In reality Madonna was chosen for her sense of style for the movie and her style was reflected in the clothes that she wore throughout the movie.
Iconic Fashion Film Nombre 4
4. Sex and the city
Patricia Field was the costume designer for both the tv shows and movies of sex and the city. When designing costumes for the tv shows, she would choose outfits that were unexpected, fresh and sometimes even outrageous. Therefore, when on the set of sex and the city (the movie) after a few years faced with the same task of designing costumes for the 4 main characters, she wanted to come up with some kind of action, by which she could follow some philosophy about the movie. On this note, she decided to make the outfits in the movie more sophisticated and more to the elegant yet sexy side for an older crowd of women who were more sensible and driven by profession. as she realized Carrie had evolved as a more mature and career oriented woman in the movie but had was still sexy.P
Iconic Fashion Film Nombre 3
3. Funny Face
One of the outfits worn by Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face was the one during her photoshoot in Paris where she wore a short sleeved black dress with fitted waist and full skirt. Flat black pumps and black hat. White wrist length gloves. This outfit, like all the rest was also designed by Hubert de Givenchy along with Edith Head for Audrey Hepburn. He won the Best Costume Design in the Oscars. This was perhaps because the costumes were so well suited to Hepburn's role in the movie which was the shy but intellectual character given to her. Hence, she wore plain clothes and shoes in neutral shades.
Iconic Fashion Film Nombre 2
2. American Gigolo
Giorgio Armani, the famous Italian designer has made a significant intervention into film history. Costumes in the movie American Gigolo (1980) by Richard Gere's character Julian helped to alter the way in which the cinema perceived and represented masculinity. The most sought after scene in the movie shows Julian choosing an outfit to wear for an appointment he had in the evening. On his bed, he laid out a selection of Armani jackets, and then matches them with some shirts. Finally, he adds an array of possible ties before finally picking one to wear. While doing so, Julian shimmies sensuously to music, dressed only in his boxer shorts. Once dressed, he checks himself in the mirror. Julian's overt narcissism, together with his love for Armani's expensive clothes, brought in a radical reacquiration of heterosexual masculinity on screen.
Iconic Fashion Film Nombre 1
1. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The costumes in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" portrays the image of a New York Socialista who is in a high class society. The show was like a cinematic fashion show for Givenchy as they designed all of Audrey Hepburn's gowns in the movie. Hubert de Givenchy was the first couture high fashion designer to have broken into costume design in films. In the past, Audrey Hepburn was Givenchy's favorite model, and thus was cast in this part literally like a clothes hanger for Givenchy.
The Epitome of a Fantasy Film
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland, is a computer-animated/live action fantasy adventure film that draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Alice returns 13 years after her first visit as a young women to find out that she is the only one who can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature controlled by the Red Queen, who terrorizes Underland’s inhibitants.
Alice in Wonderland is directed by Tim Burton and written by Linda Woolverton. Released by Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Michael Sheen, Leo Bill and Stephen Fry. At the 83rd Academy Awards, Alice in Wonderland won for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. The films costume designer is a two-time Oscar-winner, Colleen Atwood. She has been raved about her gothic Victorian creations in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She has also featured a how-to guide to dressing as The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.
In an interview excerpt, Collin Atwood explains the thought process on the costumes of the main characters in Alice in Wonderland.
Johny Depp: his coat has 2-3 layers of sheer silk over one final piece of silk. The fabric is then burned at several places to give it its sheer age and mood ring. It is to provide the quality for the liveliness of the movie. He wears a joke tie which can be pulled up and or down based on his mood. In scenes where he is happy, the bow tie rises up and when he is sad the tie bows snoops down. His coat also holds a set of scissors and ribbons which get pulled to make a hat at the last minute. His coat also has stitched on it different threads which he uses to embroidery on his pant while waiting for Alice to come. The waist coast is made of tiny pieces of fabric stitched together which do not match. Remanded together and all the buttons are different because he is a little like a mag pie which kicks up things he sees and turns them into other things.
The dress Alice wears right at the beginning of the party, it is embroidered at the helm, pre-empting her run through the fields. As she has to fall into the rabbit hole, layers have been added to her dress so that when she falls upside down, one gets to see the different layers; the blue, the fun stripes, stockings, bloomers and all other things.
Alice’s red dress is made for when Alice turns gigantic. It is made in a couple of different scales to play around with the scale of the curtains on it. The strips are wider to show the effect of the smaller to larger person.
The costume of the Red Queen was experimented a lot with as the size of her head is technically many different sizes in the movie and therefore the best approach to the costume had to be adopted. After much playing around the main thing that was changed was the collar of the dress. It was widened to make the neck stand out and that it did not look as if a head was planted on the collar. The black line in the middle of the dress was made to give a more wasp like figure to the dress. It was made such that the top collected and came to a point just before it went back out again. The colours of the dress follow the colours of the Red Queens Court i.e. red, black and a touch of gold.
A Fiction Movie's Specimen
The Harry Potter Series
Temime said that on every new filming for the next part of Harry Potter, the whole wardrobe has to be changes each time because her saying is that in just the one or two years gap between each move, the characters grow and change so fast that they would look outgrown in the clothes from the previous movie.
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Prisoner of Azkaban, since the starring actors Harry Potter (Radcliffe), Hermoine Granger (Watson) and Ron Weasley (Grint) were still quite young, they were dresses in Grey Jumpers or cardigans, Turtlenecks weater with designs on them, or plain grey sweaters or tees under their or with their uniforms and had slightly dishevelled hair which made them look younger. An example would be the grey jumper Radcliffe is wearing below or the grey sweater under the Hogwarts uniform worn by Watson or the Cardigans worn by the three.
For example, for the clothes to look like they suited the Weasley middle class status, Grint was made to wear cardigans that looked like they came from a charity shop but were actually from high street shops and made to look all scruffy and old to fit his middle class status. They did this by dying the the cardigans and hence changing their colour, breaking henceforth customizing the cardigan completely.
'
Tamime also added that all the clothes were made to work and hence were mostly hand-stitched. To stitch other clothing such as coats, cloaks, etcetera, the colours, movement of the cloth, thickness/thinness, weight of cloth, textures involved were all taken into consideration when making the clothings. In addition, for each costume stitched, 12 copies of the same costumes have to be stitched. This is because of the fear of the costumes getting spoilt and torn/ripped. Furthermore, as the clothes stitched are very sensitive, most of them cannot be washed therefore, there is a need for multiple copies of the same outfit as they may be used on different days of the filming or in different parts of the movie.
To make the clothes look all old, rusty, several things are done applied on the cloth. The cloth could be rubbed with stones, scraped with sandpaper, washed with hands to make them look more lifted and realistic. This is called 'breaking down'. This is all done to suit the film and its scenes.
The costume department does not only have to focus on the main starring actors or the co-starring actors, but also has to arrange and decide for the costumes for all the hundreds of students who are on the sets of Harry Potter during filming most of the time as the other students of Hogwarts. Hundreds of gowns have to be stitched for them to give them the Hogwarts 'look' and to make sure they blend into the scenes.
Measurements too, for each character are different. In accordance to the movie, even the students and teachers and other characters such as voldemort or dumbledore have coats of different lengths, different intricate designs and/or patterns on their coats which represents their status of who they are in the movie.
Take Sirius Black for example. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he was dresses in rags- wearing nothing but ripped black cloth. When he returns in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he wears clothes of the riches- embroidered vests with a gold watch hung on it which is from his family's heritage. His transformation from rags to riches is shown by the difference in his clothing.
Hence, Temime says that the costumes are done to perfection because she feels that nothing should be left to chance. Her belief is that people see the even the smallest mistakes or details left undone in a movie and hence she aims to make sure that the costumes of the characters blend in perfectly into that specific scene.
The explicit detail Temime adds to costumes to make them perfect and the effort her and her team make shows what a driven and fantastic costume designer she is. She is the setter of tone in the Harry Potter movies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)