Costume Designer

The End of the Road

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , ,

After months and months of the most intense process I have ever put myself through, Kalopsia comes to an end. I’m so pleased I had the chance to throw myself at such a rewarding project at the very end of my degree.

I took on a role which was completely new to me. Being Costume Designer has been extremely challenging at times, exhausting, time consuming and emotionally exhausting.

But OVERALL, more than anything it’s been an absolute pleasure. Seeing the professional photographs and hearing people’s kind feedback have made the entire experience so worth the hours of work I have thrown at it through the process. It has taught me that I am perhaps more creative than I first thought I was.

I couldn’t submit my final post without mentioning what a wonderful team I have worked with whilst creating Kalopsia. As The Pin Hinge Collective I feel we really put everything we had into our show and I’d really like to think that our hard work came across.

Our show changed and developed a lot during the process as we continued to better and fine-tune our understanding of who we are as a company. I feel that we began the process trying to capture too many ideas and by the end of the process we had sieved our ideas right down to create a much more clear and concise performance.

We sculpted the show to fit with our company’s ethos. The show remained about what makes us human and what makes us each unique individuals.

If we had the chance to begin the process again, I would try to balance my production role with my secondary acting role more. I feel like I could have spent more time working on my character and making sure I really knew her inside out. I would also have tried to come to a final show idea sooner than we did, I feel that if we had had more time to work on our final idea, our show could have been even stronger.

Thank you to the rest of The Pin Hinge Collective for helping me to finish my degree with a bang! I really couldn’t have done it without the lot of you. ph1

Ultraviolet Spaceman

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , , , , ,

Tom, the Handyman, wants to be an engineer. He wants to build something brilliant.

His delusion has taken the form of a physical theatre scene with him as the spaceman protagonist.We have spent weeks creating a beautiful piece of space movement and I wanted my costume design to match the movement we have created.

A pair of white overalls…

I knew that Sam would need to be able to move freely in his costume, so I had to consider this in my design whilst maintaining my desired appearance for the spacesuit. I also wanted to echo his ‘real life’ costume by having his spacesuit as a pair of white overalls similar to the blue ones he wore in the original scene.

I found some sew-on space patches on eBay which I thought might add a nice finishing touch to the white spacesuit.

I drew out a design as I thought about how I might like the costume to turn out:

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I found a very reasonably priced pair of white overalls on eBay and bought the sew-on patches. I stitched the space patches and union jack patch to the suit by hand.

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UV Stars…

Our Stage Manager, Dan suggested using UV paint to create star gloves and a galaxy suit for our Choreography, Holly. I found a bulk pack of black mime gloves and began creating the UV gloves with fabric paint.

For our technical trial session, I painted one glove with the UV fabric paint with the white paint. Under the ultraviolet light the white paint was difficult to see. I tried painting over the star design with yellow paint and the star showed up very well under the lighting.

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For Holly’s galaxy costume I bought a pair of black leggings and a black long-sleeved top and painted star designs all over them in the UV paint. I added a black mask and gloves which I had also painted. The design looked effective under the ultraviolet light. The stretchy leggings and top also made it easy for Holly to move.
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The ultraviolet fabric paint costumes took a long while to make but I feel that the end result really made the hard work pay off. The gloves stood out against the black background and Holly’s costume shone under the lighting. I’m pleased the paints worked as I hoped they would.

 

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The Finished Spacesuit

 

Howard Rees-Jones, G. (2017) Kalopsia. Lincoln: George Howard Rees-Jones Media.

 

 

A Cape Fit for a Queen

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , , , , , ,

Beth is a very self-assured character, she is good at her job but she knows it. She works extremely hard to gain sales and eventually it all pays off when she wins the promotion for the role at head office.

We decided that Beth’s delusion needed to show how she sees herself. We initially had the idea of having Beth’s delusion showing her as the president of the United States. We wanted to get her high self-confidence across to the audience and also her big ambitions.

We really struggled to imagine how we could make the president delusion visually interesting for the audience, so we started again. We knew we wanted the delusion to show Beth achieving greatness, so we started looking up powerful women throughout history and it was decided…

Queen Elizabeth I was our lady.

We watched a Youtube clip of Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I on horseback. We were inspired to use a Queen Elizabeth I speech as Beth’s words of acceptance and delusion after winning the promotion.

I began thinking about the costume for Beth’s delusion. I was inspired by images of Queen Elizabeth I and decided that a cape with some form of Elizabethan ruff would be suitable and easy to put on in front of the audience. It was this specific picture of Elizabeth which inspired me to begin designing the cape.

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I loved the height of the cape behind Elizabeth I’s head and stated thinking about how I could design something similar.

After finding a long satin skirt which had already been used as a cape, I was able to think about how I would apply a high lace collar to the material. I looked at Pinterest for inspiration, it helped me think about the design of the lace collar and how I would get it to stand up by itself.pinterest

 

Pencil to paper…

I drew out how I wanted the cape to look and though about how I was going to get each element of the cape to work on the stage. I wanted it to be possible for the cape to be put on in front of the audience, so I took into account that Emily would have to wear her office costume underneath. My design ended up looking like this:

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With the beginnings of the cape already donated from a local theatre’s costume store, I was able to start creating the lace collar.

I began with two wire coat hangers, an old lace curtain and a few broken pieces of jewellery.

cape beginning

From here, I shaped the wire into the shape I wanted and then stitched the wire onto the cape.

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After a lot of sewing, the cape was beginning to take shape. (With a little help from my feline friends)

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I sewed on individual pieces of jewellery and reinforced the lace collar to ensure that the cape would stay in place during the speech.

I’m very pleased with how the cape turned out, it was very simple and quick to put on. I’m pleased the design worked and resembled Queen Elizabeth I’s fashion.

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Kowkshsee (2011) Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett), Tilbury Speech [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Bq1h728X0 [Accessed 6 May 2017].

Howard Rees-Jones, G. (2017) Kalopsia. Lincoln: George Howard Rees-Jones Media.

A Clear Picture and a Notebook

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , ,

With the script written, characters established and delusions sorted, it was time for costume creativity to commence.

It all began with a glossy new notebook…

After creating a table to record everybody’s clothing and shoe sizes, I was ready to start getting ideas for office wear and delusion costumes down on paper.

notebook

 

I wrote down what I needed to source for each character’s office wear and delusion costumes. I began to find out which items we had already and what items we could source as in kind donations. I have started searching online for the items that had to be bought, looking for the best possible prices to keep costs at a minimum.

Now I have begun to think about what I will need, I will be able to think more closely about what each specific character will wear in the office based on their personality.

Theatre Company Funding- Arts Council England

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer ,

The Pin Hinge Collective are a small scale theatre company and a not for profit organisation. Arts Council England provide funding opportunities for up and coming companies in the UK. They look to support artists, organisations, artists and events which help them to achieve their mission to provide ‘great art and culture for everyone.’ (Arts Council England, 2017)

If The Pin Hinge Collective were going to apply for government funding, we would apply through the Grants for the Arts scheme. This is a programme aimed at individuals, arts organisations and people who use the arts in their job, it is Arts Council England’s open access funding programme. Through this programme they offer grants ranging from £1,000 to £100,000. On the Arts Council England website, it states that they will only fund up to 90% of the project. We would have to fundraise some of the money ourselves. We have been raising funds over the last few months for our upcoming show, Kalopsia. We held a themed quiz in a local pub where we charged for entry. We have also been selling raffle tickets for the opportunity to win a luxury stay from which we managed to raise £250.

Arts Council England (2017) Grants for the Arts. London: Arts Council England. [online] Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/grants-arts [Accessed 28 April 2017].