design

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.

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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.

The finishing touches

Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager , , , , , ,

It’s just 2 weeks away from our performance now, and our print has been finalised and is being distributed!

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In regards to our flyers, I made the decision to have our design printed in different colours. I did this to ensure they were eye-catching and appealing to different people,  as whilst it is widely known that red reaches the back of the retina first (hence why I chose it for our poster design), different people are drawn to different colours based on their personality. This is in-keeping with the theme of individuality and expression running through our show, reflecting the idea that different people view the world very differently. I believe these colours all complement each other and stand out both on their own and in a set, and I hope to test this theory when we distribute them in town and around the university campus.

Our posters are beginning to pop up around the city; I have made sure that they are put in places relative to our target audience to ensure maximum reach and that this correlates with ticket sales – there’s no point putting them in places our audience will not visit! A prime location for our type of audience is independent coffee shops, and many owners have been very keen to put up posters and flyers as they are driven to help promote emerging companies/the arts!

 

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.

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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.

Show Name and Print Design

Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our show finally has a name!

Kalopsia

noun. The delusion of things being more beautiful than they really are.

We agreed that this Greek word applied well to our show as we wanted to show the side of love that isn’t glorified in cinema, the real, gritty, mundane, exciting, side of love. Kalopsia is what happens in film, our show aims to establish and combat that.

Now comes that all-important time to give our show a branding and a public-facing presence, as well as us as a company. We have sourced an in-kind designer to create our print for us, giving him designs we created ourselves for inspiration and allowing him to create the final image for audiences to see.

I mocked up some sketches of potential design ideas as follows:

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We had the idea of creating something that people associate with love, yet giving it a twist to show something less commonly seen in films, such as empty pizza boxes, tissues, remote controls, general mess, dirty underwear, etc.

However, the premise of our show changed somewhat during this process – we revisited the name ‘Kalopsia’ and its meaning and decided that rather than focusing exclusively on love as the form of ‘delusion’ we discuss, we wanted to look at the way people view their everyday lives and what delusions we imagine on a day to day basis, i.e. the way we perceive ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in, going back to the idea of reception theory that we discussed in our first rehearsal. Many of these situations within the narrative of our show will also focus on love, therefore we wanted to implement that into our print, yet also show more of an element of the human and humanity: each individual has their own delusions.

After being in talks with our designer regarding this, he sent us some mock-up images of potential designs:

 

We agreed that the anatomical heart both showed the idea of love, the idea of reality as opposed to the delusion (a cartoon heart – shown in the title) and the idea of humanity. We wanted to have the title of the show resembling a dictionary definition as we knew many people wouldn’t know what Kalopsia meant, and to tell them how to say it through phonetically breaking it up. We also agreed that having the definition under the title would also give people an insight into what the show was about, as well as adding a recognisable yet ‘quirky’ twist. From here, we are to finalise a design and get it completed, as well as creating the final copy and back of the flyers for our shows, and getting it all printed! We have set aside a printing budget of £100 which we will hopefully stick to, but since our designer was in-kind we have some leeway to go over this if needed.