costumes
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“This Was Like Designing for Six Different Leads and Six Different Backgrounds”: Costume Designer Mary Zophres on The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel and Ethan Coen have been making films for over 30 years now and, since the mid-1990s, costume designer Mary Zophres has been a key part of creating their distinct aesthetic worlds. Working consistently with the fraternal directing team, Zophres has provided some iconic looks, among them the puffy jackets of Fargo (1996), The Dude’s sweater and bathrobe in The Big Lebowski (1997), and the prison garb of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), to name just a few. The designer’s resume also includes the delightfully quirky and punkish costumes of Ghost World (2001), which have inspired countless young women, […]
by Abbey Bender on Jan 15, 2019 -
So You Can’t Afford a Wardrobe Designer: Costume Design for Independent Film on a $500 Budget
“Microbudget filmmaking” is a bit of a misnomer considering the broad spectrum “microbudget” entails — one producer’s $5,000 line item is another’s entire operating budget. In a perfect world, we’d all have sufficient funds to hire the best and brightest among us and no project would be too scrappy. Unfortunately, when it comes to independent productions, sometimes that old chestnut still applies: if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I learned this lesson the (somewhat hard) way when I directed my first feature, A Feast of Man. With an operating budget of $15,000 – a combination of […]
by Caroline Golum on Aug 21, 2017 -
No Mimes, Please! Soderbergh Recuts Antonioni’s Blow-Up
“For legal reasons, all of the footage with the mime troupe will have to be excised,” writes MGM “executive receptionist Tureen Patarga” to one Michelangelo Antonioni about his movie, Blow-Up. “Apparently one of the striped shirts worn by a cast member was originally created by the noted designer Hermoine Girth-Schnitt and was not cleared for use by the costume department.” Any on-set producer, particularly on a low-budget picture with lightly-staffed departments, has experienced that morning-of irritation: “Hey, is this okay to use? Can we clear this?” Usually it’s a rock-star poster, a t-shirt, or some ambiguous knick-knack foregrounded in the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 29, 2015 -
“Pull the Threads until it Unravels”: Advice from TFI’s Fashion in Film Event
Director and cinematographer Christina Voros nicely summed up the difference between the fashion industry and the film industry at the Tribeca Film Institute’s Fashion in Film event Friday: “Fashion is sort of antithetical to film. The fashion industry is all about making sure the seams don’t show, that every thread is in place. Documentary is about pulling on the threads until it unravels.” She was speaking of the process of filming her second documentary feature The Director, about Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini, but the sentiment was reflected in films and discussions throughout the two-day event. At first blush the […]
by Randy Astle on Sep 24, 2013
