Happy Little Helper

Over-locking as though my life depended on it! 

Also tonight I helped again with the Mondrian costumes as the filming is tomorrow and there was still a lot to make. Grace had adapted lots of jersey tops, adding geometric detailing to the midriff and she was busy making these into leotards as well as working on unitards. I had to take the tops she had fitted and over-lock them to the right size and hem them with over-locking.

To be honest, I found this experience quite a learning curve. Grace told me to cut along the chalked lines up the side seams and arms flip them right sides together and then over-lock up that edge. There was so much to be made that quality, I feel, was challenged. There was no time to make sure the garment was symmetrical or the curves were smooth and so I just got on with it. These leotards are for background artists and therefore there is unlikely to be any close ups on the sewing but I realised through this how anal and precise I like to be which on this occasion was my problem!

I'm sure as a collective these costumes are going to look amazing! They are going to be wearing balaclava type hats with visors in, which'll be really effective I  think and reminds me of this Kylie video below!

Mondrian!

Today I went and helped a friend with measurements and fittings for the film she is designing for SDP. The film is inspired by the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian. Actors wearing black walk in lines representing the lines of the portraits while 3 primary coloured people dance in a manner representing their colour in the middle. For instance Red is representing anger and fire and so has to dance like this. It is all very abstract but really interesting to watch.

I have rarely been on a film set/rehearsal before. It is a very different environment to the theatre which I am used to. I found the action a bit staccato because the cameras have to be moved to focus on different areas.

William Dudley and Trevor Nunn

This weekend has been dedicated to Shakespeare at the V&A and with that Tassie and I arranged to go and see 2 lectures, one by William Dudley, a British award winning designer and a conversation with Trevor Nunn, who was artistic director at the Globe.

Trevors Nunn's talk was mainly about how he approached Shakespeare plays, setting them in different times, working with the language etc, which was interesting but would have been more relevant to other SDP projects. William Dudley's designs are quite multi media based, he uses a lot of video and he showed us amazing animations and set designs he had produced on the computer.

The content was interesting but what I found these lectures helped to confirm that I am determined to do a postgraduate degree. I have been looking into this for quite some time and after doing such a practical undergraduate I would like to do a more academic masters, though I understand the difficulty of continuing onto something like this without a humanities degree. I don't know when I should do this because of money but one day I would be interested in studying History of Dress or Museum Studies I think.

Footloose!

This week I have been helping as a stage hand on the BU and AUCB production of 'Footloose'. I have been on stage right bringing on and off pieces of scenery. 

The atmosphere backstage was really fun and this has been great new experience for me. Backstage was very small and so I have learnt about when to stay out of the way and when not, for instance when there was a fast turn around. I have also learnt about little things you can do to help the actors that they really appreciate. I think these things will help me in the future with dressing and other theatre work that I might do.