Unit 5

Unit 5 - Production Skills & Context

Context

For our Unit 5 we competed in the Royal Opera House Challenge to improve our production skills for future shows and projects.
The challenge was to create either a set, costume, marketing strategy or a hair and make-up look for the ballet Romeo and Juliet. The challenge also gives us the opportunity to dive into an area that we wouldn't particularly choose to do as a full time job but still peeks our interest. We can also learn how to apply the techniques that we use in this challenge to production arts and technical theatre. Through this we also learn what it is like to work for a client and to listen to what they want as well as putting our own creativity into the design.

Research

Costuming

The first area we explored during our practical class was costuming. We were given half an hour to create a male and female two-dimensional costumes out of tissue paper. We had created a mood board during a previous lesson with colours that we thought were linked to the story of Romeo And Juliet. We learned about texture and different fabrics and how this can works for costumes, but can also be restricting for the dancers.
After that we created a "costume" using scraps of fabric and a mannequin. We were given about twenty minutes to do this. We were supposed to do this in pairs, but I ended up doing it on my own which I didn't mind. When the time was up we discussed how functional our creations were. We talked about restriction and how the dancers need to be able to do certain movements.

Set design

Our second area was set design. We started of by getting the assignment to create a 8 cm by 8 cm box made out of foam-board. I initially thought that this wouldn't be too hard but it actually was. We had to cut out the square pieces using a craft knife and then glue them together. It was quite hard to get the pieces to all be the exact same size. This made putting it together harder too, as some of the pieces didn't line up and formed gaps. After everyone had assembled their cube we assessed each individual box. We learned that you have to consider the thickness of the material your using and which sides will touch which to get a perfect cube. In the beginning the creating of the box didn't make much sense to me, but after the explanation it did. I learned that you have to be extremely precise when it comes to set design as one millimetre will become much bigger in real life, so of you have one centimetre too much, it will affect the whole set when it gets built to scale. 

After learning all this we got another assignment to create a small box staircase. We learned how to plan this out but didn't get very far on the actual making of the staircase as the class was almost over.

Royal Opera House

During our research period we went to The Royal Opera House to look at the costumes and sets that they had on display. Our teacher explained some of the techniques that are used to create the sets. I was very interested to see bits and pieces from professional costumes to get inspiration for my own piece. Although there were more female costumes than male, I could still work with the pieces that were on display.

Something that sparked my interest was the detailing on the costumes, especially the male ones. I liked how intricate it was and wanted to incorporate that into my costume to make it feel more like it would fit in within Royal Opera House standards. Something else that stood out to me was the usage of gold within the male costumes.

Another thing that was displayed were the different types of netting that are used to make the tutu's. This was interesting to me as I was thinking of making a tutu for one of the characters. I eventually scrapped that idea after seeing how hard and intricate it is to create a tutu. 

  

Planning

Once we had done some basic research for all the different categories we had to start planning what we wanted to create for the challenge. As I already had some skill in sewing but wanted to develop this more, I decided to got for the costume category. This meant that I had to sketch costumes for three different characters and execute one of them.
The first thing I did was divide my portfolio into different sections; History of ballet costumes - Romeo and Juliet: The Ballet - Character Research - Sketches - The execution process.
I tackled each section one by one to get an optimal amount of knowledge about the subject and to keep everything organized.

I searched online for the history of ballet costumes and wrote down the information into a Word document so I could later write it down in my portfolio in my own words. I also searched for pictures that would spark interest and for the reader and that would clarify some of the terms that I used in my writing.




For the Romeo and Juliet: The Ballet piece I found my pictures first. I wanted to show how companies differentiate from each other by using different colours and textures to identify the characters. I decided to write something about the music that is used in the ballet, the choreography and of course a brief summary of the story itself. Although I wrote about different aspects of the ballet, I still wanted to keep the theme of costuming coherent through my portfolio.

After the main research of the ballet I needed to decide which characters I would want to create sketches, and later on, a full costume for. Something that I was planning to do from the start was to choose a character that wasn't as big as Romeo or Juliet. I also knew that I wanted to dabble in creating menswear so the characters that I decided on making sketches for were: Mercutio, Lady Capulet and Juliet.
Now that I had picked three characters, I needed to do more in-depth research on them. I created a mind map for each character, displaying their personality traits as well as other characteristics that came to mind when I thought of them. Each of them had a different style of mind map for example; Mercutio's mind map was very boxy and with straight lines connecting the small boxes to the big one. Juliet's mind map was a lot more flowy and less angular to portray her youthfulness. Another thing that I added to each character's page was pictures of the costumes that other companies have used.

During the process of the character studies I already started drawing some sketches. Although this was not in the planning, I did let it happen because I was a afraid that I might lose the idea if I didn't sketch it right in that moment. Knowing that I had three characters to design for, I allowed myself to have multiple weeks to do this as I can't control my creative flow.


After I had sketched for all of my characters I had to pick one sketch, this was one of Mercutio's designs, and start to think about buying the fabrics and trimmings. I knew what type of fabric I wanted and made a rough estimation of how much fabric I would need to create the costume. By using Google to find the nearest fabric store I set a date to go there to have a look around for the fabric, trimmings and buttons. Fortunately, the store had the exact fabric that I was looking for as well as the trimmings and buttons.

Now that I had my fabric I needed to create a pattern for a jacketed sew it. I planned for this to take up most of my week and allowing for it to go wrong as well as I had never done this before.
Something else that needed planning was having time with a model so I could see how the jacket would fit on a person. I got in touch with a friend and agreed multiple occasions for him to try on the jacket and give commentary on the fit and look of it as well as getting a mannequin to put the jacket on when the model was unavailable.
One of the last parts that needed planning was the taking of the photo's/recording the video that would be send of to The Royal Opera House.

Problem solving

As most projects come with some problems to tackle, mine did as well. 

One of the more frustrating parts of the portfolio was that it was kept in a room that we weren't always able to access. This made it hard for us to work on the project as times a we couldn't always take our work home with us. We resolved this problem by storing our portfolio's in a different room which we did have access to. 

Another thing that I had not taken into consideration is that I had to hand-sew everything because I do not have a sewing machine at my home in London. This made the sewing process a bit longer but after I got the hang of it again it went pretty quick. 

Something else that I had to tackle was that the first jacket I created didn't fit properly due to the pattern. The first pattern was based off of a denim jacket but it was too ill-fitted on the shoulders and too baggy everywhere else. Due to this I had to think quickly and realized that my sister has chefs jackets that would work perfectly. Using the chefs jacked I created a new pattern. Fortunately I still had enough fabric left to create a new jacket. I managed to do this within a few hours as I had some experience with the cutting and sewing of the precious jacket. The second version had a way better fit overall. 

The last thing that didn't go exactly according to plan was the fact that my model wasn't there on the day that we took the pictures. I would've liked to send in some pictures of how the jacket looked on a human as well but I settled for ones that we took with the jacket on the mannequin.

My final piece:

My Royal Opera House Design Challenge Video:

The feedback that I received from the judges:

Evaluation

During the process of designing a costume for the Royal Opera House Challenge I realized that I could have done a lot of things differently. Some of these things are completely logical thinking about them now for example setting a period for me to be creative. When I was not able to produce something in that amount of time I would be disappointed in myself and would stress about the time that I would have left to complete the designs. For future projects I would just let my creativity come in and make time whenever it feels right to do so. Another thing that I would do next time is too either rent a sewing machine or plan time for me to use the sewing machine at the college. This would prevent me from stressing over having to hand sew everything. This would also make the design look cleaner by having flatter and more equal seams. Something else that brought me some unnecessary stress was the amount of gold trim that I had, or rather the lack of it. Although my calculations for the fabric itself were good, the ones that I made for the gold trim were not. Due to this I didn't have enough to cover the front seam. Even though the jacket looks alright without it, I feel like it would have given it a bit more of a luxurious look if I had put trim along that seam. One of the last things that I could have improved was the positioning of the buttons. These were not as perfectly  aligned as I wanted them to be. Next time I will definitely take more time to make sure that the buttons are in the correct place. The final thing that I would want to be different the next time is to have an actual model for the photoshoot as well as a mannequin. By having this it shows that the costume is actually wearable and it gives more interesting photo's as a person can position themselves in a way that shows off the costume best. It would also help by making my vision truly come to life.