Henry V

Designing Henry V has been quite a long endeavor, and now that opening night is upon us, I want to go back and take a look at the process that got me here.

It was probably a little under a year ago when I got my design assignment to work on Henry V. I was a freshman, and so excited. I knew nothing about the concept or director. the only thing I knew was that When I took a Shakespeare class in high school, Henry V was my least favorite of the plays we read.

Before this last fall semester began, I was told to sign up for TMA 401. this class is usually just for seniors, but I was told that in addition to the normal seniors taking the class, the cast and design team would be in the class. As a group we would be work shopping, adapting, and coming up with the concept for the show in the class.

about a month into the class, I got my first glimpse of what our director and teacher, Professor Jones, wanted this show to look like/ sound like, and it was this: ( p.s. I'm super sorry there's an F bomb in there. I know there is a clean version of the music video online somewhere but I couldn't find it.)

she particularly wanted me to take note of how the band was dressed. it is totally modern, but at the same time fits in with the civil war. now we obviously are not setting Henry V in the civil war, but she wanted me to think of how to create this same sort of effect with modern and medieval clothing. so she showed me this music video, told me the name of a designer to look up, made a few comments about combat boots, skinny jeans and skinny ties, and that was about it until production meetings started. I had lots of time to think all of that over, and did a ton of sketching. I researched medieval armor, listened to Some Nights about a million times, and got super psyched about where this show was going.

once production meetings started, I got to talk to professor Jones a little bit more about specifics. as the design process unfolded, I talked to her a lot about ways to differentiate between french and English characters. as well as upper and lower class. this is a children's show and all of the actors play multiple characters so I decided to differentiate the French and British through color, and the classes through style of clothing. the other big thing about this show that affected my designs was that it all had to be easily layered. so I had to think about the designs for all the characters in terms of layers.

so after lots of thinking,  I did my sketches:

These make up around a third of the designs, but were some of my favorites. quite a few designs changed as we went into the pulling and fitting phase of the show, but these ones all pretty much stayed the same.

Once winter semester began, it was time to start having fittings with the actors. these were a huge cause of stress for me. but some of them went better than others and I was able to see how these designs would really look, and I ended up pretty happy with how everything turned out. after quite a few fittings and alterations, screen printings and shopping trips, everything was almost done and it was time to take publicity photos and videos. I had never seen the show at this point, so it was a really cool experience to see it come together. And with that, I give you publicity photos/videos!!

And you can watch the publicity video HERE

After that, we finished all the costumes, had a dress rehearsal, and it was time for opening night, which was TONIGHT! Its sort of weird to think about, but in many ways today was one of the most important day of my costume designing career thus far. after all the hard work and worry (and maybe a few tears) my first show at BYU finally opened. and I am SO happy. It was seriously the coolest experience to see things that were just thoughts floating around in my head a few short months ago come to life. I feel so blessed to be able to work as part of such a unique collaborative team, and to help create the world of these characters.

And that's it! the Henry V stage of my life is over. I learned a lot, and looking back at it, there are things I would change, but this show and these designs are totally my baby. This makes it a little sad to be pretty much done with it all, but a relief as well. I have a lot more projects coming up, so it looks like I'm not slowing down, or even getting any time to catch my breath!

New Semester, New Projects, New Challenges

Winter semester is well under way, my schedule is finally finalized and just as busy as ever! This semester may very well kill me, but it looks like it might be the most amazing semester I've had so far. Im taking Costume Design, Scenic Design, a religion class, auditing a special topics costume construction, and the rest of my credits this semester are coming from the design projects I'm working on. speaking of design projects, here is the rundown:

Henry V:
This will be my first time designing costumes for a play at BYU. it opens in just a few days and I am so excited. I designed it last semester, and this semester we did all of the fittings and alterations. I have definitely had some ups and downs with this project. Because it was my fist time working with the costume shop as a designer, there have been some times where I honestly had no idea what I was doing and started doubting my ability to pull this off. So it took some time to figure out what I was doing, but now that I have a little better hold of everything, I think it is looking really great. I have been obsessed with the concept of this show since the beginning of last semester, and cant wait for it to open.

Without a Rope:
I am working on another student capstone film this semester. After working on Mirror Portrait last semester, I realized that I loved film and couldn't wait to design the costumes for another. Luckily, a friend of mine is directing one of the capstones this winter, and asked me to do the costumes for him. The main portion of the script is about the main character rock climbing. and there is enough blood, sweat, and rain to make my job really interesting and challenging. figuring out all of the versions of the same costumes Ill have to make at different states of dirtiness will be a little bit of a headache, but I am so excited about it. This project should be a blast! the script is great, it has a really good message, it is pretty ambitious but the crew we have is amazing, plus we get to make a movie! It will will be the highlight of my semester, up there with Henry V opening.

The Light in the Piazza
In about a week, I start my design project for next season, The Light in the Piazza. I will be co designing this awesome musical and am so excited to hear the directors concept. unfortunately I don't get the break I thought I would between Henry V and this show, but it will be really fun to design a musical, and I'll be sure to post updates on that as I learn more about it.

If I thought last semester was the best yet, it is going to be nothing compared to this semester. I'm not likely to get much sleep, but I have all of these amazing opportunities coming my way and I am really just so excited and thankful all the time that I get to do all of this.