Life continues to be busy

This semester continues to be the most amazing one yet, After Henry V opened, I began working on a show for next Fall, Light in the Piazza. I am still so excited that I get to be the costume designer for this amazing musical. we have a really great team put together to work on this show and I feel so blessed to be a part of it.
other than that, I have been working on a Student Capstone film this semester called Without a Rope. The script is really great and included some challenges that I have never faced as a costume designer. after a semester full of pre-production, tomorrow is our first day of filming! I've been preparing for it for so long its a little crazy to think that its finally here. Now all that's left to do are any last bits of preparation I can, and then tomorrow its time for me to do my thing and make an awesome movie with an amazing crew!

The other really exciting thing that's been going on is my first real paying job doing costumes for film! I am currently the wardrobe supervisor for the film Adopting Trouble produced by Rare Legends Films. sometimes I still cant believe that I am working on a feature film. the crew is small, the script is hilarious, and the cast and crew is all amazing. this is the production company's first feature film, and I feel so blessed to be involved. we have been shooting for a few weeks now, and will continue to film for another month or so.

And that's really it as far as designing goes for me. Lately all my posts have been about recent shows and films I have been involved in, and that's pretty much because that's all I do.  this semester has been one of the busiest I have experienced but it has been so amazing, and the best part of it is still yet to come!

as a side note, I turned 20 last week! I spent my birthday with some great people but I've got to say it was really different having my birthday with Alex on the other side of the world. He sent me a really sweet email and once again I remember how lucky I am to be stuck with the best person o the planet as my twin. He had a good birthday in Australia, and my roommates and friends made my birthday great here in Provo. one of the weirdest things about my birthday, that I realized afterwards is that almost no one I spent my birthday with had ever met Alex. It reminded me of how many amazing friends I have made since August.

And that's it for tonight. these next few weeks are going to be busy, and great. If I can just make it through them and enjoy them, then soon enough I'll be blogging to you from London!

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.

I've never had so much to be thankful for

As the semester draws to a close and finals week begins, I cant help but think I have so much to be thankful for. This semester has been the best of my life. My classes were all amazing, I met so many amazing people, and had some really incredible opportunities. here are the projects that have been keeping me busy lately:

Mirror Portrait:
this was the student film that I designed the costumes for this semester, and I have to say, working on this film was a life changing experience. I learned so much, and accomplished something that I never would have been possible. When the whole process started I literally had no idea what I was doing. not a clue. but with a mixture of asking questions, working really hard, and pretending like everything was fine, I was able to end up with something that I was really proud of.  and I made the director happy, thats always a huge plus.

Henry V:
this is the play I was assigned to be the costume designer for at BYU this season. Ive been working on it for a couple months, and it opens in February. I will have to do a post just about this project sometime soon, because it has been an amazing experience so far, and I cant wait to continue working on it next semester.

thats really about it for now. it looks like Ive got some really awesome classes and projects lined up for next semester but Ill write about those when I know a little more. this is a lame post, I know. but its been WAY too long since Ive written and I felt like I needed to catch the blog up with where Im at in my life right now. So I will try to come up with some better posts in the near future.

Mid-Semester Craziness!

Well, its been a month since I posted last and I kept meaning to keep up with the blog but it just didn't really happen this month. so for anyone who is wondering, here is a little snapshot of what my life is currently like:

Class:
I am completely loving all of my classes. I was a little nervous about a couple of them, but I'm having a blast. I'm taking 15 credits and I'm in class/meetings for around 28 hours a week during a normal week, which keeps me super busy, but I absolutely love it.

Projects:
I just finished up assistant costume designing Sleepy hollow. It started touring to elementary schools last week, and will come back to BYU in 2 and a half weeks. It was super fun to work on, and since they still have to to tech rehearsals and stuff for the performances here on campus, I guess my responsibilities aren't actually done after all on this project. Mirror Portrait is a student film that I am designing the costumes for. the costumes aren't going to be super big or exciting necessarily, but I'm having a really fun time figuring out how to dress real people and figuring out who the characters are. we are going to film over two weekends in November which is crazy! I cant believe its coming up so fast! it is going to take crazy amounts of organization to figure out which costume pieces are in which shots and all of that, but the stress is something that I thrive on so I'm excited for the challenge. And last but not least, Henry V, which opens next semester is starting production meetings soon! I'm so excited, I have a little bit of an idea what the concept for the costumes is and I have been completely obsessing over it for the past few weeks, I cant wait to get started!

Friends:
I absolutely love living in an apartment. It definitely comes with different challenges than living with the dorms, but there are also so many things that I like better about it. my roommates are amazing, I seriously couldn't have found better girls to live with. over all our complex is fun too, we have made some good friends and we are really just having a blast here at liberty.

Family:
I miss my family of course, and I really miss Alex. it is so weird being here and having a whole life that he isn't a part of and hanging out with people that have never met him. sometimes its sad to realize just how far away he is, but I love getting his emails and over all, I'm just so excited for him and proud of him.

Well, that's about it. I've been busy with class, designing, and friends. I've met some great people and I miss my brother, but over all life is so great right now, I feel so blessed.

I Got To Talk To My brother!!!

So today I got to talk to Alex on the phone! He left the MTC to fly to Australia so he got to call my parents and I from the airport. He sounds like he is doing great. He is with about 7 other Elders I think, four of which are going to Perth with him. He told me more about the MTC, he asked me about living in an apartment, my classes, and was sure to remind me to stay away from returned missionaries. He said it was a little weird to be out of the MTC and in the real world and that he was sad to say goodbye to some of the friends he made but he sounds like same old Alex, although maybe a bit more talkative than normal since we havn't talked in a few weeks. I really do miss him a lot. I didn't realize how different this year would be without him. But he's excited and I'm super excited for him.

A new school year

So I really can't believe I haven't blogged about everything that has happened to me lately. It has been such a busy time, full of so much change, and I have just been putting it off. I guess the first big thing that has happened is that my twin brother Alex left on his mission. It was an amazing experience to finally have him leave because not only is this something I always knew was going to happen, but he got his call to Perth, Australia a long time ago and has just been waiting to leave. It was sad of course to know that I wouldn't be able to see my twin brother for two years, but I know he is going to have so many amazing experiences and I am just so exited for him. Dropping him off at the airport wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Of course it was sad but there were two other missionaries  that were going on the same flight as him to salt lake and seeing him go through security with them made me feel considerably better. We finally just heard from him which was so exciting.
The other huge thing that happened to me was coming back top BYU! I have seriously been waiting to get back to Provo since the day I left and I'm really bad to be back. I'm living in an apartment this year with some amazing girls. I am so excited to be living with them and I know I am going to have a blast. I is definitely weird being back though. Almost all of the guys i knew last year are on their missions now, so while I am so excited and proud of them all, I can't help but be pretty sad that things this year are definitely not going to be the same as last year. But although that's a little sad and I miss some of my friends and my brother a lot, I know that this year is going to be full of great opportunities for me and I can't wait to see what happens