Have You Ever Been Tied Up?

Have you ever been tied up?  Not in the 50 Shades of Grey kinda way but in the fly me to the moon kinda way?

Maybe not, although… you may have felt the pinch of a climbing harness in your past.:)

D is for duct tape.

Click here are get some instruction on how to make a” Judy” of yourself with duct tape!

I love duct tape or as I have always called it “Gaffer’s tape”. I grew up in the film industry so we always had silver rolls of duct tape around the house that we used to close, hold or fix just about anything. I didn’t even know that it was called ‘duct tape’ until I went to buy some after I moved away from home.

#Future Proofing… Are you ready for the future?

Last weekend I attended the Digital Days; The Future is Now seminar, at the Electronic Arts Campus in Burnaby, British Columbia.  It was enlightening, eye opening and wonderful.  When I signed up I wasn’t sure if all the talks were going to be about something I was involved in; meaning did this have anything to do with costumes?  As I sat through each talk, I realized that even when it was completely focused on other departments there are still so many little bits that directly relate to many aspects of our department.

Walkie Talking Around

“Yeah, breaker one-nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck; you got a copy on me, Pigpen? C’mon.”

C. W. McCall, Convoy

There are quite a few film blogs on walkie-talkies.  So I why am I writing another?  Well, it was shown to me the other night by one of my day calls that we need to have just one more… one that maybe just us costumers are reading.

We don’t use trucker talk on the walkies.  But I do think it would be tons of fun to say:

“Breaker-Breaker, this here’s Costume Chick, you got your ears on Camera Dude?”

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Mark Twain

Director Steven Spielberg accidentally stepped into the frame of one of his first movies, a made-for-television production called Duel. When the film was released on DVD, Spielberg left the mistake in to remind him of the imprecise nature of film making. Link

When I was a kid I would watch movies curled up beside my father on the sofa, eating Ritz crackers and drinking ginger ale. This was the time of VCR’s so we could rewind when required. When he saw an error he would ask, did you see that? Then rewind the scene and we would watch it again… and again, till I could point it out to him. It was our game. I loved it and still do… much to the dismay of my husband! Hey, don’t all people watch TV like me? I guess not.

I receive an email last week from a new follower to my blog. This person asked me to give him some pointers for costume continuity. I took a look at what the Internet had to say and there are some wonderful descriptions already so I will link to one of them, and also give a few pointers of my own!

“If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.”

Alfred Hitchcock

 

 

Standing on set and watching the scene is just one part of the job as On Set Costumer.

Being able to see the monitors can sometimes be difficult due to either the location or the amount people around them. I often try to stand behind/near the cameras while rolling; this allows me to watch the entire action and what the actors do during the scene.

“There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.”

Dr. Seuss

I thought this was a good one to pass on.

Lots of you may already know about the DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) setting that is an option in your camera.  However, for the few like me who had no idea about this function, this will make a fabulous difference to your crazy mornings.