This explains how I made the Golden Stag mask for the finale of Head Over Heels, a film we were allowed to make for streaming (instead of the usual stage show) because of the Covid 19 Pandemic. (Last time to stream is 6/18/21-6/20/21!)
Continue reading Making the Golden Stag Mask for Head Over Heels (Diablo Valley College, 2021)
I don’t know if this would have come as a surprise to me if it were not 2020-2021 when we went from the idea of doing Head Over Heels as a first part of Fall semester stage musical, to a film production taking up the whole Spring Semester and only premiering for streaming download this June of 2021 (final weekend of streaming is 6/18/21-6/20/21), but I did not realize until we were a week or two into filming that there was supposed to be a lion in this show. For a long time I did not have a script (while we were getting the OK for making a film) and I did most of my designs only having seen a “Slime Tutorial” of a production taken from dodgy angles before putting pen to paper. So when I was asked a week into filming what the Lion costume was going to look like, my reaction was “What Lion Costume?”
Continue reading Lion Costume for Head Over Heels (Film), Diablo Valley College, 2021
The masks for the chorus of Head Over Heels (Film, 2021 Diablo Valley College) were made by sewing a cloth cover which had been drawn with sharpies to a KN95 mask. You can see the images below of the cloth covers before application to the masks. If you want to make a similar mask you can print out these pages and use them with a light box to see and draw out the images to replicate or adapt these designs.
Continue reading Making Masks for the “Head Over Heels” ChorusSince Covid has made close interpersonal time with people who are not members of one’s own household a problem, coming in to the costume studio just for measurements, or asking a friend to come over to do measurements, are potentially a hazard.
While some brief interpersonal time may be unavoidably needed for a costume fitting, for the duration of the current plague we want to make this sort of thing as minimal as possible.
One of the ways performers can help is by learning to take accurate measurements of oneself at home.
Continue reading Measuring Yourself for Costume Construction
I had the good fortune to get funding to purchase 25 sewing machines to loan to students who are stuck learning online with my Sp 2021 costume design class. I discovered last March when we went on lock down for Covid-19 that only 2 of my 30 students last Spring had sewing machines at home. One had purchased one before the lock down, and another did so as soon as we were all sent home for the duration of the semester. All the rest had none.
These renderings are for our upcoming musical at Diablo Valley College for Spring 2021. We will be filming it instead of playing it live, and it hopefully will be downloadable in pay per view in May 2021, and filming in March and April. All costumes will include masks and much of the filming will take place outdoors. I am currently inventing types of masks that can work as parts of costumes, which I will post about in detail shortly . Principals will have clear masks of two types, while the chorus will have cloth masks.
UPDATE!: So, as of this week the test puppets were approved as the finished size, so the shadow puppets we are making will be done with 1 sheet of foam core (Ariadne, Theseus & Ship) or 2 pieces (Dionysus, Leopard & Minotaur). I have designed these for the “Ariadne’s Story” portion of the film version of Kathleen Normington’s [Dreamer] Project: an Undocuplay we are doing under her direction. (Images of my designs are available in printable PDFs below, or can also be accessed at Google Photos: The Dreamer Project.) Based on what was done in the previous stage play version at SJSU most of the shadow puppets were about the size of a sheet of foam core or slightly larger. The puppets will be used with rear lighting or projections on our scrim in our PAC Mainstage Theatre and filmed.
Continue reading How to take the Shadow Puppet Renderings and Use them to make the shadow puppet Prototypes for [Dreamer] Project: an Undocuplay
“The Magazine of Magic” vol. 4, 1916 is a copyright expired how to magazine of the 1910s graciously shared for free download in Google Books. They have also volumes from 1915, 1917, 1920 and 1921. This snippet can be found by searching for “Quick Change” in volume 4.
This was an answer I made to a letter sent to me back in the 1990s when the Costumer’s Manifesto site was new, Here is the original Question: Dear Professor Maginnis, I’m trying to determine why people have embraced “retro” style right now and whether it’s a manifestation of a larger trend or perception. I’m trying to go beyond Faith Popcorn’s analysis that we are embracing anything to do with nostalgia because we are ambivalent about the political uncertainty and technological innovations in our world. Can you suggest some books or articles that address this topic?
I think that Popcorn is essentially correct, that the overwhelming dependency on fashion revivals that seemed to kick in during the 1980’s, and which we haven’t lost since, is a reflection of the backlash against change that began around that time, but I would agree with you that it is far more than that.
Continue reading Comments About Vintage Fashion and Fashion Revivals
