All language subtitles for Dressing the cast

and this we were going to look at

our wardrobe situation

if this interests you

I highly recommend checking out

our previous training series on pre production

where we looked more at the concepts

and design of the wardrobe

our characters in depth

our incredible wardrobe person was Bitsy Rennie

who is one of the most talented and versatile people

I've ever seen on a film set

because of the world that our film was set in

we couldn't show any modern clothing

so Bitsy made this huge wardrobe

with specialized

handmade costumes for the main cast

but she also made wardrobe

for all the extras that showed up

or that might have showed up

she also made shoes and feet covers

for the front row of extras

in case the camera could see their feet

now let's look at her dressing a few of the actors

and see what a difference that made

in creating these characters

let's start with William Bratt

who played the warrior garoon

William shows up to set looking you know

just like a regular dude

white T-shirt jeans

Bitsy slips a big tunic over him

kind of like the base of the costume

she has this amazing leather chest piece

with chainmail and stuff on it

buckles him up with his sword

which is actually a prop

as we saw in the last chapter

add these awesome faux fur accents

on his shoulders and his waist

and caps it off with these awesome wrist guards

and what looks like bound faux fur around his legs

all these pieces combined

becomes a very complete costume

that added a lot to this film

my other favorite costume

was for Andrew Tribunese character

Mark Holland

who is the political leader of these people

Bitsy made Andrew's wardrobe pieces

out of thicker fabric

which looked more regal and kingly

then Bitsy found these sticks

lacquered them

cut them with the saw

then strung them together with twine and glue

to make these amazing neck and crown pieces

I mean these are not simple costumes

almost all the main characters

had lots of little pieces

they added so much

this world that we are trying to create

one of the big burns I put on Bitsy

was that I wanted her to dress the entire cast

really quick

I knew that big production day with everyone

would be long

and so I didn't want everyone

to have to wake up really early and be tired

but also didn't wanna push back the start time too late

so she made pieces that she could throw on over the day

close of the extras

really quickly

of course you made sure to tell the cast

to wear plain

dark and muted colors of street clothes

we didn't have your neon green sticking out somewhere

when we showed up to set

Bitsy had her clothes rack set up and organized

I mean it was a sight to behold

let me tell you

I think she had 30 minutes to dress

all of the main cast

of all those complex pieces we looked at

and 30 minutes to dress all 20 to 30 of the extras

and all these people

from head to toe

she never done anything like this before

and neither did I

but I trusted her

and she delivered

her secret was

she had a brilliant strategy here

Betsy would explain to each cast member

how to put on their own clothes

and then she would just fine tune them

before they went to set

a lot of times

a wardrobe person

will meticulously dress each cast member

and on most productions

you know it's probably what needs to happen

but we intensely didn't want

a super tailored look to our clothes

so this slap dash method

worked perfectly for this production

I still can't believe she did all that

Bitsy also hovered around the monitor

in Video Village

while I was paying attention to the cinematography

in the acting

she was catching problems

with street clothes

sticking out from under costumes

because remember

it was bitter cold

so we felt this

kind of like

a necessary compromise

to let people layer their street clothes

with their costumes

and because of that

you know we had a lot of little problems pop up

that I wasn't looking for

and I probably wouldn't have noticed until post

and it's way too late

and expensive to fix it

then busy rainy

wore many hats

on the assurance hair

makeup wardrobe

she was even a featured extra

on top of it all

this could work on most sets

but it worked great on ours

largely because

Betsy's just incredible

remember that the wardrobe job is really threefold

one they create

or find the costumes in preproduction

2 they dress the cast on the day

3 they watch Video Village

to make sure that everything is still fitting

the way it should

and make any changes when necessary

many low budget short films

don't even have a wardrobe person

but for this project

we absolutely needed Bitsy

to create and find these incredible costumes

to dress 30 people

head to toe in an hour

and to spot and fix wardrobe issues

all day on set

next we'll look at makeup

which busy also applied

to everyone

during the same few minutes

that she also dressed them