00:00The first time Michael tried on the suit, it was kind of like, he's back.
00:03It's showtime.
00:06The portal is open and Beetlejuice is back, along with the Dietz family,
00:10joined by Jenna Ortega as Lydia's daughter Astrid. To clothe his larger-than-life and
00:16afterlife world, Tim Burton turned to his longtime collaborator,
00:20four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood.
00:24Hi, I'm Colleen Atwood, the costume designer for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
00:31I've done many films over the years. Tim and I have a real shorthand. We've worked together
00:36on many things. We're making our own rules, we're making our own worlds, and us pushing
00:40each other in a new direction was really the most exciting thing, and working with the cast,
00:45who I'd always admired. For me, the characters are the world. You start with them and you make
00:50them who they are. In approaching Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, I looked to the first movie,
00:55of course, for the things that are expected, starting with Beetlejuice.
00:59Not to mention the fact that you're talking to a dead guy. Now, what do you think?
01:03He was the main thing that was iconic. The original designer was a woman named Maggie Rogers,
01:08so keeping with the influence of her costumes, we used a really beautiful four-ply silk satin fabric
01:14from a company called Taroni in Italy. Michael really wanted to feel like he was a little bit
01:20older. So we kind of like broke down the clothes, so they looked a little more old manny, even though
01:25it was Beetlejuice. It felt a little less hyper real. Beetlejuice's other main costume is his wedding
01:31tuxedo, which we manufactured in a little bit different wool fabric than the initial one was.
01:38We kind of kept to the same vibe of that tux because it just looks like a rent-a-tux,
01:42which is kind of the idea. He has a couple little surprise changes within the story that we kind of had fun
01:49with. With so many characters and so much to create pre-production, the planning process before
01:54a movie begins filming is when Atwood begins crucial collaborations with the director and actors.
02:00My process with Tim is not like a lot of discussions, intellectualizing about story
02:05and character and all that, and I sort of just show him my fabrics, my ideas. He just says,
02:11go for it. With each actor, we sort of figure out their clothing and their character, whether it's
02:16Catherine or Winona or Jenna, because we sort of know what set they're going to be on, what they're
02:20going to be doing in the costume, because you have a script that you're working off of. In the art
02:25department, they start before us. They sort of show you the colors that the rooms are and things like
02:29that, and I don't look at one color for one person. I look at all the colors together and I apply them.
02:35Kind of diffused 70s colors. There's scenes in it with Soul Train and with different things where it's very
02:41hearkening to another time, and the sort of lighting and the elements of the underworld measured into
02:48that in a way that it all looked good that way. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Well,
02:54Winona's very stylish in a really low-key way, so we had a fun time collaborating with different
02:59things. She was very key on sort of keeping that vibe of somebody that wasn't comfortable in their
03:05clothes. Her first costume she wore when she has her TV show in this really great 80s dress with a
03:11cinched waist. It looked like a cheap old horror costume, and we love that. And then as she goes
03:17along, her casual wear is a real nod to Victorian sort of style with small waist, high collars,
03:23sort of very Lydia from the first movie. Whatever a character feels about clothes,
03:28it's a costume designer's job to make sure the actors can move and perform seamlessly in their
03:33costumes. She has super sensitive skin, so we had to do cashmeres and really luxe fabrics on her,
03:38kind of keep her comfortable in the clothes. I have a lot of people that help me with fabrics
03:43and shopping, so they go out and they see what they find. One of the challenges of it is just
03:47being able to find a quality and a fabric that you like, but have enough of it to make five costumes
03:53out because a lot of stores now don't carry big quantities of anything. And if you're using antique
03:58fabrics, you're really limited in it because there really isn't any more that you can go get.
04:02When I get the script initially, I don't break it down per se. I just kind of get a closet sort of
04:08idea built up. As I get deeper into it, as I have fittings, we kind of talk together and say,
04:13oh, this would be great for this scene, this would be great for that scene, but it's not like it's
04:17written in stone. When I initially signed up for this project, the things that I had in mind were
04:22making the clothes exciting for people today. So it was really fun to reunite with Winona, who I hadn't
04:29seen since Edward Scissorhands. See Jenna again, who I've worked with, they're as odd as Beetlejuice,
04:35the whole family. They're all like a puzzle of crazies. Don't ever say that name, Beetlejuice.
04:41Jenna and I have a great time together. We did Wednesday Addams together, so we have a comfort
04:45zone. We sort of went with her character as somebody that didn't really focus on clothes that
04:50much, kind of grunge in a way. Her Halloween costume was a departure from that. She's going as a
04:55Halloween date as Marie Curie, so I chose a fabric that looked like it might be radioactive. It kind
05:01of glows in the light and in the dark. It's very lightweight, and I knew that she'd be moving a lot,
05:06so it moves beautifully. It's a very sheer nylon and metal fabric that's really hard to sew, so the
05:12workroom was really happy to see it be finished. The floral dress that Astrid wears once she's met
05:17her boy, and she kind of goes over to see him again, so it's a little bit girlier than her other clothes.
05:22It's a beautiful old chiffon fabric that I had with little tiny sunflowers on it that I've always
05:28loved, but there was just enough to make a dress for Jenna out of it, so it was great. Nice girly
05:33look, not as tough as her other stuff. While that was going on, we were looking for stuff for the
05:38underworld to see what was out there that we could buy, rent, and acquire to sort of build these characters.
05:44Where is Beetlejuice? I think the introduction of my corpse person was really a fun element for us,
05:52because we didn't know how you get the body out of the box with something on it so it wasn't naked,
05:57and put it together, and then put together this stitched together person in a bridal dress that
06:02was sort of quasi-period that goes from one color to another was really a fun kind of fresh thing in
06:08Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Though they created many new pieces for the movie, Atwood and her team
06:12made sure each piece looked lived in, even for the dead. The sort of technique of making them and aging
06:19them and breaking them down was an overall challenge. You wanted to make them exaggerated reality, but you
06:26didn't want them to be showy in doll clothes. You wanted them to be real. So it was taking kind of
06:31exaggerated fashion a little bit and keeping it toned down and broken down enough so it looked like
06:37it's viable that it could be real people's clothing. There's two routes. You can pre-age the materials and
06:42then make the clothes, and then there's making the costume and then taking it and steaming it and adding
06:47aging to it with paint to make it feel like it's really been around, which is kind of what we did with the
06:53underworld clothes, which are much, much more beat up than the above-the-ground clothes. You could have a fun
06:58ways in a sort of quasi-dark humor way of looking at cause of death in a way that you could convey it
07:05in costume and makeup. That we were able to have people in the underworld, or they died while they
07:10were hiking and they fell off a cliff, or they had a spear through their heads. Could have been in show
07:14biz. We did moms. We did everybody. We sort of all embraced that from the start together and sort of
07:20had a great time with it. We had, I think, 200 people that we did that way. That's 200 out of 2,000 total
07:27costumes. When you're designing for people whose faces are blue and green and different colors of
07:32gray, you don't really want to put them in gray costumes much. You want to put them in color to
07:37kind of enhance the whole makeup and hair exaggeration that's going on in the room. This job required
07:44imagination and fun, which is just like a gift. Thinking outside the box, the main thing was kind
07:50of the shrinkers. Their heads aren't where normal heads are. Their arms don't move like normal arms,
07:54so we had to do a lot of R&D before we could actually make the costumes. So they didn't have
08:00a bump in the back where the actual real person's head was, and so they could actually move and see,
08:06because their faces are actually where the shirts are. So we had to put mesh in the shirts in order for
08:11them to see out when they were acting and running around. Their actual shoulders are on their head with
08:16the head, which is an old puppet trick. You know, it's still working. And I needed a lot of fabric to make
08:21their costumes loosely based on Century 21 real estate guys from the 70s. And I said, why don't we go,
08:27why don't you look in the upholstery world? Those old 70s bonded fabrics are like upholstery fabrics.
08:33And then we found it, and it was like three dollars a yard. Not only was it right, but it was really cheap,
08:38which was great. Even though Beetlejuice was in the 80s, there's definitely a timeless quality to it.
08:43It could be the 50s, it could be the 70s, which is what makes it really special. So you kind of have a lot of
08:49latitude, which was my approach to it. I didn't really feel like I had to be stuck in now. And I
08:55didn't feel like I had to be stuck in then. I could kind of make my own time with it. And Tim was very
09:00supportive of that. Luckily for Lydia and Astrid, Beetlejuice can be contained and life can settle
09:05down. When the film's finished, the clothes that we've manufactured are all owned by the studio and
09:10they have an archive space they keep it in. And then the rental stock gets returned to the rental
09:15houses. And then there's things that we call expendables, stockings and things like that.
09:19And we donate those to theaters or other charities. But for Colleen Atwood, the next costume adventure
09:25is just beginning. For me as a costume designer, the thing that keeps it exciting is that you never
09:31really know what your next project is. You never know what period you're going to be in. You never
09:35know who's going to be in it. You never know what's going to be required of you as a designer. You learn
09:40stuff all the time as you're designing. And it keeps it fresh and it keeps it alive, which is really
09:45one of the things that makes art and life exciting.
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