00:00Hi, I'm Colleen Atwood, a costume designer for film, theater, and television.
00:19I always loved art. I was always, like, really felt like some propensity with visual arts.
00:26But I had no idea that costume design existed, so that came into my life much later.
00:31I met on Edward Scissorhands. I came in for an interview for the job, and Tim and I talked a little bit,
00:37and then he just asked me in the room if I wanted to do the job, which is very unusual.
00:42Usually, you know, you go through an interview, and then you go,
00:47I wonder if I'm going to get it, you know, like 20 other people are behind you in line.
00:51But in this case, Tim said, do you want to do the job? And I go, yeah.
00:54And then we just kind of have an easy way of communicating with each other.
00:58Edward was somebody Tim had been living with for a long time in his life,
01:02so he was very familiar with the character when I started.
01:05And then I had to make that idea work practically
01:09and collaborate with making the scissors and everything
01:12so he could really be a real person besides just a sketch.
01:16In other cases, Tim doesn't show me the sketches and then, you know, I see them after.
01:22So it just depends on the job and, you know, how many characters there are and how it rolls out.
01:28I mean, there's very many, many parallel things about the process of doing a collection and doing a film.
01:42In both senses, you're creating a world, but in films sometimes you have more latitude
01:48but you're creating something within a pocket of history or fantasy.
01:53It doesn't have to necessarily be a commercial endeavor.
01:56It just needs to be inspirational.
01:58I think when you receive the script for the movie and you sort of read it the first time,
02:03you see the movie in your head, like what you think it's going to be.
02:06And I don't think it matters to me whether it's a historical, you know, rendition or a fantasy.
02:14I think it's both world-building kind of creative process.
02:19My normal workday, say on a movie where I have a huge crowd scene, like in Dumbo or Masters of the Air,
02:27like I start at like four in the morning and we start dressing the background artists.
02:32And then by around eight, we're dressing the principals, if it's like a crowd of 400 people, for instance.
02:39And then we get everybody on camera for the day and then I go back to the workroom to check on everything that's being manufactured.
02:49And then I usually come back and close, you know, and they're for the close of the company so I know what's going to happen the next day.
02:55If you're in the room, it's always better than just getting it second hand.
02:59So that's normally kind of the process. So it's like from four in the morning till eight at night, usually seven or eight is the average workday on a feature.
03:09You are in charge of 35 planes and 350 air crewmen.
03:14I think the really thing that costume design is by the world conceived as this sort of glamorous world
03:23where you're just shopping in all the best stores and going and buy fabrics and somebody's making it.
03:28Meanwhile, you're like washing people's shoes, putting on their socks.
03:33You're actually making things. You're carrying stuff around.
03:36You're traveling all over the world with two suitcases by yourself to go do a fitting somewhere that you've never been before.
03:43And so you have to have a spirit of a physical, actual job along with the stamina to keep it going.
03:52through a very long day sometimes.
03:55Wednesday Adams is here. It's Adams with two D's. Like padded room.
03:59It was really great to dress a teenage character in Wednesday because with Jenna, you know, she was a very special character.
04:06It's a character we've seen recreated over the years. And I really wanted to leave all that aside and sort of do a different version of Wednesday.
04:14In the beginning with the scene with the swimming pool, we gave a nod to the white collar floral dress.
04:19It's like kind of the iconic Wednesday Adams that we remember from the movie and from the sixties.
04:25But I really wanted to create a kind of modern take on Wednesday Adams and the world around her of Never, Nevermore.
04:34Collaborating with the actors is key because the main thing about the costume, no matter what it is, for sure you want it to look good and you want it to suit, tell the story, but it has to be part of them.
04:54It has to become not costume but clothes, no matter what period it is.
04:59So it's really important that the actor is comfortable in the costume or some cases uncomfortable depending on what they're doing, but comfortably uncomfortable because they have a really long work day.
05:11Tim is the person I really admire the most in the industry as far as being an artist himself.
05:18He's an amazing artist without doing movies. He doesn't have to do movies. He does art.
05:23And he creates the spirit of the characters he creates is so special.
05:27And as the years have gone by, it's been really beautiful to see how young people of all ages connect with Tim, whether it's from 30 years ago or today, he still resonates with humanity, which is a really amazing gift of his.
05:43It's really nice to be able to work with somebody a lot of times because it does, you know, it's always a new experience, but it's nice to sort of have a shorthand.
05:53Now, let's play dolls.
05:56I did a movie a long time ago called Lemony Snicket, and each costume I created the fabrics for and the costumes.
06:02And that was like one of my fondest memories of construction. I've done it a lot on Tim's movies, too.
06:08And then you have little characters that you work with that you remember from movies fondly, like whether it's a little day player or Edward Scissorhands.
06:16I mean, you just kind of remember the characters in the world every once in a while when you see something or when you see a movie that you've done 10 years after you've done it.
06:25You connect in a different way with it than you do when you've kind of been so close to it while you're doing it.
06:31Bye.
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