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
01:26and how it rolls out.
01:28I mean, there's very many, many parallel things about the process of doing a collection
01:42and doing a film. In both senses, you're creating a world.
01:46But in films, sometimes you have more latitude as you're creating something
01:50within 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.
02:36If it's like a crowd of 400 people, for instance.
02:39And then we get everybody on camera for the day.
02:44And 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, in there for the close of the company.
02:53So 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.
03:01So it's like from four in the morning till eight at night,
03:04usually 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.
03:37You'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 through a very long day sometimes.
03:54Wednesday 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.
04:09And 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.
04:42Collaborating with the actors is key because the main thing about the costume, no matter what it is,
04:48for 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,
05:07but 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.
05:17He's an amazing artist without doing movies.
05:20He doesn't have to do movies. He does art.
05:22And 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,
05:34whether 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,
05:50but 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
06:21or 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.
06:46So, please wait a minute.
06:47All right.
06:48All right.
06:49So, thank you very much.
06:50We'll see you next time with our show.
06:51We'll see you next time on O.
06:53Bye bye.
06:54Bye bye.
06:55Bye bye.
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