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WPI Technical Theatre Handbook: Documents
 
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Documents

The costume designer, if working solely in a design position, will typically need to produce several documents so that the rest of the costume crew may acquire or make the costumes. These documents, ranging from simple sketches and notes to color sketches and pictures, are the most important means of communication between the costume designer and the rest of the design staff. Figure 2.4 shows a typical costume sketch.

Figure 2.4: An example costume design sketch.
\begin{figure}\psfig{file=costuming/costsketch.eps,width=3.5in}\end{figure}

It is not uncommon for a costume designer to take or find photographs of costume styles they wish to replicate, and leave it in the hands of the seamsters and costume crew to come up with them. In other cases, a very specific design may be required, and the designer may go out of their way to make patterns or other detailed drawings indicating how the piece should be constructed.

It is very valuable to the actors and technical production staff to have sketches of the costumes available well before the production begins. The overall direction of the production can be a lot clearer in the minds of those on the production staff if everyone involved knows what all of the designers (including costumes) are working on.

In many smaller productions, the costume designer ends up working on the costume crew, or is the costume crew. Sometimes in these cases, much of the documentation process is ignored because it's just one person. This has the advantage of making the costume designer's job somewhat easier, but does not allow the rest of the production staff to have some sort of visual reference as to what direction the costume design is taking.


next up previous contents index
Next: The Set Up: Design Previous: Practicality   Contents   Index
Steve Richardson 2000-07-06

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