The Great Gatsby

As you all know I am a costume and set designer, so naturally I get pretty excited about period films. The team at Bazmark have once again managed to peak the interest of movie lovers around the world with the release of The Great Gatsby. 

I am a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel and the 1974 film by Jack Clayton with the divine Mia Farrow as Daisy, so I await the Australian release of Baz Lurhmann's new film with anticipation. 

The film opens on the 30th of May, book yourselves in for a night of spectacle, glamour, drama and one of the greatest stories ever written. The irony of the American dream and that damn green light blinking across the water!  

Also I am pretty excited to see Gemma Ward grace our screens in this film! Love that girl!

Keen for some little facts about the Costume of the film?

Of course you are!

Total costume crew: 84
Total metrage of lace purchased from Solstiss (including plain lace, beaded lace and fabrics): 1400 (that’s 1.4km!!)
Total number of styles of individual lace purchased from Solstiss: 210
Total pairs of stockings/pantyhose/garterbelts from Fogal: 1,080
Total number of Prada party dresses: 40 (Uh, I die!)
Total items of men's formalwear and daywear produced for background talent by Brooks Bros.: 2,291
Total number of Brooks Bros. tuxedos: 200
Total number of Brooks Bros. bowties: 260
Total number of Brooks Bros. braces: 200
Total number of Brooks Bros. shirt collar studs: 200
Total number of Brooks Bros. silk knots: 200
Total number of Brooks Bros. daywear shirts: 150
Total number of Brooks Bros. tuxedo shirts: 200
Total number of Brooks Bros. three-piece suits: 55
Total number of Brooks Bros. boaters: 100

Watch The Great Gatsby behind the scenes video here and get excited! 

Images care of Bazmark and The Great Gatsby Facebook pages, and press releases from Roadshow.

Swamped

Hello, this is just a short and sweet post to let you know I am inundated with work and will be on a short hiatus. 

This is my busiest time of the year as The Adelaide Cabaret Festival opens very soon, so I am swamped. I am

busily organizing final details, having my pieces built, art finished, final sourcing, and back to back meetings in order to bring together the seven entertainment venues, two pop up bars, pop up restaurant, pop up cafeteria and garden space, function space, Artist bar, corporate functions designs, costumes, props and set elements for various artists shows, Shane Warne The Musical, the Reg show, anniversary Gala, Cabaret Gala and more.

Yep. I have five outfit posts, a travel diary, and a ton of other material ready to be edited to share with you, but I am not sure when I will get a sec to get them up, so please bare with me. Trust me, once Cabaret etc are up, I'll have some REALLY cool stuff to share in the way of behind the scenes! :)

 Follow me on instagram, facebook or twitter for regular behind the scenes updates, and of course pre-post images from the Josh Goot lunch on Friday (I am justifying going as I have not eaten a sit down meal in a week, and well, it's Josh Goot- just make it happen!), my adventures in Melbourne sourcing during Shane Warne rehearsals, and the odd launch coming up. 

xx Nell

Facebook / Twitter

Instagram / Pinterest 

Oh and anyone following on Pinterest wondering why I have a Shane Warne board? Haha, it's the easiest way for the director to check in and see my reference images for the Shane Warne characters costumes/ hair/ makeup etc. I am not suddenly into cricket! :)

Post Melbourne Sads and The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell

Little bit feeling like my man Woody here, having had such a great time in Melbourne last week and now being back in reality town! Ha ha. Actually, it's not all doom and gloom, I am getting a little dramatic. Got some pretty full on weeks ahead, as I cram in as much fun and work before I take off again. Getting some secondments organized is pretty exciting. There are some really incredible people out there. Also super excited for the whole PQ event, and some of the great workshops I am going to be doing.

While in Melbourne I had the pleasure of seeing a preview of Straight Jacket Productions new show The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell. A friend of mine had done some animation for it, and it just so happened that I had designed set and costumes for it while at WAAPA with the play write Reg Cribb. It was so interesting to see how it was staged, the design and how our interpretations differed. They did an amazing job, the set was like a collage of doors, surrounded by dried suburban scrub. This not only afforded a lot of depth for the lighting designer, but created this kind of lost world sort of feel. As our design had been an un-realised project, we had had to cast according to our interpretation of the characters, and the funny thing was I remember using an image of John Wood as a reference. The cast were brilliant, it was amazing to see the show come to fruition, since I knew the script so well. If you are in Melbourne, I would head on down to 45 Downstairs and check it out. The link above has the show dates and so on. I will add some pics from my own design below...








Daniel

Craig

Sarah

Preview of my new website

Just a little look at what I am putting together for my new website. I am not a web designer at all, so it is taking me a little while longer than I would like to make, but my site is nearly ready. It is to show my work in mainly costume and set design, but will have illustrations and millinery as well. I did make one but decided to change it and started over. Perfectionist? Something like that.
The collage is made up of my set and costume designs over the past year.

Credit must be given to Jon Green, as a lot of these photos were his.

Joking Apart Set Photos

Here are a couple of pics to show the set I designed.

Joking Apart 2010

Anyone for Tennis? Wouldn't that be nice...

Last week the season of Joking Apart closed. It was a long journey for me, and one which I learnt a lot from. Creating a garden indoors then flooding it with lights (not the UV kind) each night turned out quite well, when all is said and done.

The best part of the show were my crew, whom I loved working with. From driving around to pick up soup mugs all over town, to stealing trees branches from the curb-side and later early morning expeditions to get our real trees (kindly donated to us by the wonderful people at Indoor Gardens), it was so much fun.

My workshop crew made me feel at home in an environment where I could quite easily feel foolish and out of place. I was blessed with an incredible team of builders, painters and giggling girls who can really pull together. As the invisible curtain closed on the final night (not that the fire curtain didn't try it's hardest to ruin that!) it is with a mix of happiness and the slight twinge of sadness that I watch it all end. The happiness is that I am happy with the work done, and am glad to be able to have done and move on. The sad is that I will miss my crew.

Thank you to all that worked with me on this show, your skills at hiding monsters, gnomes, faces and so on amongst the garden are not to be protested. Your work speaks for itself and I wish you all the best in your futures. I hope that some of us are lucky enough to work together and share in the fun once more someday. Thanks to all that came and saw the show, had a laugh and supported me. Much love.

"Steak and Yorkshire Kidney Puddings? Oh get on!"

The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell Set Model

Today we presented our set and costume designs for Regg Cribb's 2008 play 'The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell'. 

We had been working on this project since the start of this year with our tutor designer Zoe Attkinson. 

The project was one of the biggest we have done.

I learnt so much from Zoe, she really focused on pushing us according to our individual weaknesses.

I am not the strongest set designer, my model making skills are hugely under

developed and I rarely draw perspective drawings.

So my focus was to use this project to focus on those things. Which I think went well.

I am actually really proud of the set model. I know that with more time management 

I could have played around and made more design decisions but I am happy with the architectural structure.

The Playhouse was the venue, which is a great space, and is sadly not going to be used past this year.

Model making wise though, I think I am getting a lot better each time. Yey.

Joking Apart

Tickets are now on sale for my new show Joking Apart through the WAAPA box office! It is going to be an amazing show, it has been a huge learning curve for me and I can not wait to see it all come together. Please come along.

The search for life. Plant-life.

1pm. 

Joking Apart. 

Time for production work.

Find assistants.

Compose lists.

Shout "Hoorah" each time an item is ticked off. 

Track down ute. 

Borrow key for ute. 

Pile in too many people. 

Hope that I do not crash. 

Drive out to list of locations. 

Get lost.

Curse at the GPS system and rely on instinct instead. 

Avoid being hit by oncoming traffic as we climb out and run across busy road ways with branches and trees from the verge. 

Discover how little people are wanting to donate. 

Discover that the plants promised equate to tiny pots with either dead twigs or small flowering plants. 

Flowering plants, with one flower per pot. 

Drive back and forth to add to our pile. 

Feel pile is growing but would like to grow far bigger, much faster. 

Explore op shops for glasses and mugs. 

Discover that I have designed with my parents kitchen items in mind.

Kitchen items from the 70s.

Kitchen items that are in another city.

Discover that said items aren't so easy to find, wonder if people are holding onto them like my parents. 

Give it up people!

Find desired glasses and discover that some match. 

Some match despite being found on opposite sides of the city.

Weird. 

But "Hoorah"!

Hope that this is the last of it. 

Actually want to do homework and not drive ute.

Come in to discover set nearly finished and feel wave of excitement.

Wish that I could turn set into a tree house/ cubby and hide away inside.

Hear Pirates of the Caribbean theme song in head for fourth time in one day.

Decide it is time for the weekend. 

Game, set, and Match!

One show down, one term down, and six months to go.

I am currently working on Joking Apart by Alan Ayckbourn, for which I am doing the set design. It is being directed by Andrew Lewis, staged in the Geoff Gibbs Theatre with half of the third year actors. Actually the casting is wonderful. I first read the play in January and laughed out loud, which is always a good sign. I did not find out the casting for at least a month, but was so pleased with it. It will be very funny indeed. Joking Apart is set in an old overgrown English Garden, with most of the action taking place off stage in a tennis court (which butts onto the stage) and a little gazebo. Creating the world of this has so far proven rather challenging as we are battling with a really low pros arch, a deep stage and very specific set requirements. I have drawn and re-drawn plan after plan, perspective drawing after perspective drawing, and have finally worked it all out. The white card model has been made, and approved by Andrew, so on Monday I will have it costed once more by the workshop department, and begin making the real model and the construction drawings all ready for the presentation coming up. There is a lot of work to do, but as I feel I know the dimensions and have answered as many questions already as I have pre-conceived ever coming up, I am confident. I think tis show will be pretty darn good! I am looking forward to starting rehearsals and the build. During the course of my last show I feel in love with the people in workshop once more, they really are a great bunch.

So far I think this semester I have learnt the most about set related stuff, and tried to focus more on my perspective drawings and building the models. I was so happy to have made the Playhouse in half a day, which I will use for my class project with The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell. I am learning a lot from Zoe Atkinson, who is really a great teacher. She has been so encouraging and has pushed us further than we normally are in classes. We were also able to tour the Playhouse and meet the playwright Reg, which has made a huge difference in my interpretation of the play.

I am meeting the playwright and the director of my final show at WAAPA late next week. It is a musical, being written for WAAPA called A Little Touch of Chaos. I am hoping that it will afford me a chance to design some bolder brighter costumes. Maybe be able to be a little more adventurous, although, it is a small budget musical, and it may be too contemporary. I seem to design for more serious costumes, in suits, and house dresses and period ware that are pale, muted colours. I am keen to do some more print clashing, fabric clashing crazy stuff just for a change. We shall see…

The Trial Set Production Pics

Set Production Photos from my last show...

The Trial at WAAPA

Directed by Michael Jenn

The first ones are of the filing Cabinet the rest are of the chair. More to follow!