In this project we were developing our skills in theatre design. Our project was to design costumes and set for a low budget performance of Grimm's Tales in our universities black box theatre. We worked with directors and completed a script read through, mood boards, research, directors meetings, actor casting, a 1:25 scale set model and designs complete with fabric samples and thumbnails. I decided to go with Hansel and Gretel and The Lady and the Lion. I used a library theme and went for modern clothing with warm and cold colour schemes; warm for the protagonists and cold for the antagonists. The actors would be customers in the library that then transformed into the characters the were reading about. My set looked like the interior of a library and I wanted the library furniture to transform into the fairy tale world of the story, but in a literal way so I used an illustrative style, with bookcases that turned to reveal scenery on the back, a projector with a border that looked like a kindle at the back, which projected scenery illustrations, and a librarians desk featuring an oven. Also coloured rugs represented different grounds as the characters travelled through their stories and the tables and chairs could be used in different way to represent buildings and furniture like beds. To save cost I designed the set and costumes to be able to transform into different pieces, so the same item could be used for several things. For instance clothes that could be turned inside out to reveal a different costume.
For my costume designs I used watercolours then coloured pencils to add texture. I tried to set them out professionally like we had been taught in Core Skills while keeping my style for the project. I found the set model more difficult as the small scale meant it was very fiddly work and it wasn't as neat as I'd have liked. Once we had completed our sketchbooks, designs and model, we picked our 3 best costume designs and set them up in an exhibition with our model for family and friends, tutors and directors to come and see the work displayed with lighting before they were marked. |