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Galactic News
Wednesday August 22, 2001
AOTC Costume Design!
The Official Star Wars Site has a great article about the costumes from Attack of the Clones!
Between the world of traditional costumes like Obi-Wan's Jedi robes and the world of props like a hand-held holo-projector, lives Costume Props Modeler Ivo Coveney.
Returning from The Phantom Menace crew to lend his talents to Episode II, Coveney describes his team's creations as "anything that's worn, but not actually part of the costume in a traditional way. Props are all those things that are held like backpacks, weapons and things like that. But there's a middle ground which includes masks, jewelry and armor that end up on the costume props side."
While the idea of a costume props group is engrained in the current Star Wars productions, it has not yet become an industry standard. "A props department doesn't usually answer to the costume department, so if you ask the props department to make you a suit of armor or a backpack or a helmet what they deliver is what you get," Coveney explains. "Some designers got frustrated with that and said, 'This is really important to me and I want to have control over it.' So that is how my role has come into being in the U.K."
Working as a part of Costume Designer Trisha Biggar's department, Coveney has added end-user considerations to his skills as a craftsman. "Quite often in the props side you don't see the actors, so you don't worry about them, you just make a gorgeous-looking object," says Coveney. "But when you put your work on an actor, it can sometimes be too heavy, too cumbersome or too fragile. With characters like Jango Fett or when I did Russell Crowe's armor on Gladiator, we had to make it something the actor is comfortable with. It has to be as light as you can get it, but also has to be resilient for the fights and last all day."
The Mandalorian armor of Temuera Morrison's Jango Fett was a special thrill and challenge for Coveney team's early on in the production. Creating a costume based on the legendary Boba Fett "was fascinating and also frustrating," he recalls. "It's an image from 20 years ago, and it's such a stunning image. It was an honor to do it and it was nice to be able to change the color scheme to create a bit of a new look. But in other ways it was frustrating, because remaining faithful to that costume's look meant we couldn't take full advantage of a lot of our craft's advancements since the 1980s."
"Of course, Jango has a lot more action than Boba Fett ever did," smiles Coveney. "I don't know how many costumes they had for Empire and Jedi, but we ended up with six full costumes, of which three were hero costumes – close-up work costumes – and three were stunt costumes. We had to have someone on-set to keep an eye on it, not realizing how much of a beating it would get. He was just doing so much, as you'll see, that you just can't make a costume to survive that really."
With even more costume changes for Natalie Portman's Padmé in Attack of the Clones than in The Phantom Menace, Coveney made sure to pay extra attention to the royalty from Naboo. "One of the helmet headdresses I made for Episode I was the one with the pencils hanging down the side. It ended up being very heavy and I know Natalie was uncomfortable," Coveney recalls. "And so that's one of the first things I said to her when I saw her for Episode II is that I would do my best to make things as light as possible for her comfort."
"It helped that for Episode II, Padmé's headdresses are still really ornate, but they are much smaller and more contained than the last film," Coveney says. With so many headpieces for Natalie to wear, Coveney began their creation for two full months in the UK before the team was assembled in Australia. "We did card mockups trying to solve the basic profiles and shapes. Then Trisha [Biggar] and I spent two days with Natalie doing fittings to find out what worked. We then sent them to George [Lucas] for approval so that we could carry on right away when we arrived in Australia."
"There is one big one that I was worried about, but we worked really hard to keep it as light as possible," says Coveney with pride. "I know what Natalie had been through, and I knew I wanted to come back for Episode III..."
Coveney credits the ability of both Biggar and Lucas to visualize a final design from preliminary work as a key to producing a high volume of work in a compressed schedule. "It takes a long time for us to be able to give them the finished product because you have to do the sculpt and you have to cast it and then you have to produce an original. Then you fill it on the person and then you alter it. And its only a couple of days before it's actually delivered that it looks like it's going to look. Luckily they're both so used to it now that they can see how it will work."
Seeing the finished product on-set is the ultimate pay-off for Coveney, so he made sure his team took a break to see one of their first major creations in action. "Actually seeing something in front of the camera and thinking, 'Oh, that is going to look good,' really helps. If we hadn't have seen it on-set, I don't think everyone would have been able to put in as much effort into our creations as they did."