What do the movies ‘National Treasure,’ ‘Seabiscuit,’ ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,’’The Legend of Bagger Vance,’ ‘For Love of the Game,’ ‘Gloria,’ ‘Pleasantville,’ ‘Great Expectations’ and the ‘The Devil's Advocate’ have in common?
Their costume designer, 3x Oscar© nominated, Judianna Makovsky.
Summer blockbuster X-Men 3 is a top notch collaborative picture. There are new mutants, each with impressive examples of their powers in action.
Director Brett Ratner hired Judianna Makovsky to continue the look on X-Men 3. Her experience breathes life and veracity into the diverse cast of characters.
For X-Men 3, she continued in her basic process for designing costumes by conferring with the director, often times the production designer and DP (cinematographer) too. "All projects begin for me with research" said Makovsky.
"This research doesn't necessarily mean an exact representation of the period or character. For 'Harry Potter', I looked at everything from renaissance paintings to South American Surrealist paintings, I ask, what is the world that these characters live in?" explained Makovsky.
In the actual construction of the costumes, Makovsky relies on prototypes, sketches and even artwork to get the nuances of color down, textures of fabric too.
“For 'The Legend of Bagger Vance', I showed Robert (Redford) some obscure American Impressionist landscapes to show how the colors in the shadows could translate to the clothing palette on the golf courses," she said. "Bob (Redford) was a painter and art student, so I knew he would understand, but I don't think I could do that with a lot of directors- other directors like Gary Ross love to look at extensive research with me - as well as the more esoteric references."
The look of the costumes for X-Men 3 is decidedly un-period, and Makovsky made it a point to steer clear of kitsch futuristic or too fantasy-like renderings.
When costuming contemporary pieces, clothing can always be found readily.
Period and fantasy films need planning, construction and adapting. With X-Men 3, Makovsky noted "The X-Men films are grounded in today's world, and that makes it difficult to reconcile comic characters with a reality based theme.
The X-World was already established by director Bryan Singer and his designer Louise Mingenbach, the decision was made not to stray from that look for the third. It was much more difficult to do 'Harry Potter' which is fantasy based, and I had to completely start from scratch and figure out what the world would be".
Currently Judianna Makovsky is costume designer on "Mr. Brooks" with Kevin Costner and Demi Moore, filming in Louisiana.
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