Thursday, November 26, 2015
Contender - Costume Designer Jenny Eagan, Beasts of No Nation
Below the Line: Director Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s Beasts of No Nation takes a look at Agu’s life as a child solider fighting in a civil war of an African country that is never named. The film, which was shot in Africa, tells a powerful visual story and costume designer Jenny Eagan‘s work contributes no small part. Eagan was really excited to join the project when she received the invitation from the director to be a part of the team. She was deeply drawn to the script, which dealt with a subject matter that she had never worked with in any way, and she saw it as a chance of a lifetime. “It is always interesting to me when it is something that challenges you in a way you’ve never been challenged before, looking at something a little bit different,” Eagan said.
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4 comments:
What Jenny Eagan said about her collaborating with her director Fukunaga is exactly the dream of a relationship between a costume designer and a director. If anything, the two professions need to be intertwined more than anyone because of their relationships to the characters. A director can give everything and nothing to a costume designer in the way of information on what he or she would like to portray in a certain scene; if you're not servicing your director's vision of a character, then what are you doing the job for? I also liked what she said about the actors embodying a certain personality in their roles, and having that translate into the clothes they wore. It really interests me to be able to gather a set of clothing of what I think might work for a certain cast of characters and then letting the actors play in what they feel like is their character. That sort of dialogue between actor and costume designer is so enriching and interesting because then so much of a character's story and journey actually comes out through their wardrobe choices. A costume designer can think up all they want for the backstory of a character -- but it's up to the actor to actually embody it in their choices.
One particular comment about the "powerful visual story" which the film tells resonates highly with my perception of Jenny Eagan's work based just off of the trailer. Her use of plot cues as artistic instruction for design is an interesting inversion of a costumer's usual method of using design cues to assist audience understanding of plot, and to me seems as if it will serve a more complete communication of the significance of costumes throughout the story. Instead of helping the audience to perceive the plot as if she is one of them, Eagan goes inside the work and acts as a well-developed bridge between story and audience, communicating back and forth between both sides through her own design methods. Not only is this a show of her hard work and talent - it is a testament to the devotion of everyone involved in the storytelling process, just as Eagan states herself. The close contact and collaboration needed in order to fully dissect a script which demands such clear and well-expressed visual choices is astounding, and speaks to the efforts of all involved toward doing this story justice. I believe Netflix may have a masterpiece on its hands - and not because of a talented director, or an incredible costume designer, or a thoughtful screenwriter, or a devoted producer. This will be a remarkable work because of the all-or-none effort which went into it, the choices and creativity of many as one. What a dream come true a challenge like this must have been for everyone involved, especially Eagan.
Well, this article isn’t the most well written one I’ve ever read. That being said it is always interesting to me when costumes require a lot of aging and distressing. We have a whole class on the subject here, but there is a nuance to breaking down clothing that can not be taught. If you look at your favorite jeans and then try to recreate that same look in two days it is very difficult. It is very smart of the designer to think realistically about the resources that the young soldiers would have. They couldn’t just walk into a store and pick out new clothes. They had to use what they had until they couldn’t anymore. It was also smart of her to left each soldier customize their outfit. Even with limited resources people always find a way to express their individuality. It’s important to embrace that otherwise the film would be drab visually.
I have heard tell of this film and its power to move people with the immensely tragic subject matter it deals with. I have also heard critique of its hiring practices and production management, but that is a rant for a different time. Heading into this article, I had many questions, mostly about procuring costumes in the places and the situations under which this film had been shot, both of which I have heard caused headache for the production team. However, while reading this article, I found that if my questions were not answered, they were cast aside by new, pressing questions. For example, I had never wondered how a costume designer would incorporate the little known side-effects of being an impoverished youth soldier in wartime, without having lived or observed that life. However, through logic, observation, or education, Eagan manages to capture this moment in history by portraying the theft of clothes in her costume design, something I'd never though of before.
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