CMU School of Drama


Monday, April 01, 2019

Colleen Atwood on Dumbo and Joining the Disney Legacy

Collider | Collider: While at the film’s Los Angeles press day, Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood spoke 1-on-1 to Collider for this interview about why her profession is still exciting after all of these years, what most intimidated her about working on Dumbo, what it takes to get so many hundreds of people dressed in one day, what would surprise people about being a costume designer, why she feels lucky to work with a filmmaker like Tim Burton, and how she approached the design for Eva Green’s aerialist character.

1 comment:

Sebastian Adkins said...

I have yet to see Dumbo, because crew, but as far as production goes it looks absolutely amazing. I find it funny that she is doing both this and Lady and the Tramp because both of the films bore be to absolute death. Being too emotional I do not like animal movies instinctively, and Dumbo just seemed too sad for me. She referred to Lady and the Tramp as specifically Edwardian but this seems to be a similar era, maybe slightly later, during that golden age of the circus. I have watched documentaries about how costumers like Edith Head managed to dress the epics like the Ten Commandments, and the sheer amount of people that it takes to make those extras not necessarily specific characters but part of the world building. Now it is probably even harder because everyone is a critic and the detail is so high and studios do not have the production facilities that the studios like MGM and Paramount had. These departments were full of Italian craftsmen who pumped out these custom garments by the thousands. I once read a quip from a MGM designer that if you left a design overnight on your desk, completed or not it would appear the next morning in real life.