Things that can happen in 48 hours

This past weekend. Madness I tell you. Madness. This year's 48 Hour Film Project gave me my first stint at being wardrobe/art/production designer on a film set. I was in my element. So how it works is, you literally get given a weekend to create a short film. On friday night at around seven, the team awaited That Phone Call with bated breath, the one where they assign us a genre which was pulled out of a hat, as well as a line of dialogue, character and prop that need to be written into the story. First joyful moment, we pulled the genre Western, the genre our writers actually wanted. Our first hurdle: the character. We needed to include a stylist, Neil Msimang. Way to throw us off, but with our team of sterling writers, we managed to seamlessly write him into the story. Our prop was an envelope and line of dialogue, "You gonna learn." I would have preferred a grammatically correct line but hey, you roll with what you get. I can honestly say, the writers outdid themselves.

I spent the first night planning outfits for specific characters, as well as props for different scenes. This included intense discussions with the director and lots of brain power on my part. We were going with a 1940's setting, good thing I know my fashion history. At about 3am I finally crawled onto my mattress in the corner but alas, my brain was buzzing with way too much thought and excitement to allow me the luxury of sleep.

4:30am: I brush my teeth and gather all the props and wardrobe into my car, it's time to move on to set. We decided to shoot on an old steam train, last used in the 1920's. It was absolutely gorgeous and the colours of the interiors really complemented the wardrobe I'd chosen out. I had a walk around the train to get a feel for things, a rather spooky experience in the complete dark, and went to set up my dressing area. A much needed breakfast followed and before we knew it the sun was up and it was time to start dressing.

I was literally thrown right into the deep at this point. The first scene being filmed had about ten extras in it and I was needed on set to check out production design at the same time. It was, "Try this dress, does that fit? No? Okay this one! That hat doesn't match, take hers. You can't go like that you need shoes! And you need a tie, that one is the wrong colour!" Etc etc, whilst running off in between to plan props and look and feel on set.

I thrive on adrenaline, it was amazing, however, adrenaline is like a little bubble that keeps you floating and at some point, it pops, and then it's all systems down. For me that happened prematurely when I overheard one of our most charming actors say something awful about one of the outfits I had so lovingly put together. Taking into consideration how exhausted and overwhelmed I was at this point, it was literally enough to make me sit there (luckily alone for the moment) in tears, contemplating leaving the whole lot and going home for a nice cup of tea and bed. All thanks to Jesus at this point, I took a moment out to pray a bit and get my emotions in check, dole out some forgiveness, re calibrate my thoughts and get back to work. That was probably the toughest moment of the entire weekend for me, but I guess that's what industry is like. Not everyone is going to appreciate your creative point of view or hard work, and people say mean things without realising it far too often for me to allow myself the luxury of a breakdown every time it happens. Besides, within five minutes I had the assistant director on my case about the next scene.

I learnt a lot about myself this weekend. I'm far more detail orientated than I've ever realised before. I had an entire scene stop filming when I noticed an extra with her hair done in a way that was not consistent with 1940's styling. The same thing happened with a man in a blue tie when everyone else in the scene was wearing brown and green, and when I spotted an actor with the wrong shoes on. It must have been rather annoying for the rest of the crew, but hopefully they'll appreciate it when they see the finished product, their movie with meticulously accurate styling.

We had planned to wrap up filming by 6:30pm. Come 2am, we were still shooting. People were getting cranky, but I'm so touched by the camaraderie and how everyone pulled together, stayed awake and kept giving their all til the very end. By 3am we were packing up, I was stock taking wardrobe and props and we were on our way back to the office. Then it was one last cup of tea for me, some paperwork and I was done and dusted, by 5:30am Sunday morning I was in my bed having a rather solid and dreamless sleep. The post team, however, were still in the thick of things, with about eleven hours work still ahead of them. I am amazed and so impressed by the calibre of people on our team, and the work ethic and effort everyone so willingly gave up after days without sleep.

I still have yet to see the final product, but I'm confident and excited. I'm willing to bet we offered up one of the best entries in our region for this year's brief. I'm proud of myself for what I managed to pull together under huge pressure. This was truly an eye-opening and unforgettable experience, and I hope this is not the last I see of the film and wardrobe industry.





























P.S. these images all come from Kyle Peters' Instagram, thanks Kyle!

All things fashion Africa - Blocking Dynamics

So I have this new job, I'm now officially one of the bloggers for the brand new website, All Things Fashion_Africa. It's been great, first week on the job I got a VIP ticket to the J&B Met. I realized today that I haven't posted any of my articles on my blog! So for your reading pleasure, here is my most recent article:

Colour in Fashion: Blocking Dynamics

For anyone who knows their trends, colour blocking will be a familiar term which has appeared on the fashion scene time and time again over the past few years. Designers just can’t seem to resist it, and I can understand why. Colour blocking is fun, it’s an excuse to play with your favourite colours and mix the shades that aren’t necessarily supposed to be mixed. It’s versatile; you can make it modern and minimal or loud and fun, it’s trendy and a way to make your favourite colour the next big thing and it’s a way to be fashion fabulous without taking your look too seriously.

So where did this trend originate? Well, most fashion and art historians will take you back to fashion in the sixties when girly glam became graphic for the first time. Possibly something to do with inspiration from the art movement known as De Stijl, or neoplasticism, where artists such as Piet Mondrian used to mathematically and strategically divide their canvasses up into flat blocks of primary colours. Sounds familiar, no? The aim was to counteract the fact that, visually speaking, yellow and red appear to jump “out of” a flat canvas while blue recedes back into it, so the blocks of colour were scientifically measured and placed in such a way as to create a perfectly flat, two-dimensional image. Then in the swinging sixties, fashion revolution occurred when edgy little shift dresses in flat colour appeared as a fashion statement for the first time, in stark contrast to the flowing and flouncy dresses and circle skirts that characterised the decade before it. For the first time, thanks to fashion revolutionaries such as Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick, fashion acquired its own attitude.

Personally, I feel like I can relate this fashion aesthetic back to something dynamic and beautiful happening right in my home country. Anyone else thinking Smarteez? Known as a South African fashion subculture, the Smarteez are starting to make international headway as South Africa’s very own home-brewed hipster variety. The group of fashion fundis in Johannesburg are waging their own war against conformity, and using clothing and kickass style as their means to forge their way forward into the South African cultural history books. They’re an inspiration and show us that fashion is more than just a look, it’s a card to play in the battle you’re fighting, whatever that may be. What you wear makes a statement, it’s been proven in history, and now it’s being proven again on our home ground. The Smarteez are fighting their battle against convention and good old South African pessimism, with fashion as their optimistic weapon of choice.

So next time you page through a fashion mag and spot an article on how to colour block, think about it, just maybe this trend springs from something as close to you as the country you live in, and maybe you should wear it and make it your own statement too.Colour in Fashion: Blocking Dynamics

For anyone who knows their trends, colour blocking will be a familiar term which has appeared on the fashion scene time and time again over the past few years. Designers just can’t seem to resist it, and I can understand why. Colour blocking is fun, it’s an excuse to play with your favourite colours and mix the shades that aren’t necessarily supposed to be mixed. It’s versatile; you can make it modern and minimal or loud and fun, it’s trendy and a way to make your favourite colour the next big thing and it’s a way to be fashion fabulous without taking your look too seriously.

So where did this trend originate? Well, most fashion and art historians will take you back to fashion in the sixties when girly glam became graphic for the first time. Possibly something to do with inspiration from the art movement known as De Stijl, or neoplasticism, where artists such as Piet Mondrian used to mathematically and strategically divide their canvasses up into flat blocks of primary colours. Sounds familiar, no? The aim was to counteract the fact that, visually speaking, yellow and red appear to jump “out of” a flat canvas while blue recedes back into it, so the blocks of colour were scientifically measured and placed in such a way as to create a perfectly flat, two-dimensional image. Then in the swinging sixties, fashion revolution occurred when edgy little shift dresses in flat colour appeared as a fashion statement for the first time, in stark contrast to the flowing and flouncy dresses and circle skirts that characterised the decade before it. For the first time, thanks to fashion revolutionaries such as Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick, fashion acquired its own attitude.

Personally, I feel like I can relate this fashion aesthetic back to something dynamic and beautiful happening right in my home country. Anyone else thinking Smarteez? Known as a South African fashion subculture, the Smarteez are starting to make international headway as South Africa’s very own home-brewed hipster variety. The group of fashion fundis in Johannesburg are waging their own war against conformity, and using clothing and kickass style as their means to forge their way forward into the South African cultural history books. They’re an inspiration and show us that fashion is more than just a look, it’s a card to play in the battle you’re fighting, whatever that may be. What you wear makes a statement, it’s been proven in history, and now it’s being proven again on our home ground. The Smarteez are fighting their battle against convention and good old South African pessimism, with fashion as their optimistic weapon of choice.

So next time you page through a fashion mag and spot an article on how to colour block, think about it, just maybe this trend springs from something as close to you as the country you live in, and maybe you should wear it and make it your own statement too.

Jess