Authentic costumes Dec 11 2009
5 comments Latest by B7
Legendary director Akira Kurosawa reportedly went to great lengths to make his films seem authentic.
His perfectionism also showed in his approach to costumes: he felt that giving an actor a brand new costume made the character look less than authentic. To resolve this, he often gave his cast their costumes weeks before shooting was to begin and required them to wear them on a daily basis and “bond with them.” In some cases, such as with Seven Samurai, where most of the cast portrayed poor farmers, the actors were told to make sure the costumes were worn down and tattered by the time shooting started.
Reminds me of how Sacha Baron Cohen never washes Borat’s suit.
A stickler for authenticity, during filming he never washed his gray Borat suit and never wore deodorant.
“The smell is an added thing for people to believe that I’m from a country where hygiene wasn’t a necessity,” he explains.
Sometimes it’s the little things.
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5 comments so far
Frank 11 Dec 09
Cohen’s clearly “sweating the details,” to use 37s parlance (among other things).
Blue Sail Creative 11 Dec 09
how does something like this transalte to peter pan? or mrs.doubtfire?
brad 11 Dec 09
I had a friend whose father ran a rare-breeds farm in the Cotswolds in England; his biggest client was the BBC . He had a lot of old breeds of cows, horses, sheep, goats, etc. that were common in earlier times but practically extinct today. The BBC rented his animals when doing historical series to be sure that the animals you saw in the film represented the actual breeds that were around at the time. I was impressed with that attention to detail and authenticity as well.
Jamie, Baymard Institute 11 Dec 09
It’s really interesting where the line crosses between utterly fake (when someone tries to be authentic but falls through) and when someone is sooo good at manufacturing authenticity (like Kurosawa) that it actually feels real hence is perceived as authentic.
B7 11 Dec 09
Not only was Kurosawa a stickler for details, but his crew was positively fanatical. They would go to any length, risking injury and enduring punishing conditions such as blistering cold weather and days and nights of shooting without rest.
I heard that Sacha has never washed Borat’s outfit, and just being near Borat is enough to make most people feel nauseated from the reek.
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