Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1352017
Spring 2021 The Costume Designer 21 by Alexandra Welker Hollywood loves to tell its own story. Many productions have focused on the behind-the-scenes drama of movie- making: the rise and fall of stars' careers, the machinations behind the camera and at the studios, the mechanics of filmmaking itself. Luminous black and white helps to imme- diately set a story in the past, but poses interesting chal- lenges from a costume design standpoint. Wandavision, Mank, and The Artist are three projects that tackle these challenges, while recreating specific Hollywood eras as part of their storytelling process. Black White Timeless Mayes C. Rubio Wandavision The Golden Age of Television is the world of Wandavision, the first Disney+ television series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which sets the characters Wanda/the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) in suburbia. The seven episodes carefully recre- ate sitcoms from the 1950s through the 2000s. Costume designer Mayes Rubio found herself working in black and white for the first two episodes, which reference classic '50s and '60s shows like I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, and The Addams Family. "It was fun!" Rubio exclaims. "The challenge becomes designing the world tonally and that meant lots of collabora- tion with the production design team, set decorators, and the cinematographer. We all had to be on the same page about what we wanted to see. For Episode 1, we developed & Wandavision illustration by Jonay Bacallado Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in Wandavision Courtesy of Disney+