Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1529398
Devon Patterson joined the team at the crossover of The Mandalorian season three and Ahsoka. She and her team received the 2024 Emmy for Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes for the episode "Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord." "I inherited the crew from The Mandalorian. Julie Yang Silver was finishing up Mando, but she couldn't stay because she lives back East. Shawna called to ask me if I could come in to take over Ahsoka and I was like "sure!" It was like a dream for me to be able to do Star Wars. I met with everybody; I came in hoping that I could add my experience to the mix and to help get things going. I mean, it's not like things weren't going because things were! But it's a lot because with a show like Ahsoka, you have to be extremely organized and I would say that coming into it, E [Elissa Alcala], who was the Assistant Costume Designer, and Stefanie Cytron and Gio Kendall, who are the two main keys were very instrumental in helping walk me through the process that was already in place. Basically, it was up to me to make sure that it continued to work as we went through everything in terms of the builds, [and] the deadlines that were coming up for what we were shooting. Devon Patterson Devon Patterson Costume Supervisor Q: What were the day-to-day operations of Ahsoka? DEVON: The first thing is you have to have a calendar. Literally, you have a huge calendar on the wall, "this shoots here" and you have notes where it's two weeks out, one week out, four weeks out. And then based on that because I remember that there was this thing, we were four weeks out and we hadn't even gotten to doing the Night Troopers and it was like, "we have to start this now!" Shawna always liked to do things in-house, which I understand. So, at that point, it's a conversation with my designer going, "Okay, in order to meet this deadline, and this deadline and this deadline. This is stuff that has to be sent out so that this can get moved over to our in- house people." It was literally a lot of discussion. And that is what is key, communication is the most important thing that you could do to make sure that everything runs smoothly to get everything to camera on time. The fact that everybody who worked on Ahsoka was passionate and dedicated to the process, it made my job easier. They could tell me "No, this costume was from this period, from this era. And so, no, this wouldn't be for this, you can't use this for this." It was amazing. For Shawna to have hired such dedicated individuals to the show who live and breathe the show, that is what made the show an Emmy winner. Everybody could tell through the costumes, what was put into it by the people who helped create it. GIO: This was a whole departmental effort. Devon Patterson had the ultimate responsibility in making sure that we were well staffed and had the support that we needed to make that happen. What I appreciated about Devon was that she wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel. She trusted that we knew what we were doing, that we had experience, and she trusted our institutional knowledge. If we told her, "This is how long it takes to build this stuff," she'd go, "what do I need to support that?" We'd give her estimates and then Stefanie Cytron, our Principal Key, Elissa Alcala, our ACD, and I, the three of us, we worked very closely together to communicate what our build needs were to our custom-made folks. We're juggling principal deadlines, stunt deadlines, as well as background deadlines for these custom-made things. We'd get together every single day and discuss. If there were changes, we would make sure we were always on the same page so that nobody was getting behind. It's good to have full transparency with your team about what those deadlines are. Alterations need to be done so that there's time for aging and dying, for getting inspected by Shawna, traveling and then going to set. We would make a distinction. This needs to be ready for the fitting. This needs to be ready to travel. This needs to be ready by noon because it's a last-minute thing and it's got to go to set and it's got to play today. One of our crew's biggest strengths is that we looked out for each other. MARCUS: Shawna always gave us inspiration to work from and she looked at us also as artists. She was collaborating with us rather than just telling us what she wants. She valued our input as artists, she had a special way of building that feeling within our studio where everybody was open to collaborate with each other and with her, it was just an amazing environment to be in. LUIS: Some of the projects you only MOTIONPICTUREC O S T U M E R S .O R G 27