Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546058
MOTIONPICTUREC O S T U M E R S .O R G 41 put on, so the costume house doesn't necessarily want to put stencils on all their woodland camo, and didn't have it be just for Marine Corps. They would rather keep their stock open to use for the Air Force or Army, or anything that doesn't have a stencil printed on. So, for us, it just made more sense to purchase everything and to put the stencils on ourselves." Like many shows, there is the helpful resource of a technical advisor that Butler works closely with on NCIS: Origins. "Usually, you have a technical advisor on the show, and I try to run everything by them way ahead of time. The last thing that you want is to do all this work, all these uniforms, and then the technical advisor has a different idea of what it should be—it doesn't happen all the time, but it can happen—and that's the last spot you want to be in. The military advisors also have a large part in how the uniforms are worn on set; whether it's how the hats are worn or how the sleeves are rolled. On NCIS, the tech would say, 'When we were in the military, it'd be tight, and it'd be cuing off our circulation, but we had to keep an image.' The Marine Corps is very strict about keeping an image. We try to roll the sleeves as correctly as possible to make everyone happy." There are many projects that require Costumers to source uniforms that are newer regulations for contemporary shows. One of Butler's recent examples was The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, an espionage thriller showcasing the transition from an elite Navy SEAL to a ruthless CIA Special Operations operative. The Navy Seals AOR1 digital camouflage uniform, made by Crye in the 2010s, were not available to the public as it is specific to that Special Forces branch but they were essential to the reality of the storytelling of the production. "The only place you could get them is from ex-service members that were selling them on eBay or picking through the costume house—so you'd find one here, two there, three here, but we had a ton of cast to do. Thankfully, those uniforms were very durable, because we could only get singles for a bunch of guys, and they were wearing them constantly. Ideally, you always want to give people multiples, especially for a cast, but there are circumstances where it just doesn't exist." The costume team was given nine weeks to prep, nine days of shooting in LA, and six weeks of shooting in Europe filming Uniforms pulled, fit and prepped for the background actors.