Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/910903
56 • THE ARTISAN FALL 2017 My design for the film was a collaboration with director George Clooney. During our conversa- tions, we discussed how the characters were best served by sharp clean looks indicative of the time period. He was specific that the haircuts and styles of the main cast and background characters should reflect the era. Julianne Moore played twin sisters in the film, so hair stylist Jeri Baker and George wanted to show how the two characters were vastly differ- ent through their looks. Jeri chose coloured and styled wigs to reflect differences between the characters and to show the audience their story. The men, women and children who played background characters from the neighbourhood, such as postmen and town hall workers, were cru- cial in setting the look for the film to back up the story that was about to unfold. Many hairdressers and barbers spent countless hours to select hair sets for the secretaries, wives, neighbourhood mothers, postmen and children. The background actors were given flyers and videos that perfectly showed how to come ready for work so we could carry out our picture-perfect hairdos of that time period. We used wigs and period styling tools such as hairsprays, hairnets, gels rollers and pin curls for the looks to be in perfect sync with our storybook. Mr. and Mrs. Mayers were an intelligent and educated couple, so we chose to give them clean and styled barbered hair. Mrs. Mayers was a lov- ing mother and woman of colour and her wig was dressed to depict her up-to-date style. Her son, played by Noah Jupe, was an innocent and lovely young boy and like his mother, he was also well- groomed. We made sure to schedule weekly hair- cuts for him to maintain his stylized cut. Noah's look was crucial in the relationship with the son of the evil parents, so we took the task of design- ing his look very seriously. Kelvin R. Trahan served as the hair stylist for Matt Damon on the film. According to Kelvin, Matt's research was pulled from photos of typi- cal businessmen from the '50s and his haircut also matches that era. It was common for men to "grease" their hair in the '50s, so Matt's hair is very tidy and greased with every hair in place until mayhem begins and then Kelvin and his team mussed his hair accordingly. This era was a very uptight rigid time hair-wise and it works perfectly for Matt's character, who is slowly com- ing unhinged. •