how to make characters costumes

Titania-Titania’s costume has a white base and is decorated with satin pieces, using colors such as pink, lilac purple and yellow. The strips on the skirt have been ripped individually and have securely been tacked onto the netting of the skirt. To add detail individual roses have been attached to the neckline. Mint and olive leaves are used to compliment the colors on the skirt, and jewels will be added to the bodice to match in with the head dress. As the costume progresses we may spray it with other colors. The head dress will be very ornate, and Titania will be wearing ballet shoes, and tights which will be dyed to match in with the shades of the skirt part of the costume. The makeup team will be designed to fit in with the color scheme of the costume. The costume will be securely sewn to ensure the wearer is confident on the stage.

Peasblossom- The base of peasblossom’s costume is a white leotard with a long in length tutu. It is decorated with purple, dark green and lilac satin strips. These strips have individually been ripped and tacked securely onto the netting of the skirt. Individually made roses have been attached to the neckline with the larger roses in the middle. The costume will be securely sewn to ensure the wearer is confident when on stage.

Mustard seed-Mustard seed will have makeup which is designed by the makeup team following a gold theme. The color scheme used will include gold and mustard decorations. Around the neckline of the leotard it will include lemon roses to add detail and effect. The dancer will wear ballet shoes whilst on stage. The costume will be securely made and securely sewn to ensure the wearer is confident on stage.

Cobweb-Cobweb wears a white base leotard with a full length tutu. The makeup will be gothic reflecting the costume and theme. Black, silver and white strands will be cut individually and securely tacked onto the netting of the skirt. The will be wearing black ballet shoes, and black tights with holes cut into. The costume will be securely sewn to ensure the wearer is confident when on stage. Around the neckline black, white and silver material will be added to add effect and fulfill the theme of the costume.

About a Midsummer Nights dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The play revolves around loved ones, of which involves two sets of couples whose love life and romance is complicated and confusing. These couples (Hermia and Lysander and Helena and Demetrius) enter the forest where Oberon, the King of the Fairies and his queen Titania are. In the play Puck is very important; he is full of mischief and has many tricks up his sleeve. Bottom and his friends also enter the enchanted forest as they want to rehearse their dire. The theme the play portrays is that Love will succeed in the end and the pleasure that you get when dreaming the Impossible Dream.

Titania the queen of the fairies-
She is mistress to Oberon and is very pretty. Titania is a gracious queen but she is still sassy. She is strong minded and keeps her own way. Titania is raising a little Indian boy and she refuses to give him up. Titania is a strong minded woman; she tells Oberon he should take it easy with his demands for the little boy. Titania is known as one of the most powerful women in the play.

Bottom-
Bottom is an overconfident weaver who is full of great advice and self confidence but he is always making silly mistakes and misuses language. He is in love with the beautiful Titania, but he doesn’t realize that puck transformed his head into an ass this to resemble how foolish the character is.

Puck-
Puck is Oberon’s jester, he is a mischievous fairy who is always up to no good, and he enjoys playing pranks on mortals. Through the play his actions are divided between several groups of characters. Puck is a very important character in this play.  His mischievous and enchanting personality sets the atmosphere and he is what creates most of the confusing between the characters. He gives the love potion to Lysander instead of Demetrius this causes madness and chaos within the group of the young lovers, as well as transforming Bottom’s head into an ass.

Oberon-
The king of the fairies, Oberon is usually in love with his wife but because of the Titania’s Indian child it has created complication within their relationship. Oberon wants revenge in Titania so leads him to send Puck to take the love potion flower which creates the confusion within the play.

Pease blossom, Mustard seed, Cobweb, Moth-
These characters are all fairies, and are always being ordered around by Titania to attend to Bottom once she has fallen in love with him.

Step by step on how to construct a leaf and rose

Firstly I drew a leaf template and carefully cut around it with scissors. I pinned my material (satin) to the template, and slowly using material scissors to get a quality look, I cut around it to form a satin leaf shape. You then sew around the leaf shape, making sure there are two leaves, but make sure towards the tip of the leaf you have left a gap.

Once this has been done, turn the leaves inside out using scissors to make sure it is all pushed through. Carefully hand sew the gap together. Now your leaf will be finished and you are ready to make more, making the leaves look affective.

When constructing a rose you will be using scissors, a needle and thread. Firstly you cut a strip of material and fold it in half, next using a needle and thread do running stitch along the open side from top to bottom.

Along the edge using running stitch and sew from top to bottom. As you go along pull the stitches to gather until you reach the end, once you have gathered the stitches a rose shape will form, but to complete the shape tack together the material tighter to form a full rose shape.

Roll the material inwards so that the bottom resembles a spiral shape, and tack tightly. Continuing until you reach the end of the material, making sure it has all been tacked tightly. When you reach the end fold the opening of the material in and tack tightly until you are sure the rose will not unfold.



COSTUME CONSTRUCTION - A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

Over the past month we have been focussing on A Midsummer Nights dream in our btec performing arts costume consturction lessons. The reason of this is because Kings Langley school compete in something called Rock Challange and our theme is following A Midsummer Nights dream, this has been spoken about on my blog before, but it is a global competetion which is 8minuetes long and you can only express your story through dance and acting. Our school is very big on this and have been for years, it is something we put a lot of hard work into, and our very passionate about. In our costume construction lessons we have been set the task to make the costumes for the faries in  A Midsummer nights dream this is including the main faries e.g - Titania, Peaseblossom, Mustard seed and cobweb. As well as Titanias little faries who we are focussing on to make the costumes for. Here is a picture of my skirt so far-






To make the skirt we were each given a netted tutu, and we had to pick a colour theme we would like to follow, I chose to follow light pink, hot pink and yellow as I think these colours really compliment eachother and will look nice when on stage. I cut strips of the coloured silk material and took one from each colour. I then grouped the strips and folded them in half, to secure them onto the tutu I tacked them until you feel there strong enough, to test this pull the strips to see wheter they are sturdy or not. You repeat this all the way around until your skirt looks full and appropiate to what it is meant to look like. I then added decoration to add effect to the costume and make it fit in with the theme. The decorartion I added was the leaves and roses which the instructions of how to make are on the above post. The dancers will also be wearing ballet tights which have been dyed different colours, following the colour theme as well as a leotard which has again been dyed to follow the theme. The fairys costumes follow the theme of Titanias as they have to compliment one and other. Here are photos of the main fairy costumes -


(neeed to add pics)

Amersham and wickham performing arts show - Moulin Rouge

On tuesday 13th of December me and Kelly went to watch Amersham and Wickhams production of moulin rouge. Our friend from our dance school was performing in it and we wanted to go and see her and see if their btec performing arts was similar to ours. The performance included a mixture of acting, dancing and singing from the first and second years, so it was great fun to watch as a mixture of things were included.

There was a range of different dance styles during the performance. There was a duet which including things such as lifts and the connection between the boy and girl was beautiful to watch. To open the show it started with some acting opening up the moulin rouge and starting the story off, the first piece of dancing was also a girl on pointe and she made the transition from flat to pointe look so simple and smooth, and not once did her face look in pain she carried it out very well. This was great to watch and so interesting. In contrast to this there was a hip hop dance which was full of fast, bouncy, punchy moves, it just made me want to get up and dance! This was really fun to watch because of the energy and i really enjoyed the atmosphere it brang to the show, it is also a style i'm not as experienced in so it was even more interesting. Another dance was contemporary which was very different to anything i had seen before, it was very robotic and included a lot of repetition. Each individual dancer was doing different movements over and over to a strong backing beat. All the moves were jerky and different and they travelled all around the stage. At certain times in the dance there was a group of dancers doing the same moves like crawling along the floor and doing leg movements. It was very interesting to watch and i really enjoyed it because it was a new interpretation of contemporary style dance which I would love to do. The very unique dance style i didnt expect to see in the show was bhangra/bollywood. I was very suprised when this was added because it was completely different to the theme however they tied it in. We have done bhangra before and I enjoyed watching it as it reminded me of when we did it.

The singing in the show was mainly in a group which was effective because it needed to be loud to have a good impact. However there were certain points in the songs where some solo's were sung. Each individual singer had a head microphone which was really effective and professional. The singers where also very strong which was nice to see, as the dance didn't over power it, and it was all on balance.

The actors in the show were very good, they stayed in character throughout the whole show and you could hear them clearly. I liked the way the actors interacted with the audience because it made you feel more involved with what was happening. They also did things you'd see professional actors do and it was surprising how strong they were. 

Overall i really enjoyed the show and thought it had been put together really professionally. The whole night was very professional and i would go and watch another one. The stage and set that was used as well as costumes was also very professional!

Christmas concert

On the 7th of December our performing arts group performed in Kings Langley Secondary School's christmas concert. Every time there is a school production we always participate. It was a bit late notice and we were told about it 2 weeks before that we would be performing and we had to think quickly of what we wanted to do. We were thinking of making it christmas themed but then realized that we performed in MSH has got talent a while ago and we decided to do this number again in the christmas concert would be the best option. Things didn't stay exactly the same as we changed things to make it suit the stage as it was a lot smaller.


We had the 3 main singers Kelly, katie and chloe who stood on the sides of the stage with a stationary microphone and then we had laura ann with a head microphone. This was because we did not want to over crowd the stage and decided that the singers could be standing to make more room for the dancers. Me along with the others where the dancers, the dance was choreographed by the btec students, with help of miss dolan! It was rock n roll style, and was great fun to dance and choreograph.


We all turned up to school with our hair and makeup done and went into the drama studio to get changed and warm up our voices and bodies ready for the performance. We were the last act of the first half and so we had time to have one rehearsal before being called down to perform. We got called down and were all nervous to go on stage, all stood backstage patiently but everyone was nervous as we had a lot of people in the audience we had to impress. We then got on stage in our opening positions, the music started and everyones energy was up and performing to our best. 


At the end of our performance we were all so out of breath but it was the best we had ever done the performance. We were all really pleased, and so was Miss Dolan.