Friday December 30th

Today marked exactly one week until the show. On Thursday, we decided that all of the characters should have a costume change for the second act as the majority of the characters had a change. I did a few more pulls from the costume shop to complete the look of each character. Some of this involved a little bit of buying from Goodwill such as the gansey, a kind of fisherman's sweater, that one of the characters wears. While I purchased one at Goodwill I had to readjust because the first was in too dark of a color. I also found the perfect shoes for the narrator of the story that will work perfectly. A lot of the characters need small little adjustments that will be done this week, and I'll put the finishing touches on the jacket then too. The jacket itself is done, fully-lined and everything!

Jack's Uniform

Today ended my search to find a white British military coat for our character Jack and began my adventure in making a new coat for Jack! Overall the materials were relatively cheap, the lining, interfacing, twill fabric, and notions came to about only 40 dollars. A good price for a coat that will probably get used more than once in shows. I have about half of it done right now. I also went in to see the director today to talk about the costumes which lead to all the character wearing their costumes for practice. The director loved the overall look of the show and commended me on making the sisters look like a tight-knit family. I was pleased to hear that he liked the look of the show so far even though there were crucial pieces like Jack's jacket missing. Hopefully I will have the jacket done by Friday, but it will be surely done by Monday at the latest. We're coming up onto dress rehearsal week for me which should be pretty stress-free as most of the characters already have their costumes put together and just need nips and tucks here and there. There definitely are a lot of modifications that need to be changed before dress rehearsal week, but that's the price we pay for pulling from stock. I believe it's worth it though! Saves the department lots of money and keeps me on budget!

2 weeks until the show!

This weekend marked the 2 week mark until the opening show. While the actors are getting a bit nervous, so am I! It's scary thinking about how little time I have to costume the show, basically about 3 weeks. We did all the final pulling on Friday and began to wrap everything up, yet there are still a few pieces that need to be discussed. The general's coat is still causing great concern, as I'm not sure where we can attain such a coat and renting one might not get here in time. The show being so close is getting nerver-racking. It may come down to having to make a coat similar to the director's instructions which is only scary because it would have to be done over a weekend! The pulls for the costumes went well, and I had another meeting with the director to show him what I had purchased for the characters and pulled. The characters are all dressed in similar muted tones although I would have loved to have a completely sepia-toned set of costumes, it's not practical in budget and time constraints to go by that strict of a look. However, the muted will look very good on stage and accurate to the time period. Within the next few days we will be working on trying the costumes on and possibly pulling different pieces if some do not work out. Then the week after that will be dress rehearsal week!

Thursday, December 22nd

Today was my last day at my internship…kind of. After talking to Renata a few days ago, we decided that I'm going to come back next semester to do another semester of work. So I was sadder thinking that I wouldn't be coming back, but now that I know I am, it's just like taking a winter break from school and coming right back. For my last day, I did everything that I normally do. Things don't change very often around here. I archived Monte's emails, completed Renata's red marked emails, opened all of Monte's mail, posted the artist news stories, and mailed out some important documents. Even though I do the same thing almost every day, I have learned a lot at this internship and I'm really exciting to come back next semester and learn even more. Next year we're working with the T.V. show The Voice and the movie The Hunger Games, so we'll be extremely busy. I'll miss Universal and New York while I'm home over the next month or so, but I can't wait to get back to work in 2012.

The week in review!

It definitely has been one crazy week! I went into the class yesterday to work on costumes again with the class and this time worked with a small group of three. I had finished all my renderings for the costumes, which turned out well and will be presented in a glass display in the lobby. The class' renderings did affect my renderings and I tried to integrate pieces into the show that they wanted to see. On Wednesday we finished the pulling for the class and did a few try-ons. These went well, the only problem we ran into was one character's costume, but I discovered a perfect coat for the character for only 20 dollars at my other job (Old Navy) that would work perfectly for the character. The most amazing thing is that the coat is just what the class was looking for as well! For anything that I haven't been able to pull, I've been able to search Goodwill or clearance at stores to find. Although I haven't executed a costume yet, I feel I may have to for the coat for one of the characters. The character is supposed to be a general who acted as a missionary in Africa for around 20 years. He comes back to be with the sisters (Kate, Chris, Agnes, Maggie, and Rose) in the play. The general needs a sort of military like coat, preferably in white. While the costume shop at my school is expansive, it does not have any sort of military coat like this. I think I will contact the costume director at the Des Moines Playhouse to see if she has any similar items. Hopefully I will be able to pull final looks today and tomorrow to be able to show the director again Friday.

Wednesday, December 21st

Today was my second to last day at work so I did a lot of wrapping up. I entered a lot of the papers that Renata needed for the internship and I had to turn in my pass and i.d. Tomorrow I will just have the front desk call up to the 8th floor to have someone let me in. I still had to do all the normal tasks like archiving Monte's emails, going through Renata's red marked emails, and opening Monte's mail. We got a new shelving unit delivered for the back closet, that some how managed to stay clean over the last few weeks. We put it together a took a whole bunch of the Rolling Stones things that we have laying around and put them on the shelves and in the storage units. Our area of the office looks much cleaner now that all of the extra stuff is out of the way. I did some artist news for a few hours and realized that I'm actually going to miss doing artist news. I like being able to research our artists and use my creativity to write different stories about them. I did a few tasks for Renata here and there like running documents to different floors and opening mail and organizing emails. It was just another stereotypical day.

Tuesday, December 20th

Today, we had another intern listening session. This one was for King Charles who is an artist from the UK who hasn't really had his big break out yet. They're trying to figure out what songs to put on his EP album that will be released in the US next year, and they're also trying to figure out what song they want to launch as his new single. To figure out which songs to pick for what, they have all of the interns go in to the lounge and listen to his entire album and then write down comments and a score out of 10 for each song. This album had about 15 songs on it and we had to listen to it twice, so it took a long time to complete. But it was fun to hear unreleased music and I was actually a huge fan of his music. I would definitely buy the album when it comes out. After we got out of the intern session, we came back and finished all of the normal tasks and put away a whole bunch of new CDs that we got delivered to us.