Costume

For the women i did some research into 1940's women's fashion, and after a lot of looking around i found these two images which i thought were perfect for my design of the female costumes in the play.

After looking at these images i decided to have a go at Gertrude (left) and Ophelia (right) i drew Gertrude in a sleek royal blue skirt and jacket as the colour shows hierarchy and the style shows class. I tried to draw Ophelia in a similar way but found it hard to distinguish the difference in age between the two amongst my drawings.

Ophelia

I drew her several times but they all came out looking older than her character, then i came up with this, it still shows class and elegance but it shows you her age, that she is young in comparison to Gertrude.

Costume

For my Hamlet model box i had to do a set of costume drawings, after a lot of research images i chose how i would have the males in the play.

This is Hamlet (left) and Claudius (right)

I decided i was definitely going to have the men in suits as the mafia, i gave Hamlet a black suit as i thought it was more hidden and confusing where as i gave Claudius grey pants and a coat, the coat i find shows the hierarchy within the characters.

This is Leartes (left) and Polonius (right)

I decided to have Leatres in a slick grey suit as it shows his age i think, plus i think it shows that he is like the ultimate 'older brother'. I chose Polonius to be in a smart black suit with a red tie as i think red shows a little bit of deception as it is risky, also i drew him in this stance to show that he is working the majority of the time if not all the time.

Process

During the model box project i came across many challenges, one of the biggest challenges were the windows i started off with a piece of card at the back with windows on but this appeared to make less space instead of creating more which was what i was trying to do.

Model Box

I then tried several different ways of making space with the windows, i can to the conclusion that i had to make the windows massive where you could only see part of each window as is they were dissapearing up past the BP screen.

Model Box

After deciding on the windows i came to the challenge of trying to get the colour of my set to match the colour of Grand Central, i tried many different colours to try and match if however it took several coats and washes to create the desired effect.

Finished Model Box

Model Box

I had a few troubles along the way with my model box, even after our trip to nottingham playhouse where we were shown around the playhouse and shown where all the sight line issues were and which were the best seats.

Nottingham Playhouse

After our look around the playhouse the Production Manager, Jasper, showed us one of the model boxes for the most recent play at the time ' The Kite Runner'. This helped us with the making of our model boxes as for the last project we wern't shown an example which made it harder to make.

Model Box

Suitcase Project

After a lot of group work, agreements and arguements we came to our finished piece, we were very happy with the final outcome, even though we could of filmed our own water for the surroundings it went very well and peopole were very intrigued.

We hung labels from the bars on the ceiling which proved very interesting for the poeple coming to see it in the final showing. At first we wern't going to write anything on them that was important but then decided it would look better and i am very glad we did as lots of people were going straight to the tags to read what they said.

The stepping stones were also a hit with everyone, at first they didnt want to go on them as they thought it was part of the piece to look at but after a while i started walking along the stepping stones and people were following.

Suitcase Project

After looking at a lot of different research into Ophelia we started to put things into the suitcase we were provided with to decide what we wanted to create.

We put things such as a very beautiful mirror in the suitcase as this symbolizes beauty in itself, also we put a lot of flower petals and jewellery in the suitcase also to symbolize beauty.

With Sean we had an objects and space workshop which helped me to learn the connections between the charachters in Hamlet. We were given Ophelia for our charachter and we had to create a 'family tree'

to show what hewr parents were like, her husband and her children etc.

We used objects that signified madness and beauty, for the majority of the couples we put an object that signifies madness and an object that signifies beauty together as it is shown that many children follow in their parents foot steps by marrying someone who is like their mother or their father. However on a few couples we showed that not all children are like this.