Featured Article No2
Stunning Costume Design, Animatronics
International, award winning costume designer,
Vinilla Burnham has recently collaborated with Adam Wright, an animatronics
and special effects designer to create something special for Lady Gaga.
Words: Vin Burnham and Adam Wright
I’ve just completed a fascinating job for Henson producers, Martin Baker and Pete Coogan (Baker Coogan) and Pete Brooke from Henson’s LA.
The task was to design a dress for Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball World Tour. Pete Brooke and Jamie Campbell were designing the Monster itself, a huge animatronic beast with flailing tentacles, puppeteered by dancers. The original intentions were for the dress to be worn in the finale with the monster.
Gaga had seen the incredible moving dresses designed by Hussein Chalayan and animated by animatronics designer Adam Wright and his team. Gaga wanted something that moved . . . Following several transatlantic conference calls with Gaga’s Art Director Matt Williams, I started drawing up some ideas based on his brief. Time was tight, and fittings were impossible (not ideal for such an exacting costume), but with my team of ace costume maker Sten Vollmuller and assistant Susan Smith, we launched into a prototype. Luckily, Adam Wright was available to animate this dress. He really led the process, as anything that the costume did affected the animatronics. It couldn’t be too heavy or cause snarl ups with the cables that pulled the dress into its various positions. My main concern was the aesthetics of the proportions and the shape along with the materials, which were mainly pleated plastics. I stumbled across an extraordinary material by accident one day in a model shop. It was a woven stainless steel. We discovered that when we photographed it in the dark using a flash, it looked as if it had thousands of volts of electricity running through it. It became known as the 1,000-volt fabric, and we used in for the wings.
The dress premiered at the Liverpool Echo Arena on February 23rd. It was an incredible moment when we saw it animated on Gaga for the first time (just 4 hours before the show). I was overcome. I’ve become a bit cynical over the years, but this was a moment I will never forget. It was the combination of the dress, the animation, the music, the lighting, and of course Gaga herself who has the most powerful voice and stage presence.
This dress wasn’t designed for a character, there was no script, it wasn’t even worn for the same number it was designed for. It had a life all of it’s own. It was immediately nicknamed 'The Living Dress’ in the press. The crowd went wild when they saw it.
As I mention the design of the costume was a collaboration between myself and Adam Wright who is an animatronics and special effects designer. This is the story from his side.
We had only four weeks to make this moving dress with pop up wings and a fan hat. Unlike on a film where we are on set to operate and maintain it, this had to go on tour, and work every time without any of the original team on hand, so things had to be right.
This job particularly allowed for design collaboration and playing with the aesthetics far more than usual. And Lady Gaga being a high profile client, there was a fantastic buzz surrounding it. This would be a great boost to my portfolio. With the tight deadline, the job possessed me. I was eating and sleeping it. It was very consuming and stressful. Often after a twelve-hour day with the team, I would then stay on in the studio, alone, looking at the job, resolving the problems so we could continue the next day, before going home and trying to empty my head.
What I like to bring to a project such as this, is not so much clever mechanics (I don’t think I am specially gifted that way), but to energize and work with others, bouncing creative ideas around with a team, while trying to stay within the brief and also to suggest other ways of introducing movement. If the process and solutions are fluid right to the end, there should be a memorable result that is something new and magical. This dress certainly was.
I had difficulty finding available mechanical designers, and was very relieved to catch Ed Dimbleby for two weeks on a break from Warhorse. I had to broaden the make-up of the crew to cover the design and making. If the talent is available and they get on well, you can achieve anything, and this proved to be the case with our team which consisted of: Helly McGrother, Richard Blakey, Jonathan Saville, Adam Keenan and John Nolan. And for the initial concerts I bought in the invaluable back up of Josh Lee. I think we are all still talking to each other!
I approached the design like a creature with a head, wings, body and tail. This allowed each part to be worked on individually by different members of the team, in order to get it finished on time. When making a costume such as this the mechanics can both restrict and liberate the design. Before you have a mechanical solution, you don’t want to restrict anyone’s ideas, but you want to allow them time to experiment, while at the same time guiding them, knowing what is and isn’t possible in the time frame set.
On opening night, Josh and I sat by the stage where Gaga was going to pass. Control boxes in nervous hands and hundreds of fans hanging over our shoulders, we waited. We had already prepped the dress, checked it and switched it on, making sure batteries were charged and there were no tangled strings. We tested it and tested it again. With a deep breath, we handed over the controls to Gaga’s team. What could go wrong.? (You should never say that!) We waited for the music to start, Gaga passed us, followed by her dancers, carrying the dress and hat. The screen came down and covered her. Josh and I looked at each other. The pause was long, and finally when the screen came up I saw one part of the dress moving, I knew we were in with a chance. The dress worked perfectly. We all felt brilliant, 'the bees knees’. It was the best moment for a long time. The high was great and the booze up after, a relief.
Vin and Adam’s fantastic ‘Living Dress’ for Lady Gaga can be seen at by clicking here.
The task was to design a dress for Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball World Tour. Pete Brooke and Jamie Campbell were designing the Monster itself, a huge animatronic beast with flailing tentacles, puppeteered by dancers. The original intentions were for the dress to be worn in the finale with the monster.
Gaga had seen the incredible moving dresses designed by Hussein Chalayan and animated by animatronics designer Adam Wright and his team. Gaga wanted something that moved . . . Following several transatlantic conference calls with Gaga’s Art Director Matt Williams, I started drawing up some ideas based on his brief. Time was tight, and fittings were impossible (not ideal for such an exacting costume), but with my team of ace costume maker Sten Vollmuller and assistant Susan Smith, we launched into a prototype. Luckily, Adam Wright was available to animate this dress. He really led the process, as anything that the costume did affected the animatronics. It couldn’t be too heavy or cause snarl ups with the cables that pulled the dress into its various positions. My main concern was the aesthetics of the proportions and the shape along with the materials, which were mainly pleated plastics. I stumbled across an extraordinary material by accident one day in a model shop. It was a woven stainless steel. We discovered that when we photographed it in the dark using a flash, it looked as if it had thousands of volts of electricity running through it. It became known as the 1,000-volt fabric, and we used in for the wings.
The dress premiered at the Liverpool Echo Arena on February 23rd. It was an incredible moment when we saw it animated on Gaga for the first time (just 4 hours before the show). I was overcome. I’ve become a bit cynical over the years, but this was a moment I will never forget. It was the combination of the dress, the animation, the music, the lighting, and of course Gaga herself who has the most powerful voice and stage presence.
This dress wasn’t designed for a character, there was no script, it wasn’t even worn for the same number it was designed for. It had a life all of it’s own. It was immediately nicknamed 'The Living Dress’ in the press. The crowd went wild when they saw it.
As I mention the design of the costume was a collaboration between myself and Adam Wright who is an animatronics and special effects designer. This is the story from his side. We had only four weeks to make this moving dress with pop up wings and a fan hat. Unlike on a film where we are on set to operate and maintain it, this had to go on tour, and work every time without any of the original team on hand, so things had to be right.
This job particularly allowed for design collaboration and playing with the aesthetics far more than usual. And Lady Gaga being a high profile client, there was a fantastic buzz surrounding it. This would be a great boost to my portfolio. With the tight deadline, the job possessed me. I was eating and sleeping it. It was very consuming and stressful. Often after a twelve-hour day with the team, I would then stay on in the studio, alone, looking at the job, resolving the problems so we could continue the next day, before going home and trying to empty my head.
What I like to bring to a project such as this, is not so much clever mechanics (I don’t think I am specially gifted that way), but to energize and work with others, bouncing creative ideas around with a team, while trying to stay within the brief and also to suggest other ways of introducing movement. If the process and solutions are fluid right to the end, there should be a memorable result that is something new and magical. This dress certainly was.
I had difficulty finding available mechanical designers, and was very relieved to catch Ed Dimbleby for two weeks on a break from Warhorse. I had to broaden the make-up of the crew to cover the design and making. If the talent is available and they get on well, you can achieve anything, and this proved to be the case with our team which consisted of: Helly McGrother, Richard Blakey, Jonathan Saville, Adam Keenan and John Nolan. And for the initial concerts I bought in the invaluable back up of Josh Lee. I think we are all still talking to each other!
I approached the design like a creature with a head, wings, body and tail. This allowed each part to be worked on individually by different members of the team, in order to get it finished on time. When making a costume such as this the mechanics can both restrict and liberate the design. Before you have a mechanical solution, you don’t want to restrict anyone’s ideas, but you want to allow them time to experiment, while at the same time guiding them, knowing what is and isn’t possible in the time frame set.
On opening night, Josh and I sat by the stage where Gaga was going to pass. Control boxes in nervous hands and hundreds of fans hanging over our shoulders, we waited. We had already prepped the dress, checked it and switched it on, making sure batteries were charged and there were no tangled strings. We tested it and tested it again. With a deep breath, we handed over the controls to Gaga’s team. What could go wrong.? (You should never say that!) We waited for the music to start, Gaga passed us, followed by her dancers, carrying the dress and hat. The screen came down and covered her. Josh and I looked at each other. The pause was long, and finally when the screen came up I saw one part of the dress moving, I knew we were in with a chance. The dress worked perfectly. We all felt brilliant, 'the bees knees’. It was the best moment for a long time. The high was great and the booze up after, a relief.
Vin and Adam’s fantastic ‘Living Dress’ for Lady Gaga can be seen at by clicking here.
Vin Burham is represented by Michelle Arnold at The Dench Arnold Agency. www.dencharnold.com
www.vin-burnham.com
Adam Wright can be found at: www.adam-wright.com