Indie Film "Death and Space"

The great thing about doing costume design is the variety of projects you can have that allow you try experiment will all kinds of techniques and materials. Working on 'Death and Space' has been particularly interesting because it actually takes place in space. Or as close as we mortals can get, the green screen :)

There were going to be alot of tight shots and close-ups so the space suit worn by the astronauts had to have as much realistic detail as possible. The creators ordered an NASA replica space suit modelled after those worn in the Apollo mission which ended up looking pretty simple and needed tweaking.

The helmet had to have extra fabric added to the neck in order to cover up the bottom lip of the visor. Hand sewing Velcro on to thick glued canvas is painful, let me tell you. Though, we didn't have to worry about making our first blood sacrifice for the film after that.. haha

The front pack base was usable but the 'hardware' it originally came with made it look like a toy. I got to install all kinds of fun gadgets and dials so that it more resembled the real thing. The grey piece on the front was originally bright silver so I repainted it and added distressing and darkened the edges. The backpack was pretty plain so I added more fabric overlay pieces and held them in with screws that were the closest I could find to the original.

 

PETER JORGESEN, DEATH AND SPACE

Photo Credit: 2010 Trevor Kai. All Rights Reserved.

Photo Credits Above: TM 2010 SMASHWORKS. All Rights Reserved.

The snoopy cap that came with the suit was pretty unusable so I ended up drafting and entirely new pattern. From here, they look fairly simple but the ear pads were a bit more complicated. I also had to worry about them starting to droop so I actually filled them with polar fleece so they would keep their shape.

ERICA LEUNG, DEATH AND SPACE

Photo Credit: 2010 Trevor Kai. All Rights Reserved.

The most frustrating and time consuming piece of this project was definitely the gloves. I had to start over from scratch with those and the stitch lines were so close together, working on my machine became very complicated. I ended up having to hand sew a few small parts in the end. But all in all, they worked out and looked exactly as I had envisioned.

Photo Credits Above: TM 2010 SMASHWORKS. All Rights Reserved.

They are still working on post-production but I have some stills from the film and it looks pretty cool :)