In this week's blog, Costume Designer and Costume Society Trustee Ray Holman lets us behind the scenes on the process of creating creatures for the iconic sci-fi series Doctor Who. Ray analyses The Sea Devils, giving us an insight into how he and his team worked to give new life to a creature that fans would be familiar with from past series.
When designing costumes for Television or Film, contemporary, period or fantasy there will be research involved and The Sea Devils are no different. The brief was to find a new design aesthetic based on an older loved design for a fan favourite, bringing the creature to a new family audience. I will break down the various pieces of the costume which were all made from scratch in our workroom in order to give some idea of how we achieved the final result.
We start with the script, location and period. We are set on a historical ship and the creatures are pirates. After researching the periods for all characters and what the creatures actually do in action (lots of swashbuckling) I put all references together and create a mood board which eventually becomes a costume sketch using any relevant images. This is presented to the producers, discussed and given an approval with instructions on how many we need to build, in this case 9, which is a good number for digital reproduction for background performers and we also created the lead speaking part Marcissus.
The pull-on heads are a specialist make sculpted first in clay and then moulded in latex foam, they were made by our specialist prosthetic costume maker (Robert Allsopp) the sight lines for the performers are through the mouth piece which means the heads sit higher on the actors’ head (they have an internal helmet), the necklines extend to mid chest and are fixed with elastic loops which go under the armpits. The design decision was made to stay true to the original prosthetic which was created in 1972. They are painted with acrylics and have fixed eyes; they are an art form in their own right.
The costumes were made completely from scratch:
Marcissus’ coat is made from cotton moleskin, cut to a Norah Waugh pattern from “The Cut of Men’s Clothes”, the actor is 6’7” tall and we exaggerated the coat skirts and cuffs, it was lined in cotton and “broken down” in order to look used and old. The tricorn hat was never going to sit on the prosthetic head properly but we made a huge one and used for a second on screen in order to give the flavour of the period.
The armour is pure fantasy and created from vegetable tanned leather with crayfish netting heat pressed between two layers in order to create a textured look and feel which also represents the sea. The armour is both protective and practical to the action of the scripts. Swords and daggers are used and so the cross belts and waistbelts were created to be practical and yet look sumptuous and scary, we used generic period style buckles and leather lacing in order to hold the daggers and water bottles, the belts were also all made from scratch and fitted to each performer. The arm armour based on medieval pauldrons and braces.
The green arming jackets worn under the armour were made from heavy green cotton, sewn and quilted in our workroom, they have a layer of wadding between two layers of cotton (they took an age to quilt), the buttons are toggles and rope. Under the jackets we have black linen 18C shirts with the wide floppy collar stand, open collared to get the best value from the prosthetic neck.
The breeches are made from a striped heavy cotton, cream and navy inch wide stripes which was really hard to find, again based on a Norah Waugh pattern. We cut a fall front and extended the length of the leg to put a cuff below the knee which was tied with cotton corset lacing. We had to dye the fabric 4 times in order to get the fabric to look old and worn.
We were making these costumes during a national lockdown and so it was hard to get the right number of boots made for the budget we had and in time for the filming, so we used pre-existing, long straight generic leather boots we already had in stock (which were made in France) we cut the bucket tops and glued them into our straight cut boots and then dyed the whole lot.
These costumes are defined by their worn-out look and the nature of the sea creature needed some sea references so we moulded limpets and sea weed in latex, which comes out white, we then painted the latex and glued the limpets to the costumes and also added a mixture of rubber-based glue and grit to feel like the sand had hardened on the clothes.
Things evolve in the making any costume especially during the fitting process and we decided because of the scripted action it wouldn’t be practical to have prosthetic hands or feet, they needed to be more practical hence the use of boots and gauntlets, we also added the breakdown elements to these and it helped the action flow easily.
These costumes were made alongside many others with a tight timescale, always with the filming happening at the same time.
I hope this gives a flavour of the skills and research and design challenges which enabled the costumes. From start to finish I think they took 5 weeks to create alongside other work being created for the series. We are always juggling with multiple character and creature designs at any given time and so the context in which the creatures were created is that we were very busy, filming is always happening on various episodes and as the designer I always see every actor onto set on their first day of filming. For this episode we had several principal speaking artists, some in traditional villager costumes and two sea faring ships Captains, one man and one woman, none of the costumes were available through traditional routes and so everything was made in our workroom.
We were a small department of seven people and we employ “dailies” who come into help us on a when needed basis throughout the filming process.
I was the first Creature & Costume designer on Doctor Who with overall responsibilities for the look of the series and I have now stepped out of that role in order to return to pure costume design. As well as a recent addition to the Honorary Trustee group for The Costume Society I am an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and sometimes I teach BA and MA students whenever I have time in the hope that I can introduce students to the world of Television and Film and share the number of craft-based careers that are available in the industry, I also help the occasional PHD student with research. This year I have designed a new series called Wolf for the BBC based on the books written by Mo Hayder, I am about to start researching and designing a series set in 1986 based on Jilly Cooper's Rivals which was a best-selling novel. It is being produced by Disneyplus.
Ray has previously written a Day in the Life as a costume designer, published in Issue One of The Thread, the Costume Society's members' magazine. To receive new copies of The Thread and to access past issues online, click here to find out more about how to become a Costume Society member and what else is included in the membership.
