Welcome to the Caveman's Hideout

do y'all remember when they found all that tf art in Osamu Tezuka's drawer post-mortem because I think about it often

ever after (1998) vs cinderella (2021)

lord of the rings (2001-2003) vs the rings of power (2022)

It's not just that we're unionized, though that absolutely plays into the financial aspect of it to a degree. There is 100% not just an anti-labor and anti-artistic sentiment, but also just an overall shift from these productions being treated as less like storytelling and performance, like they were in the past, and more like corporate investments and business endeavors. Everything is bottom line vs potential profits, marketability, and modern trends, or what will trend on tiktok, and you have to design to that constantly.

It's also that filmmaking has developed the expectation of making movies on such a short production time that there's no time to MAKE amazing beautiful pieces like this. A good gown may take weeks or months to complete and many rounds of fittings and mockups, and might be very heavy or restrictive to actors and limit how long they can shoot in a given costume. From my experience, things are decided on one day and have to be ready to shoot in a few weeks, and that's only if the writers aren't constantly having to make last second changes because the directors and producers change their visions constantly on a dime, down to the very last minute, and there's nothing we can do as the costume team except make it happen or make a REALLY good case for why we can't just find some cheap option fast that would work instead. So you might spend thousands on that beautiful dress only for them to completely cut the scene, change the context entirely in rewrites, or just decide they don't like the dress and want something else.

And because directors and producers get last say, and often they have Bad Taste and want things that are modern and marketable, and often will think things look great that are actually pretty unfitting for the character or make no sense for the design of the film, they insist on bad choices that then get pushed through to the end result of the film. Actors do this too sometimes, like what happened with Emma Watson and Belle's dress in the live action Beauty and the Beast remake, but usually only the big name actors have enough star power to swing full changes like that.

And of course, yes, there's not enough budget for high quality work. Costumers, like everyone else on film sets right now, are expected to stretch the budgets they're given to 'make it work' because so many have (in order to make the producers happy and keep their jobs). And in return, quality goes down, because in order to build a costume you need good fabric, embellishments, and labor. Good fabric costs a lot of money, embellishments cost a lot of money, hand fitting and skilled labor cost a lot of money, and costume budgets are being given none of that because the studios are incredibly strict and frugal with what they expect you to spend so they can make the most profit off of a given project, so cuts to quality end up being made somewhere in order to make up the difference and get the actors clothed.

Rings of Power? that was Kate Hawley. who also did Crimson Peak (2015) and produced costumes like this:

The website where I first read about it is no longer operational but gather round and I'll try to convey the true meaning of Tuba Christmas (with apologies to Charlie Suissman, who told this story better than I ever could)

The concert was conceived in 1974 by Harvey Phillips as a tribute to his teacher and mentor William J. Bell, born on Christmas Day, 1902.

Harvey called up the programming people at Rock Center to propose a concert in December. They said "what did you have in mind?" He said "100 tubas playing Christmas carols." And there was silence on the other end of the line.

So Harvey talked to some pals like Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein. And a while later he gets a call from Rock Center, and this time the guy on the phone says "we've talked to your friends, you can have anything you want."

So then he puts out a call for tuba & euphonium players. And it turns out EVERYONE wants to honor their teacher Bell, and he gets THREE HUNDRED rsvps. And then the next hurdle is that somehow no one has ever arranged Christmas carols for an orchestra entirely made of tubas, so he gets someone on that.

Day of the concert they basically have a few minutes in the hall all lined up to test out the arrangements and magically THEY WORK. So everyone parades out onto the ice and it's magical.

Making a snowman is hard - part of my Animal Crossing nostalgia illustrations. Snowman proportions are so finicky...I always messed up and pissed the guy off