How Many Suits Does One Hero Need?

How many costumes does one super hero need? In the movie, Xam and Power Dog have one costume each. Throughout the movie the costumes will get really torn up. Seeing how I don’t want to rip up the costumes as I’m filming (you never know when you’re going to need to do re-shoots) I can’t just rip the costumes up with no regard for the future. So, similar to a big budget movie , my little movie is going to require multiple costumes for each hero.

In a Hollywood movie, there are fleets of designers that do nothing for weeks on end but design and create costumes for the movie. I am not that lucky. I’ve never really sewn before sitting down to create this project, so I pretty much had to learn on the fly. That’s not a problem since I’m going to be ripping and shredding some of the costumes. That gives me some leeway as to the quality of each costume.

Xam has three costumes. I designed the patterns myself so each costume varies slightly from the other as I was making tweaks and improvements with each new costume. The big thing was to make sure that each costume looked exactly the same on film. In their current states, they all look the same. Throughout the film, Xam’s costume will get shredded and torn. Three costumes will be needed to achieve the varying degrees of degradation while still leaving me with the ability to do re-shoots.

Power Dog has only two costumes. Due to his indestructibility, his suits don’t really take a whole lot of damage. It pretty much takes a near nuclear explosion to hurt Power Dog. When you see his suit shredding, you know he’s taking a serious beating. I’m sure as I finish the story I will have to reevaluate how much punishment Power Dog will actually receive. Perhaps then I will determine he will need an extra costume. At this point I hope not. I’m getting pretty tired of sewing the same suits over and over again.

For the purpose of the movie, Willow the cat makes the duo’s costumes. In reality, it is me, and I’m not a world class tailor by any stretch of the imagination. Still, it has been fun at times and I’ve been able to learn something of what it takes to sew. This has given me a new appreciation for people that do this for a living. It’s hard work and I really won’t know if it was worth the effort until I finish this project. Not being under any deadlines, I have no idea when that time will come. Until then, I just have to assume that it will be totally worth the effort.