Janty Yates
Janty Yates and Ridley Scott are one of the best collaborations in the movie industry as she has designed the costumes for the likes of Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies, American Gangster as well as new movie Robin Hood.
I caught up with Janty to talk about her latest work on Robin Hood as well as working alongside Scott and Russell Crowe.
- You have designed the costumes for Ridley Scott’s latest movie Robin Hood, which is just one of the many collaborations with the filmmaker, so how did you two start working together?
Well I did a film called Plunkett & Macleane, which was directed by his son Jake Scott, and we shot that Prague and each Monday Jake would come in and go ’dad said this about the rushes’ and I would think ’oh my God he’s talking about Ridley Scott’ (laughs).
The next thing I know I’m doing a film a film in Belfast with Michael Winterbottom and I get a call asking me if I could fly over and meet Ridley Scott. So he took me, director of photography, make up and steady cam camera operator from Jake’s film onto Gladiator and beyond.
- So what is your working relationship like? How closely do you work during the design process and how hands on is he in bringing ideas to the table?
He is fantastic! We start off with an overall brief of his vision and because he is an artist he does all of his own story boards and he will give you film references, artists and so on and then you go from there. He is very collaborative, but not in a bad way.
- What keeps you wanting to work with his?
Because I think that he is one of the most talented director’s in the world.
- Robin Hood is a story that has been told many times with many different movies to what was your inspiration behind the look of the new film?
Well it’s a very heard act to follow when you have Errol Flynn in the very bright colours, it was the addition of Technicolor that made everything so so bright, and then you have got Kevin Costner which was very of it’s time with the leather, which was very of the period.
But basically we wanted to have it more linear and more accurate of the time and we just wanted to make the lines of the costumes a lot simpler.
- Did you look at the movies that have gone before or were you encouraged to design something new?
We did a huge amount of research going around a lot of museums as well as the Tower of London, York I also went to a lot of churches to look at statues so there was a lot of fantastic research there.
But I did watch all of the other films to avoid doing what they had done.
- Well that leads me into my next question really Russell Crowe’s version of Robin is something that is very different to what we have seen before he’s very tough and very macho, he wears leather breaches instead of tights, so what was your initial design for the character and did that change?
No it was exactly that just very simple, we were always going to have brays, which are leather leggings; because there was not way that I was going to put Russell Crowe in a pair of tights.
- Did you never even suggest this?
We laughed about it, I think it was of the very first conversations that we had and it was like ’I’m not going to put you in tights’ and he went ’we are not going to wear any tights’ and I think that’s fair enough.
- Russell Crowe is an actor that you have worked with on many occasions so what is he like to work with and how collaborative is he?
He is very collaborative and he is very involved in a huge amount of detail, he loves the detail, and he basically likes to get involved in every aspect.
- So after you have designed the costumes what is your role, are you on set?
Constantly because it’s huge you are designed armies, drummers, and people on the jetties for the boats you are literally doing everything and you have to cover every single aspect.
We had 1500 extras I had to create their look and make sure they were as Ridley had visualised, for the armies we had eighty actors; some of which had up to eight changes, we had something like two hundred special extras that had one line or were going to be characters.
It’s just a lot of running around you are there at 5am to get everybody dressed then basically you are monitoring the costumes every hour of the day, then scenes will change so you are running to get the new brief and running back again, so I’, on set all of the time.
- What about the costume for Marion she is a very strong woman this time around?
I loved doing Marion because we were making her look as if, basically they had had money ten years ago and then they had no money coming in and all of it was spent on the estate, so we made this beautiful woman look like peasants and that was quite a challenge.
Cate brings her own fabulous elegance to everything, she and I had worked before on Charlotte Gray, but she is a joy to dress.
We designed her armour to make her look feminine and yet masculine at the same time and that was probably the biggest challenge.
- On a movie of this scale, such as Robin Hood, Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven what are the major challenges that you face?
I think the armies and ascertaining the armies and getting them fixed because you design and army and then it had to go into major production because, of course, you are talking about up to 1500 uniforms and so ascertaining every kind of detail, even the crest, have to go to India to have the golden bullion put on and once they are set you can carry on with everything else.
Also every single actor you have to give 150% as they come through the door and sometimes they are cast quite late so that is another big challenge, it takes eight week to make a knight’s armour because there are about twenty eight different components and everything is hand made, everything has to be aged and distressed, there’s leather work, all of the chain mail has to be tailor made, everything just needs a huge amount of detail.
- You won an Oscar back in 2001 for Gladiator so what was the first thing that went through your mind?
‘Oh my God!’ (laughs) I was dumb-struck because I never thought that I would get it but I was so pleased because it was a huge team effort there was so much talent that deserved it, it was just the person with the name on it.
- Finally what’s next for you?
At the moment I am considering various options and I will make my mind up in the next month or so.
Robin Hood is out on DVD and Blu-Ray now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Janty Yates and Ridley Scott are one of the best collaborations in the movie industry as she has designed the costumes for the likes of Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies, American Gangster as well as new movie Robin Hood.
I caught up with Janty to talk about her latest work on Robin Hood as well as working alongside Scott and Russell Crowe.
- You have designed the costumes for Ridley Scott’s latest movie Robin Hood, which is just one of the many collaborations with the filmmaker, so how did you two start working together?
Well I did a film called Plunkett & Macleane, which was directed by his son Jake Scott, and we shot that Prague and each Monday Jake would come in and go ’dad said this about the rushes’ and I would think ’oh my God he’s talking about Ridley Scott’ (laughs).
The next thing I know I’m doing a film a film in Belfast with Michael Winterbottom and I get a call asking me if I could fly over and meet Ridley Scott. So he took me, director of photography, make up and steady cam camera operator from Jake’s film onto Gladiator and beyond.
- So what is your working relationship like? How closely do you work during the design process and how hands on is he in bringing ideas to the table?
He is fantastic! We start off with an overall brief of his vision and because he is an artist he does all of his own story boards and he will give you film references, artists and so on and then you go from there. He is very collaborative, but not in a bad way.
- What keeps you wanting to work with his?
Because I think that he is one of the most talented director’s in the world.
- Robin Hood is a story that has been told many times with many different movies to what was your inspiration behind the look of the new film?
Well it’s a very heard act to follow when you have Errol Flynn in the very bright colours, it was the addition of Technicolor that made everything so so bright, and then you have got Kevin Costner which was very of it’s time with the leather, which was very of the period.
But basically we wanted to have it more linear and more accurate of the time and we just wanted to make the lines of the costumes a lot simpler.
- Did you look at the movies that have gone before or were you encouraged to design something new?
We did a huge amount of research going around a lot of museums as well as the Tower of London, York I also went to a lot of churches to look at statues so there was a lot of fantastic research there.
But I did watch all of the other films to avoid doing what they had done.
- Well that leads me into my next question really Russell Crowe’s version of Robin is something that is very different to what we have seen before he’s very tough and very macho, he wears leather breaches instead of tights, so what was your initial design for the character and did that change?
No it was exactly that just very simple, we were always going to have brays, which are leather leggings; because there was not way that I was going to put Russell Crowe in a pair of tights.
- Did you never even suggest this?
We laughed about it, I think it was of the very first conversations that we had and it was like ’I’m not going to put you in tights’ and he went ’we are not going to wear any tights’ and I think that’s fair enough.
- Russell Crowe is an actor that you have worked with on many occasions so what is he like to work with and how collaborative is he?
He is very collaborative and he is very involved in a huge amount of detail, he loves the detail, and he basically likes to get involved in every aspect.
- So after you have designed the costumes what is your role, are you on set?
Constantly because it’s huge you are designed armies, drummers, and people on the jetties for the boats you are literally doing everything and you have to cover every single aspect.
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