My career started in the theatre in 1969, when
I worked for the Royal Opera House. I couldn't sew terribly well
when I started and I still can't now, so I spent my time making
mouse costumes, head-dresses for Swan Lake and pantomime
horses. Probably because of that, my thing has always been sculpting
and dying fabric.
1979: THE MONSTER YEARS
I started working for costume designer James Acheson
on a series of projects including Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits and Brazil.
James is my mentor; very exacting, very creative. From the start
I worked on more unusual costume projects. I now call myself a "special-effects
costume designer" because nobody would ever think of phoning
me up to do modern drama or even a Merchant Ivory-type period piece.
I tend to do fantasy work or things verging of special effects
- costumes that incorporate mechanics; wings or tails - that sort
of thing.
For Jim Hensons's The Dark Crystal I
designed costumes for creatures, more animal and reptile, which
was much more interesting than doing humans. We looked at historical
costume, but then went off at a tangent and tried to use textures
that didn't even resemble fabrics; materials that looked like cobwebs,
bark or mosses. Everything had to be strange.
1989: THE BAT YEARS
Probably the most recognisable costume I've ever
made is Batman's. I'd originally turned the job down, but the film's
costume designer Bob Ringwood convinced me to sculpt just the head.
By the time I'd finished that, I really wanted to do the whole
thing.
The suit was foam latex and very tight-fitting
and the only way to get a perfect fit was to sculpt over the top
of a fibreglass cast of the actor. To be life-cast, a person has
to stand absolutely still for about two-and-a-half hours while
a team of mould makers cover them in plaster and brace them in
a wooden frame. It's incredibly claustrophobic.
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Vin Burnham on a career that's involved
dressing monsters, greasing up Heather Graham and wrapping Michael
Keaton in bat-shaped rubber latex.
For Batman Returns we used a medical
laser to scan Michael Keaton and digitally created a cast that
was four per cent bigger than him; thus we were able to counteract
the four per cent shrinkage of the foam during manufacture.
We had much more money and preparation time for
the second film, so my team took over after making the prototypes
for Batman, Catwoman and The Penguin. The "Batshop" in
Burbank, California was a hive of activity and creative tension
- lots of drama and lots of Hollywood politics, with a team of
40 artists and more than 100 suits to wrangle. I started off as
a sculptor but ended up as a social worker.
1997: THE SPACE AGE
Jean-Paul Gaultier designed all the fashion clothing
for The Fifth Element, while I was responsible for the
costume-effects design, like the Mangalores' outfits and the New
York cops' body armour. These were good practice for Lost in
Space.
Everything on Lost in Space had to be
done at breakneck speed because the actors were chosen so late
in the day, and we worked seven days a week for four months. To
be life-cast, Heather Graham had to fly overnight from New York
to LA. She arrived at 7am, had two hours sleep, then spent the
next three hours being covered in Nivea, then plaster.
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After a quick shower at my hotel
room, she immediately returned to New York and was back on a film
set shooting the following morning.
Director Stephen Hopkins wanted space clothing
with street-cred, so he wasn't into doing anything extraordinarily
sci-fi. We made complete mock-ups of the costumes out of cheap
material called platizote, which is a cross between polystyrene
and foam. These were approved by the director, the production designer
and, importantly, the stunt co-ordinator.
The actual cryosuites were made in foam latex,
the same as the Batman suit. But there was only one Batman mould
to fit one man. On Lost in Space, we had six people -
men, women and children - so there was no doubling up and everything
had to fit precisely. It was a huge amount of work to do in a very
short time.
Wearing a foam suit under the studio lighting
is the same as wearing a thick wetsuit in a desert - very hot,
very uncomfortable. And actors become even more annoyed by the
long preparation time and constant suit maintenance. But they just
have to learn to grin and bear the discomfort, especially as most
performers have to be glued into their costumes to prevent visible
zips. We learn as we go along; Batman's later suits had flies built
into them, but poor old Michael Keaton had to cross his legs in
the prototypes.
One problem with science-fiction is that it dates
very quickly. At the time, the first Batman looked really cool,
but when I look at it now, it looks like an old Dr. Who costume.
Because technology moves so fast, I expect that, in 20 years time
people will look at Lost in Space and say: "Look
at the costumes, that's when they used to sculpt things".
It's quite likely that by then they'll be able to develop computer-generated
suits around actors more cheaply than we can actually build them.
I can think of at least half-a-dozen actors and costume designers
who would be very happy to say goodbye to latex.
After working on underwater costumes for
a commercial, Burnham will be developing two creature-heavy projects
aimed at children.
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