Excerpt from Heel.
Costume and Set Design
by Laura Smith and Emma Burnand.
Directed by Diego Arredondo.
Winner of Cannes Straight 8 2004.
About
I trained as a Theatre Designer at Wimbledon School of Art and became interested in stop frame animation which led to work in film via training in Handcraft tailoring at London College of Fashion. These are all crafts and inform each other to turn into something else, for me it was Costume Design.
The first film project that I co-designed the Set and Costumes for was Heel. This was selected as the Winner of the Straight 8 Competition and was shown at the Cannes film Festival in 2004. The film was part live action and part animation and shot on a hand held camera on a single reel of Super 8 film with in camera edits only.
I have worked consistently since then between film, television, theatre and live performance as an in house Costumier at the BBC, then as a freelance Buyer, Assistant, Supervisor and Designer for Costume. I have worked in the UK and internationally on projects that have ranged in scale from single camera studio shoots to multi camera multi location productions with multiple principal artists and hundreds of background. These have been for Independent Film and Major Film Studios.
Over the last 10 years I have assisted Alexandra Byrne and worked with Julian Day in film and Vicki Russell and Roger Burton for commercials on awesome and inspiring projects.
My most recent project as Costume Designer is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Starring Lucy Boynton and Will Poulter. Written and Directed by Hugh Laurie, streaming globally on Britbox.
Assistant Costume Designer
I have been honoured to assist Alexandra Byrne on a series of film projects for several years, some of the titles are pictured here….
Costume Department
I have also worked across a range of roles within the Costume Department in both Film and Television as Supervisor, Buyer, Costume Assistant, Crowd Fitter and Principal Standby. I have worked as part of fantastic crews on the titles below…..