‘Everybody Wants Some’ Costume Designer – Kari Perkins – In Conversation

Hi Film Folk,

The Film Doctor team are delighted to bring you another In Conversation today.

Today we speak to the costume designer of Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some!! – Kari Perkins!

You can read our first interview with Kari about how she started her career here.

Tell us a bit about Everybody Wants Some!! Where you shot it, how long for and any interesting challenges you came across?

We shot that almost a year ago. I prepped the whole thing and it was shot in and around Austin. I ended up shopping for the whole thing in the area. So all of those clothes were from Texas. It has a very similar feeling to Dazed and Confused and that was what we were going for.

A very realistic representation of the era and just creating that environment so that when the viewer watches it they can be immersed in that era. It was very true to the time for Texas. We did extensive research.

Rick had a full library of films that we watched from the era so we watched those and so did my crew. I also got year books from 1979 and 1980 from small towns like Rick’s college was Sam Houston University so we got two of their year books and then UT and some other small towns in Texas. Just to get a really good feel for that because Austin was a little bit more cosmopolitan than some of these other smaller towns. We did lots of researching and poring over those books and pulling out pictures that I thought were interesting and we made mood boards for that and for my crew too.

We went to all these small towns in Texas and found true vintage clothes for everybody to wear in the movie. We had so many people to dress – there were some times when I needed to modify new things because we needed multiples but for the most part, everything in the movie was just really old stuff.

You shot digitally on this one rather than film, didn’t you? How does that differ from working on Boyhood which was shot on film?

Yes, the technology was changing so rapidly through the filming of Boyhood that he wanted the consistency of film. Plus digital wasn’t so user friendly or developed when we started it but now it’s really nice and the cameras are so much nicer too and the lenses that are available.

We were able to get such a great quality film. I think they actually had vintage lenses that they used on the cameras that gave it that 80s look. Rick wanted it to look very similar to those films that were made in the 80s, have that similar quality.

The other thing with digital, we can just go on and on shooting but with film you would have to be a bit more selective and take more time in setting up your shots. You couldn’t really have any mistakes, it was a lot more controlled. Now, it’s a lot freer and you can get as many takes as you want and you don’t have to worry about burning film because the cost isn’t a factor. Plus they’re able to edit it so much faster too

Sandra Adair was the editor once again, who is so amazing. So she can be working on it as we’re filming it and then if we need to pick up anything we can pretty much do it right then. It’s a lot less expensive than in the old days when you had to put everything together manually 

Then a year later you would have to go back and reshoot or pick up a scene. It was so expensive and hard to match sometimes! We’ll always hold on to the costumes after the shoot for a while but rarely it seems like we have to go back and do anything because of that ease in editing and the speed in which they can get the information to edit

How long did you shoot for?

It was 6 weeks of filming and 5 weeks of prep. That’s pretty average these days. We were working pretty fast to stay on schedule 
 

Did you shoot any of it multi-camera?

I think there was a little bit but for the most part no.

How did you like working on the film?

We had some really interesting, fun stuff. It was just a blast! They’re just on a quest for beer and girls the whole time. They have a casual afternoon beer at the frat bar and they go to a disco which was so much fun for me! Trying to make that scene look like it would have been in a small town in Texas. Just enough to take you there.

The fabrics, the way they wore their clothes, their shirts tucked into their high-waisted pants, high heel shoes. It was really, really fun! They just go on a journey from bar to bar – there was a country bar they go to. It was just so much fun for me to recreate and all the research and trying to make it look very real.

Another thing was that at the time in Austin, it was pretty blended. For example, at the country bar, there were people wearing shorts and sandals just as well as cowboy hats and boots.

I tried to mix it up so it had a really blended feel so it wasn’t just so country. Or so they go to a punk club and the same thing, it was really casual. There were some intense punks but not everybody had a big mohawk. There were some people who were a little more intense at that time but for the most part it was just these guys who loved to do the slam dancing in the mosh pit

That was the whole fun part of it. We really tried to recreate that and I think it works pretty well.

READ: our exclusive interview with #TheJungleBook costume designer Laura Jean Shannon on working with Jon… https://t.co/f6cAPnlOWj

— Film Doctor (@film_doctor) May 4, 2016

Tell us a bit more about sourcing everything from Texas?

The whole thing was shopped in Texas. The only thing I got that was not from Texas was the vintage baseball cleats. Those are really hard to find. The new ones don’t look anything like the old ones so I rented baseball cleats for all the guys. That was it, everything else I was able to get locally.

Also, I think it’s great for the community and I try to do that on the films I do – shop as local as possible. It helps the local economy and if you’re there it feels right to be spending the money in the local community.

The other advantage is that it’s all new stuff to film. It’s not stuff that has been rented and seen in film after film. I think that that can give it a costume kind of quality or make it look less realistic.

Thank you, Kari!
 
 
RELATED ARTICLE: Read our interview with Kari Perkins about how she got to where she is today

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