Ep. 185: Costume Designer Deborah L. Scott on Building Worlds with Character and Depth

Mar 7

Oscar-winning costume designer Deborah L. Scott grew up sewing doll clothes, puppets, and getting swept up by the stories at the cinema. At 21 she went to work costuming show girls on the Vegas strip. Once in film, her adaptability, imagination, and resourcefulness carved a path that led to projects with Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, and onto sets of the biggest films of our time.

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Oscar-winning costume designer Deborah L. Scott. If you’ve ever been to the movies… You’ve seen Deborah L. Scott’s work, she’s been at it for 40 years now, and has led the design of costumes on E.T., Back to the Future, Heat, Minority Report, Who’s That Girl (remember that one? starring Madonna?), Titanic - for which she won an Oscar, Avatar, and most recently the sequel: Avatar: The Way of Water…If you’ve seen that one you were undoubtedly wowed by her skill and artistry in creating the material reality of Pandora. And her process is fascinating. She actually invented a new costume paradigm: hand-making finely crafted physical costumes and props that were then digitized for film. Over the course of 5 years, she and her team hand weaved, stitched, beaded, embroidered, and braided, using a craft-based sampling-led design process. And then took these physical artifacts and blended them with the technological innovations of her collaborators in Visual Effects. And in a rare scenario for a costume designer, she stayed on the project all the way through post-production lending her vision and expertise to the digital representations of the costumes to help bring the Na’vi of Pandora to life. Just recently, in 2023, she has been honored with a Career Achievement Award from the Costume Designers Guild with 40 years in show business she’s racked up a ton of stories, forged a formidable path, and is proudly holding doors open for those on the way up. It’s a very hands-on life with deep character and beautiful details… here’s Deborah.

Deborah L. Scott: My name is Deborah L. Scott. I live in Los Angeles, California. I am a costume designer for films because I love making movies.

Amy: That is amazing and we haven’t had too many costume designers on the show so I am very excited to hear all about your creative journey. And I want to start, as I usually do, with the very beginning, your childhood. So can you tell me where you grew up and what your family dynamic was like and the types of things that fascinated you as a kid?

Deborah: I grew up in a family of four children. My father was a correction manager for a building products company and my mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of her time. We moved around a lot. I was born in Montana, which was a little obscure, but we moved constantly, every two or three years my father would get sent to a new place. And I think that was pretty elemental in my childhood in terms of being able to see the world from a different perspective. We lived all over the country, only in the US, but New York, the South, New Orleans, Indiana, Chicago, so I think it gave me a really broad perspective on people watching, which was great. And meeting new people… and I think it prepared me very well for the film business, as most people know, is pretty much a bunch of vagabonds. We go on location a lot, we pick up and move and I think that really helped me feel comfortable in that setting as well. My mom taught me to sew when I was very little, I was probably sewing by the time I was in third grade. So I appreciated the hands-on of making things. She also was pretty responsible for me having my first little camera when I was quite young and a box of paints. She was an artistic person, but I don’t think that she was really allowed to express it very much. But she must have seen something because those were kind of the gifts that she gave me. She never made a big deal out of it at all. My dad was very much a lover of movies. So whenever we could, we would go as a family to the cinema, to a drive-in, watch on television obviously, but I think that those really elemental and formative years of sitting in a movie theater and being taken away by a story was pretty foundational for me.

Amy: It sounds like it. I’m curious when you learned how to sew, were you focusing on garment construction or what were you sewing?

Deborah: Well, I tried to sew my own clothes (laughter), so I think I was very garment focused. My mother would make a lot of our clothes as children. But I also… I think one of the very first things I sewed clothes. I did dolls, that was a big deal. And making puppets.

Amy: Oh, characters, from the get!

Deborah: Exactly! Exactly! And so I still have one of my very early puppets and it brings back an amazing memory in that way.

Amy: That’s amazing! And then of all the places you’ve lived, does one stand out in your childhood as being, I don’t know, more magical than the others?

Deborah: They were so different that nothing really was more important or less important than any other place. When we lived in Indiana my poor mother was stuck in a motel. I was very, very young, I was probably three or four then and at that point I had two siblings which we were stuck living in a motel for six months.

Amy: Wow!

Deborah: I’m sure she must have wanted to absolutely tear her hair out, but we became very close with the couple that owned the motel. And it was the quintessential kind of 50s roadside kind of place. So there was a lot of character to that for me.

Amy: That’s interesting to me because you being there for six months and [0.05.00] and the hotel owners, you would be the only people who were not itinerant for that period of time. (Laughter)

Deborah: Yeah, I have absolutely no memory of anyone else, except the two, Mary and Lee are the people that ran the place. My recollecting is she wore a little uniform because it was still the days where something like that would be appropriate.

Amy: Right and did you get to see behind the scenes also… like how a motel was run?

Deborah: (Laughs) Yeah, I think so. I just remember mostly trying to be outdoors because I’m sure my poor mom…

Amy: Oh right, right, a motel room is not where you like to hunker down and read books all afternoon! (Laughter)

Deborah: Yeah and we were too young, my siblings and I were very close in age and we were too young to be in school at that point.

Amy: I love that story because for some reason it feels like it informs your ability to adapt and make friends with these people who sort of come in and out of your life and also may have given you a little window into the operations behinds the façade, the story of what is.

Deborah: Yeah.

Amy: And that’s where you operate now.

Deborah: Exactly.

Amy: Tell me about your teenager years, were you still moving around as a teenager?

Deborah: When I was a young teen, like junior high school, we lived in Orange County for a while, so that was very alluring because I could see the fireworks for Disneyland every night, so that was very… it was like oh my gosh, a whole fake wonderful world.

Amy: Yeah! (Laughter)

Deborah: That was pretty wonderful. And then I spent my high school years in Vegas…

Amy: Oh my gosh, the fakery again, yeah!

Deborah: With the fakery of that place and the bizarreness of that place and this I guess was the beginning of the 70s, the strip was such a different place than the people that actually worked and lived there. And it was a very Mormon place, so it was just this incredible juxtaposition of these incredibly two different worlds, which I also think was very informative, like what’s real, what’s not real.

Amy: Right, oh man, and how to construct the story so that it… even if people understand that it’s not real, it’s still worthy of escapism and being immersed in, for its entertainment value.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly and I think it kind of drew these interesting lines in society, which in terms of creating characters for movies, that’s one of the main things that you do, that you put a person in a place and time. It might be next to another person, but they may come from completely separate places.

Amy: You’re painting a picture or putting together a collage of sorts that seems to be leading directly to the profession you found…

Deborah: It’s funny because I’ve never quite talked about it in this way, the way you’re kind of linking it together for me is really amazing and helpful, it’s very insightful. Because I think we don’t realize when we’re children, with things that are going to take hold in us and propel us on some kind of path. Working in the film business, even the theater was a complete… like are you out of your mind kind of concept.

Amy: Yeah, it wouldn’t have been a recipe that was offered to you at the time, it’s like not a stable or easy industry to enter, so it’s not like go to college and get a job in finance or medicine or education.

Deborah: Yeah, I think that was very interesting and I think that one of my very formative moments was when I was in high school and we were supposed to take a typing class. And I was absolutely defiant. I said, “I will not learn that job,” because I knew… it was always like women could be secretaries, in the 60s that was a big deal.

Amy: Yeah.

Deborah: And I was like, absolutely no! (Laughter) I still am a terrible typer, which I regret, but it was a moment, somehow, and I didn’t know where I was going to go with that, but I knew I wasn’t going to go there. So sometimes it’s what you reject too.

Amy: Yeah, where does the defiance come from?

Deborah: Oh being one of four children and I was the quiet, middle… and I had to really chart my own way, make my own rules, be independent, which I’m very grateful for that. As much as you feel you were overlooked as the middle one, but it really gave me that… a little bit of confidence in myself to make my decisions. And I went to college when I was 16.

Amy: What? Huh?

Deborah: Yeah, I started school really early, I’m sure again, my mother wanted more children out of the house. But they allowed me to start school, and so I was always on the younger side and when I was 16 I convinced my parents that I could… I was going to turn 17 right after school started… I have a late birthday, and I convinced them that I could get an apartment (laughs) and go to school and they somehow decided to let me do that, which I’m still amazed it. They must have just been like, okay, whatever, go.

Amy: That’s very self-sufficient and independent of you. Why were you so anxious to get moving on your adult life and leave childhood behind?

Deborah: I really do think it was just that kind of, that wonder of what the world was going to hold for me. I knew that, at that point I knew that I was going to study theater. So I was already very invested in this magical, made-up world of some sort. So it was pretty easy, it was a comfortable place to land in a theater department.

Amy: This is at Cal State, Northridge?

Deborah: Yeah, I went there for three years before I dropped out and went to Vegas and worked on the strip as a costume person. The twist and turns, but I think it was that thing of knowing that I wanted to somehow be involved in this kind of world. At the time I didn’t really understand that movies were a thing. Like you could actually… I’m not sure when it dawned on me that you could actually work in the same way. But as I pursued my theatrical career… and schooling really taught me a lot and it’s one of the things that I like to do when I have time, is to teach other students.

Because to me as a costume designer, my roots were in the theater and I think that the importance of that was that you really got… it wasn’t fashion, that you had to learn about character, you had to learn the skills, you had to build sets, you had to make costumes, you had to do hair, you had to do it all.

Amy: Everything about it is so intentional because it has to embody the character, it has to give you information about the character, it has to move with the character. And so it’s not just… yeah, it’s not just dressing the person, it’s actually informing the story in a way.

Deborah: One hundred percent, that’s the main purpose of what we do, we give a visual language to the character for an audience to see. And I think it’s very informative and that’s one of the reasons why we’re quite often very close with actors or actresses because of that, that you’re working together, ideally, to present a person.

Amy: Yeah, and that character development. So you said something that I have to follow up on, which is you dropped out of school and went to Vegas. I love the way that sounds!

Deborah: It wasn’t a great idea, but it worked out! (Laughter)

Amy: Okay, let’s unpack that a little.

Deborah: Yeah, so I went back to Vegas, my parents had moved on from there, so I didn’t really even have a home, it wasn’t like I went home. But I had an opportunity to work at the MGM, when they were really just starting, in my opinion, this could be completely false information, but big shows, like big costume shows. And Bob Mackie had designed this… it was based on Hollywood.

Amy: Your worlds are colliding…

Deborah: All of these things kind of came together… I know, it’s so weird. So I got a job very easily working on that show and I think it was because of my theatrical experience. I could have been probably at the time 21, something like that [0.15.00], barely legal to be in a gambling establishment. But my coworkers were mostly older women, which was interesting to watch them work. And it was very skill-based. You had to know how to… I learned how to repair fishnet stockings, how to bead… we would do costume repair…

Amy: Oh, a fantastic experience!

Deborah: Yeah, it was amazing and because I was young and agile, I also got stage cues, because I came from the theater. So I would run up and help the show girls take off headdresses, do all these quick changes, which was absolutely a total blast. And I did that for about six months and it was two shows a night, three shows on the weekends and I really burned out pretty quickly. I’m like okay, this is not going anywhere, this is never going to go anywhere, it’s going to be what it is. I kind of reached the, what I would call the ‘height of my Vegas career,’ (laughs) unless I had been lucky enough to go on to design something, but I didn’t.

But the other part of that was the, it was the MGM Hotel at the time, they had a theater in the basement where all day and all night they ran old MGM classics. So I would often escape, after work, and go down to the basement and literally nobody would be in there. So it was like this magical world where I could sit and watch Grand Hotel, or whatever movie came up…

Amy: Oh my gosh, wow, and you’re already at home living in a hotel.

Deborah: Yeah (laughter). So it was really fun and I said, I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to figure out, what I’m going to do now.

Amy: Yeah, but that does sound like a nice dense, short patch of extreme experience that you were able to take with you.

Deborah: Yeah, it was really fun and I decided, okay, you’re going to have to go back to school, theoretically in the film business, you don’t have to go to school at all. You don’t have to have a degree. But I think at that time I still thought I was going to work in the theater. So I went back to, I started at Cal State, Long Beach, which had a much more professionally oriented theater program. Where you came out of there, you’re going to have a portfolio, you’re going to have worked on a certain amount of shows and really know how to do it. The whole shebang. And I used that portfolio a lot during my early years of trying to get work. So it was very, very worth it and I would say for students, don’t discount that it can actually be that valuable.

Amy: I actually had a conversation with a student today about her degree project and I was just advising her that you think it’s this one moment in time, but it’s actually a reservoir that you keep pulling from throughout your career. So make it as personal and as profound as you possibly can, so that reservoir is deep.

Deborah: Yeah, absolutely, I think that’s key, really key.

Amy: So it sounds like Long Beach was a really good choice. I like that we’ve got Vegas as a maybe not a great choice… it sounds pretty good to me (laughter). Long Beach was a great choice and so with a portfolio that you are now happy with and are showing off, how did you start to make your way professionally?

Deborah: I started during the summers I think I was at Long Beach for a year and a half because I had a lot to catch up on. But I would do regional Shakespeare theater and also there’s a conservatory in Santa Maria called The Pacific Conservatory of the Arts. I would go and costume. I didn’t design at the time, but I did work in a costume department. I made a lot of things. I got assigned to things that I would call ‘special projects,’ like painting fabric and being a hair and makeup designer. So again, it kind of broadened my world and my skill base. Was I wonderful at anything? Probably not, but I could have chosen many things and followed that path. But I think it was the groundwork for what I then decided to take with me, which was great.

Amy: That makes a lot of sense because even if you’re not great at being hair and makeup, you know what’s involved, you know the tools of the trade and what the issues are, so then when working with costumes, you can also collaborate with those who are doing hair and makeup on character. I’m a big fan of dabbling in a lot of things so that you at least know enough to be able to work with the pros on it.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly and it’s the same thing with constructing a garment. As a designer you’re building things a lot. And that being able to share that language, could I drape a ballgown? Sure I could. Would it be great? No, it wouldn’t, and I grew to very much appreciate the people that made that their skill, their work. And you had that language that you understand what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. And you could even make suggestions, let’s try it this way, let’s do this. So I think all of those things are incredibly important in dealing with your coworkers.

Amy: I 100% agree because you also have a lot more respect for their craft as well.

Deborah: Hundred percent and you know you need them and you can tell when people are good at that, and good at their work, good at makeup, good at wig making, good at making garments, it’s amazing work, it really is.

Amy: And it’s a joy to collaborate because you can both help elevate each other’s work by working together.

Deborah: Yeah, 100%, yeah, that was one of the biggest things, I think, that I came back to very full-on with Avatar: The Way of Water.

Amy: Wow, okay, well I definitely want to hear about that.

Deborah: It might be too much of a jump forward.

Amy: Yeah (laughter), because we’ve got 40 years of costuming to cover.

Deborah: Forty years later… 40 years later…

Amy: So it sounds like there’s a moment where you made an active switch from theater to film.

Deborah: Yeah I did, because I quickly knew that it was going to be difficult to really make a living doing that. It’s a very underpaid, underserved community and if you got to Broadway, maybe that’s a different thing. So when I was at Northridge, I made friends with a lot of people there and one of them was an actor, Charlie Martin Smith I think one of the things he’s very well known for is the Buddy Holly story. And he worked up and around in San Francisco. He was on a movie called Never Cry Wolf in Alaska and Canada and it was a very intimate, very small production in the wild, directed by Carroll Ballard, who had done Black Stallion. Which if you haven’t seen, it’s an absolute stunning movie. And Never Cry Wolf is a really wonderful film too. So he called me… he had them call me one day and say, “Can you come, can you come help us with the costumes?” And I was just like, absolutely! And I think another thing for students is when you get a… in fact the person who called me, I didn’t even know him.

Amy: Your name was passed from somebody who did know you.

Deborah: Yeah, yeah and it took a minute for me to make the connection and I was kind of like, you could have just hung up on the person and thought, you’re a weirdo. But I think for students too, it’s like, you might have a glimmer of an opportunity and you’ve got to take it. You’ve got to jump in, you’ve got to do it, even if you felt completely under qualified, which I did.

Amy: Well, I’ve got myself into so many situations that I felt under qualified, but I figured it out and I figured out, actually that I could do it, but I learned that on the job.

Deborah: Yeah, but that’s what’s important. It’s not a job where there’s A leads to B leads to C. It’s a big circle and sometimes you’re going off on a diagonal and it’s crazy and I said, sure, I’ll come. I had no idea where I was going. I knew it would be in the wild, but I was completely unprepared. I remember, I had to leave very quickly, it was like, you’ve got to come tomorrow, or something like that, right? I got on the plane, it was a couple of puddle jumpers, small planes to get to where we were…Yeah and I was like, oh my god, what am I getting myself into? And I arrived on an airstrip in Alaska (laughs), the plane… I was the only passenger. The plane touches down, I get out and I’m like standing there in a blazer and a Laura Ashley blouse and holding my sewing machine, like absolutely ridiculous, ridiculous! It’s like, how about a coat girl? How about some mittens? It was ridiculous. But I had my sewing machine, which did come in handy, but I felt so silly. Looking back on it, I wish I had a photograph of that moment…

Amy: Me too, but you painted a glorious picture, I can…

Deborah: It is so vivid that I can see the blouse, I had a little beige blazer, I thought I was so professional and I’m like, you are so out of your depth here. (Laughter) It was very funny. But I did it. I went out on that job. I was the single, solitary person in the costume department. I helped with the makeup and I also got to script supervise when the script supervisor was, I don’t know where. So we did a lot of job sharing. And we did a lot of time sitting in the wilderness waiting for the perfect light, the perfect situation. Very small crew, very, very artistic director. The question marks every day were enormous because we didn’t really have a fully written script.

Amy: Oh my gosh!

Deborah: So we’d wake up in the morning, sometimes we’d be in the town, a little, tiny town and living in all these strange spaces, or a small motel and get on the walkie-talkie and it would be like, what’s the weather? Okay, we’re going to shoot this, you know? Or we’d go out on a long ride and we would backpack in and I’d put every single thing I could possibly think of that I might need in my backpack and just pray that you have the right thing because it was too far to come back. (Laughter) So it was trial by fire, like you were saying and I think that that’s one of the things that is so important and it was so meaningful and really self-affirming for me to know that I could do that. I could answer the questions.

Amy: You have to be ready for anything because the story was coming together kind of on the fly, according to nature…

Deborah: Luckily there were only a few people in the cast, so you could handle it.

Amy: But that also means that you got to switch hats a lot and also got a very deep and immersive lesson in film making.

Deborah: Absolutely.

Amy: So wow, what a tremendous foundational experience.

Deborah: It was so wonderful and I was very, very lucky that I started off really anti-Hollywood, quite frankly.

Amy: Do you consider that anti-Hollywood? Was it very Indie and…

Deborah: It was extremely Indie and it was… the director, it was so few people, and working in that way when a director would have, in the days, I think there were so many good movies made in the 70s and 80s and sometimes I think directors had a lot of… it wasn’t machinery, there was no… you could be truly independent. No one was looking over your shoulder… even on that movie there wasn’t even such a thing as dailies because we were too far out in the wild. So the story was told from a very singular vision, which is what sometimes gets lost now.

Amy: Yeah, so personally speaking, as you’re doing this and trial by fire, you said it was self-affirming and I can see that, but are you enjoying it or are you also…

Deborah: Oh, 100%.

Amy: You’re riding it like white-water rafting, it’s just an adventure?

Deborah: Oh yeah, oh, completely. My biggest complaint was I literally froze, it was so cold some of the time (laughter), I hated that, it was very difficult. But other than that, it was meeting incredible people, being very intimate in terms of feeling like the storytelling that we’re doing was everybody had a voice.

Amy: Yeah. Wow, you’re hooked from that experience.

Deborah: That was it, I was like okay, what’s next? I have no idea (laughs) but it was a big, this is what I’m going to do.

Amy: You’ve been in the business now 40 plus years and you’ve racked up an extensive portfolio of stellar projects and just to name a few, Back to the Future, ET, Heat, Minority Report and Titanic, for which you won an Oscar. So over this amazing career, I’m wondering if you can chart the course of the projects that aside from recognition or commercial success, the ones that actually taught you the most about how to evolve your craft, how to work with yourself or how to grow even your business and your relationships?

Deborah: Yeah, that’s a good question because you realize how things are connected or not connected, again it’s that thing of rejecting the things that you don’t want, that you know aren’t right for you. But the real start to my career, after Never Cry Wolf, was the opportunity to work on ET, which had its 40th anniversary, so we can start there. (Laughs) But I was, through a bunch of channels, got the call to come and meet with Steven Spielberg, and he was just getting Amblin up and going at the time. He had… Kathy Kennedy was his producer, he works with a lot of female producers, he’s just a wonderful, wonderful man and I was really nervous. I was still using my portfolio from college (laughs) and all I had to say about Never Cry Wolf was that I had some photos and that was about it. So I went in to meet him. We had a wonderful meeting. He had already done… he’d done Jaws, he’d done Close Encounters, he’d done amazing, amazing films…So again, it was like, why am I here? What can I bring to this? And luckily for me he chose me and we just started on that movie together, which was so foundational. That was a real movie. That was at a studio, where the sets were built. Again, not a huge cast, but completely manageable for me. Very, very touchy-feely, if that’s the right word, but very hands-on and I had the absolute best time. The writer, Melissa Mathison was… we were all very close. So again, it was just an elevated version of what I had done before, which is getting together with a bunch of people who wanted to make a wonderful movie. This time we had Steven Spielberg at the helm, it was just… talk about formative in terms of how a director is supposed to behave, be, what he brought to the project, how he gathered the troops around him was amazing. It’s so wonderful, you’re like, how can it get better than this? (Laughs)

Amy: Yeah, the productions, as I’ve witnessed, just from living in LA and my corner of the entertainment business, the productions are intense, immersive, it’s really bursts of high concentrated productivity, which also means that the camaraderie is really intense because you’re so deep in it and so focused on it, for the time period that you’re in production, it’s like being on an excursion or on an adventure at summer camp or something to the exclusion of the rest of the world, frequently.

Deborah: Right.

Amy: And so to be in an experience like that, deep in it, with a really capable and qualified leader, who is not only good at what he does, but is also good at creating culture and helping all of that come together, sounds like it would be really formative. But you said something that I need to go back to, as you were wondering why you got the opportunity, well, what can I bring to the table? What do you arrive at? What did you say to yourself about what it is that you have to offer?

Deborah: I think it was the ability to just hunker down with these very sort of unique characters, kind of fragile all of them in a way. Again, the script was so beautifully written, that that was the beginning of it. It’s an incredibly well written script and the way it describes things, it was very lyrical, very character driven, not that many words. The movie doesn’t have a tremendous amount of dialogue. Because I was also so young and I hadn’t done that many projects, I really wasn’t aware… what does the film business look like beyond this? Like you said, you get into this very tiny world and I’m very, that’s where I like to go. I like to be in a world that you create, that you just hunker down in. You’re not letting outside influences come in too much. And I didn’t really understand how other costume designers worked, I’d never watched another costume designer. I’d never really been on another set. So it was that learn as you go, in touch with your feelings and your intuition, and I think that project was very, very intuitive for everyone. The actors, Henry Thomas, my goodness, what an amazing little actor…

Amy: Still…

Deborah: An amazing kid.

Amy: Still…

Deborah: He was just a love…

Amy: Still blown away by that performance.

Deborah: Yeah, he’s wonderful and the movie, you know, it took off and people still cherish it today and that’s amazing, like to have that as kind of the framework, I’m so lucky.

Amy: Okay, so that does sound like a really important moment in your career and now that you’ve recently completed Avatar: The Way of Water, which is the second in the film franchise that you’ve worked on, because you also worked on Avatar, and it sounds like it’s a longer term relationship with James Cameron, because you also worked on Titanic. So I’d love to hear all about the process of designing for Avatar: The Way of Water, I want to get deep into that. Because it’s just rich and very, very multifaceted and really encompasses so much of what costume design can be. But even before we get there, I kind of want to cap off this career trajectory moment that we’re on and I’m wondering… an Oscar under your belt, fabulous portfolio of films, how are you feeling now about the industry, where you are in it and the creative agency and your future, as being a professional woman?

Deborah: I think pretty good, obviously, you think okay, I accomplished this, but you’re only as good as your last job.

Amy: That’s a lie they tell you in Hollywood, I feel like. (Laughs)

Deborah: I know, but it’s kind of true, you have to continue to prove yourself, you can’t take anything for granted. You’re working with new people all the time, that it’s always the same process of kind of making sure that you jump in and do your best work and work really hard. You have to do that; you must do that to be successful. And there were a lot of things… I worked with a lot of different directors and took a lot of different paths around and always with a leap of faith that I could do that. Somehow I would do that and make it successful. When I did Legends of the Fall, it was another interesting different project, but that led me to Titanic. So one thing always leads to another somehow. And my relationship with Jim Cameron then stayed and we’ve reunited now a couple of times. So again, you’re trying to always make sure that you do your best work and that you’re good to work with and you’re collaborative and that your director, especially… because I work with a lot of really high powered directors, that they really believe that you can, as a costume designer, add to the story.

Amy: Yes. Yes. And what does that look like on a microscope, granular level? Does that mean you have to be assertive and reject things in the same way that you rejected the typing class? Does it mean you command respect and are able to be heard when you have an idea that goes against the grain?

Deborah: I think that is a really rough road for a lot of people and I do think costumes is normally very often a female part of the equation. The film business is notorious… they’re very, very male oriented. It’s not a joke that as a female, as a woman, as a young woman, that you are going to often be the only female in the room. It comes with a lot of baggage, it really, really does. So you have to remain steadfast. You’re always skirting those lines. If you’re a woman of a certain stature or a certain place, you’re still always bouncing against those boundaries. Like don’t be too assertive.

Amy: Right, it’s a tightrope.

Deborah: Right, don’t let them walk all over you. How do you do that without offending someone? How do you do that without giving up your own sense of self and righteousness? It’s very, very hard. That, I think, is the hardest part of the job, period. And I used to get very upset with… if you got upset, don’t get upset, don’t… god forbid, don’t cry. (Laughs) I am a very emotional person and I can keep it in check when necessary, but I also do not apologize when I cry anymore. If something upsets me, I’m easy to cry just when something feels happy or sensitive.

Amy: Me too! (Laughs) A sentimental commercial, I’m like tearing up.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly. So it’s an emotion that you shouldn’t be ashamed of and it’s a very… it gets kind of categorized as a female emotion, which is unfortunate because… it is a tightrope, it’s a tough one because you don’t want… aside from the work, you’re dealing with all of that stuff, all that stuff, and it’s very hard, it’s very hard for females, I think still.

Amy: I appreciate you sharing that and I also appreciate how much skill and empathy that it probably took to walk that tightrope in so many different rooms with so many different people for so long. That’s a real art in and of itself.

Deborah: That’s a very important part of the job and I’ve done this work for so long, and I think that we always have room for improvement and I think as… there’s always ways to help people coming up behind you, which is incredibly important. My new goal for my career is to be even more sensitive and helpful to the people, especially the women on my crew. Not because they’re women, but we understand each other better. I’m not saying a woman is better than a man in any way…

Amy: I’m with you.

Deborah: Yeah and I raised two kids doing this and I know how hard it is to be a working mom and I think that we were very often told, don’t even go there, you don’t even have to say. Don’t say that you may be distracted because you need to get home to be the tooth fairy that night. Keep it all really professional. And I think that is something that film business especially can improve upon.

Amy: Even calling that ‘professional,’ I think that’s even kind of toxic to say that for you to be a full spectrum human who also has concerns with your children and might need to let the emotion go through you rather than stuffing it back down, is unprofessional. I know where it comes from and I know why it’s there and why we use that word. But I think that that’s even… like the language we use around being a very professional, but also full spectrum human is important.

Deborah: Yeah, it’s very important and I think that’s something that we’re just starting to get awareness at.

Amy: I think so too.

Deborah: My daughter works as my assistant now a lot of times and she was on Avatar and she had her first child during the making of the movie. And when she wanted to come back to work, we just decided that we had our own little daycare (laughs)…

Amy: Perfect!

Deborah: So the baby came to the office and I didn’t ask permission.

Amy: No, good, because you’re the boss…

Deborah: Yeah, I was the boss of my department and people were very happily bringing their dogs to work and I’m like, this isn’t that much different, you know? So we established a little daycare and it was absolutely eye-opening and wonderful to see how this affected people in the workplace.

Amy: I believe it!

Deborah: It was amazing! People would come to the office, gentle knock on the door and they would come in and hold the baby for three minutes, whatever it took, and it was absolute therapy.

Amy: I’m sure.

Deborah: Absolute therapy. It calmed people down, it put people back in touch with sort of a whatever your center is, it was beautiful.

Amy: And what’s really important, not the whatevers aggravating you in the moment, but yeah, how…

Deborah: Yeah, it was wonderful, it was like therapy baby to the max, it was wonderful! (Laughs)

Amy: I love that story and I’m so glad you shared it because I think it’s an example of, first of all, it’s a very data driven example of how actual [0.45.00] daycare in the workplace is a good thing.

Deborah: Yes.

Amy: But it’s also an example of, like we’ve gotten so far away from the village, but when you bring the village back in places wherever you can, it really does create a more harmonious ecosystem. Every time, it really does.

Deborah: A 100%, a 100%, and we lost touch with that. Yeah, so it came back full force for me and I think that’s become a really important part of now who I am, when I work with people, on Avatar, working a lot in New Zealand and really taking the time to get to know the people who work for me. And with how they were feeling, how are you feeling today, what’s going on? How are you parents, how are you siblings? What are your challenges? Are you okay at work? Tell me about the work, how you’re feeling about the project you’re on at the moment. So it’s been really helpful and it’s something that I will take with me moving forward.

Amy: I love that. I’m so happy and touched to hear that. I do want to talk about your creative process because it is fascinating and we can use Avatar: The Way of Water as an example, I know it’s been five years that you’ve been working on that and even longer (laughter) because you developed the costumes for Avatar. So the characters have been in development for a very long time.

Deborah: Yes.

Amy: But your process includes world building character development, ethnographic research, a deep well, a deep, deep well of hands-on technical dexterity with regard to craft and material knowledge and construction. And enough holistic design experience to be able to artfully work with those people who are outside of your expertise, like sophisticated engineering, digitalization. And then all of that, plus needing to understand what the camera needs and what the actor needs and the dance of bodies and light and cameras and space in order to get what you need onto the story. And then motion capture, add that to the whole thing. It’s like such a huge bag of tricks (laughter). I need you to pull it out one-by-one for me and talk me through it.

Deborah: Oh my gosh, it’s so complicated and obviously all my experience paid off one way or the other. And my biggest part of the experience was to say, look, hey, you’re asked to do things that you’ve never done before. I barely know how to use a computer, or I did, now I’m getting much more proficient at it. Understanding the technical world that it takes to make these movies it’ll blow your mind. It’s completely new, to most people. Most costume designers have not been allowed or invited into that world yet and I think it’s a whole new way of making a movie that we’re going to increase our skill base as a group and that’s really important. And I’m one of the pioneers of this. It’s on me to kind of help other people understand it too. But the design process is exactly the same of any movie, right, that you’re taking a script, you’re taking directors directive and you’re creating these characters. The luxury and the terror of having this it be in fantasy world, that you have to then make up…

Amy: Yes (laughter).

Deborah: Was like, oh my gosh, I’m on that airstrip again with my sewing machine, I have no idea what I’m doing. (Laughter) But the confidence after having worked in the business for so long, you’re like, I can do this. Not only can I do it, but I’m excited about doing it and here’s what I can bring to the table. Using all the people around me, all the technicians, asking questions. Don’t be afraid to ask a question because you can’t fake your way through… I don’t understand what ‘upfront continuity’ means. I do now, but (laughs) I didn’t.

Amy: That’s another language!

Deborah: Exactly, but the costume making, the designing, getting the approvals, the live action costumes seemed like cake walk…

Amy: Sure, at this point.

Deborah: However, I did a lot of the props, I did the face masks, I did all this technical stuff that I didn’t know anything about. Again, have people help you, ask questions, rely on the expertise of others. It’s like how are we going to make a face mask that doesn’t fog up? Let’s work on that because it didn’t work…

Amy: I was wondering, how did you do that?

Deborah: It didn’t work in the first movie and many times they take the face pipe out anyway because there’s too many weird reflections…You’re not actually on Pandora. So the reflections have to be put in there. You don’t want to see the set…

Amy: Right! (Laughter)

Deborah: But when we did have to put the masks on, one of the technicians that I worked with, a really amazing guy, his name is Lance Hanson, he said, “Why don’t we put some fans in there?” And so we rigged this whole system where they could have just little tiny fans blowing on their face, which kept the fog down.

Amy: The fog away, that’s so clever.

Deborah: Yeah, it was amazing.

Amy: You didn’t have to worry about the audio of the motor of a fan?

Deborah: They were very, very quiet. At first I’m like, what about that, what’s going to happen? But a lot of times, again, it would be an action sequence or something where there wasn’t that much dialogue. And we weren’t necessarily always capturing the dialogue live anyway because of a million issues.

Amy: Right.

Deborah: I’ve learned that, it was super fun and it really paid off ultimately.

Amy: It did, I did notice a difference, because I watched the two films back-to-back recently, just to get familiar with your work. And I did notice a difference in the masks from the first one to the second one.

Deborah: Yeah, they were much more substantial and hardy and we also had to develop the dive masks, which I worked with a gentleman called John Garvin, who is a dive master. So he had all the connections. He was responsible for helping Jim build the submarine, so again, an expert in the field. Go to them, say, “How do we do this? Here’s my design, how can you help me make this so the kid can actually dive down 30 feet and be able to breathe?”

Amy: Right, so it’s actually functional and also looks the way we need it to look, which is not like an existing stock dive mask that you can buy because that means you’re out of the fantasy.

Deborah: That’s right, that’s right.

Amy: You’re a big five sporting…

Deborah: Exactly (laughter). So we had to stay within the language of the film and it was really a challenge, very, very challenging, and not noticeable in the movie particularly, right? You don’t realize how many people put so much hard work into that.

Amy: I think only somebody who knows how things get made, starts to understand how many people it took and how much expertise went together, that had to coalesce in a beautiful coordination for something like that to get realized. It is quite astounding, because on top of that sophisticated engineering and research and development of new technology, there was also deep research into indigenous crafts and can you tell me a little bit about that?

Deborah: That was just an amazing adventure to be welcomed into, like the amount of research that one can do and now with computers, I have eight million books now on cultures all over the world and I’m like, are you ever going to look at these again? Probably because they’re beautiful, but that deep dive that we as costume designers are tasked to do is extremely fun. It’s very, very informative and you learn so much on each and every job, even if you don’t necessarily use it, it’s there, it becomes part of the language that you’re going to eventually speak. So we researched all over the world, and mostly indigenous peoples, not just in the Polynesian kind of area, but all over. And I found a lot of truths in these people that they quite often were very ornamental in their clothing. That’s one of the ways they expressed themselves. They have a very, very deep cultural umbrella that they identify with. They have rules that depict and demand what their jobs are or what their status is in terms of society. It’s very, very sophisticated. They use, for the most part, what they have available in their environment to make their clothing. And they’re quite decorative. It’s also an art form the way they express themselves. So these were all just like the best calling card. Oh my god, what could be better than that? It’s like it’s everything wrapped up in one thing. So settling with Polynesia because the planet of Pandora is very warm and Jim really liked the black wavy hair as opposed to the braids of our first clan. I was able to design the characters head to toe, so I did all the hair, I did all the props, I did all the jewelry, everything. So as a designer you’re just taking up this amazing space in the movie.

Amy: Oh yeah.

Deborah: So that was really, really fun. And then we got to start making the costumes. We made the costumes for a bunch of reasons. One was for the digital artist, so they had the perfect texture map to ascribe to in making that garment. Because they know how to draw a t-shirt, they did not know how to draw what I made for those costumes. Those costumes are unique, they’re bespoke, they’re one-of-a-kind. You don’t know what that is and no computer has a brain enough to understand how those work. How heavy is it, how does that move?

Amy: That can’t be expressed in a rendering And then be believable on the film.

Deborah: 100%.

Amy: It would have to come from an actual artifact…That you hand built.

Deborah: That’s right, and so it was like creating these artifacts and that was where I just hunkered down in that workshop with my team there and it was like having your own atelier, it’s like here’s the design, let’s make it. How are we going to make it? What’s it made out of? So the designs would then sometimes change according to the materials that I wanted to use. Sometimes substantially, sometimes not very much at all. We used a lot of natural things. We also had the ability to 3D print things when necessary, that couldn’t be carved or… I had carvers, I had weavers, I had macrame artists, beaders, I mean it was amazing.

Amy: What a dream to go to work around that all day.

Deborah: Yeah, it was an absolute dream! It was an absolute dream to have people who were so skilled with their hands, that anything you could dream up, you could figure out a way to make it. And sometimes we would start something and I’d go no, uh-uh, this is not working, this is not right and we had the luxury to start over.

Amy: Yeah, you don’t always have that, so that’s a nice thing.

Deborah: No, and there was a couple of times where if we had had that kind of time restraint (laughs) it would have been really terrible. But I think you have that all the time in live action. At a point you’re like, I wish that dress was a little bit longer, but it wasn’t, so you’ve got to work with it. But luckily we did have time to sort of finesse and change because the post-production part of making a movie like this is the lengthy part.

Amy: I understand that and also, costumers are typically done by the time you get to post-production, right?

Deborah: Right.

Amy: I think that’s particularly fascinating that your role is not over at all because you’re still tweaking the costumes as they go…

Deborah: Yeah and I think also give credit to Jim who wanted to make sure that there was someone in charge of that. I was still the head of the department, I was going to lead it through the post-production, I was going to lead it with those artists, they’re fantastic, they’re amazing artists as well, the effects team, but they aren’t costume makers.

Amy: Right, right!

Deborah: So the ability to say, here’s my thing, look how amazing it looks on a mannequin, now you got to do it and you’ve got to do it really well. So we sat through many, many hours of virtual fittings where they would do their 3D modelling and they would start to make the garment. Sometimes we’d go off and make a duplicate of it, not as extensive, and then put it in the pool, to see how it worked, put it in front of a ritter fan to see how the wind blew it. Have someone do the action of the character and would it… how would it react when they did that. So there’s tons of footage also that we shot that informed the animators and the simulators. So that was amazing. It just gave credit, it gave the task that the costume department has in this movie, the footprint of it is huge.

Amy: Absolutely and the very thing that you just described feels to me like the actual bridge, slat by slat, from the physical world to the virtual world.

Deborah: it’s so layered and so deep, we could talk about it forever. How complex it can be and you know, you also have a luxury, if you made something and it’s not the exact color you decided you want it, once you start seeing the virtual lighting and the action and the situation, which can change radically from what you shot in performance captures sometimes, that you’re like, oh my gosh, okay, the top was purple, but now we should make it green. And that’s easy. So you’re still tinkering, you have this luxury of being able to tinker-tinker-tinker. I was also starting to design film three during the post of film two. So it got very complicated, but it helped inform my designs in film three and I knew how far I could go, it’s like oh yeah, when we started they look at a power shell and go, how are we going to do that? Our computers can’t do that. It’s like, yeah you can and they did.

Amy: Yeah.

Deborah: So it’s like, your imagination can be endless because they can, when asked to, keep up with you.

Amy: Okay, so that’s beautiful too, that you were in a position where you were able to carve the path for the next movie while you’re making this movie. And as an artist, seeing the finished film, does it give you great gratification to have been able to follow all the way through?

Deborah: One hundred percent, 100%.

Amy: That’s a really beautiful thing.

Deborah: Right, because your mark, and I would always tell my team that my post-production work was for all of us. It was so important to hang in there, even when you said, oh my god, it’s tedious, it’s not as much as fun as making things, but that was what I had to do, that was part of the job. And I had to trumpet that work, I had to take it in there, I had to stick with it, even when sometimes it would be like, we can’t really afford to fix it, okay, how are we going to fix it next time? Observe in my own work where I needed to give them more clarity. Maybe a design was possibly too complicated, but I can see what they can do and what they’re not great at, I mean computers and the whole language that they speak and figure out ways to make it even more successful.

Amy: Knowing that dance means you’re going to be even more fluid in the next film.

Deborah: One of my biggest compliments was when the VFX supervisor said to me, he said, “Well, when you started, you didn’t know anything, right?” And I said, “Absolutely not.” And he goes, “No visual effects supervisor will ever be able to pull the wool over your eyes, because you’ve got it.” (Laughs) You know all their tricks, you know what they can do and you can call it on them, with respect and work together as a secondary part of that costume team.

Amy: That is a beautiful evolution, I think, of the film industry. And I love a costumer at the table seeing all the way through and collaborating with digital…

Deborah: So important.

Amy: Yes.

Deborah: So important and we deserve to be there.

Amy: Absolutely and thank you and high fives for being such a pioneer. I want to ask you one more question before I let you go. I just appreciate your work, but I also want to just touch on you, the human for a second. I know you have a couple of daughters and you’ve talked about how you’re in the industry, making sure that you’re making the world kinder for the people who are coming up behind you and opening doors, so I really appreciate that. And I’m wondering, how do you take care of yourself?

Deborah: Yeah, well, I think the task to be kinder, to do all those things, it’s complicated. I think it takes some self-reflection to look back and say, when you didn’t do those things very well and to work on changing your ways because when you see people… it sounds very trite, I know, but when you see people, they see you back and that’s one of the main ways to take care of yourself. To know that you’ve done that human thing with even one other person that day, that it gives me such a sense of accomplishment and joy and that’s one of the things I will continue to try and do better each and every day. I’ve raised two children, I have a grandchild now, the houses can be quite noisy and when we went into lockdown and started working from home, which wasn’t a dream (laughter), not a dream at all, but it had its perks. But you really have to be mindful of carving out that time for yourself. [1.05.00] And I remember one day I got upset with my husband because I was folding laundry and he was trying to talk to me and I was like, “Can you see I’m working?” Because I was folding laundry, but my mind was designing something. So as women, I think we’re also incredible multitaskers when asked. We can absolutely do that. And it’s like, can’t you see? And I’m like, of course you don’t know because everything gets so commingled, you know, and I think to carve out those moments where you can have that quiet time, whatever you’re doing, if you’re taking a walk, driving in the car, folding laundry, cooking dinner, whatever it is, that your mind can be able to escape somewhere, which relaxes you. I try to exercise. I do a lot of yoga, all those good things that are good for you.

Amy: This has been so fascinating and so informative and I really appreciate you sharing your whole life story with me. And honestly, I just really enjoy you as a creative and as a person, so thank you.

Deborah: Oh my god, thank you, I’m really glad that we had this time together. I think your questions are so thoughtful and really made me be more thoughtful, you know? And so to give a framework, when you say things, it actually makes them become more alive and real, so I think I’ve really carved out, with your help, some of the things I’m going to do moving forward and I really thank you for that.

Amy: Hopefully we’ll get another chance to talk shop because I learned a lot and this was beautiful.

Deborah: Thank you so much.
Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode, and more about Deborah, including images of her work, and a bonus Q&A - head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would be inspired by Clever - please tell them! It really helps us out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps - please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.