Week Three: Adaptation

           
             For this assignment I chose the screenplay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I will discuss the approach I would take from the perspective of a costume designer. I am aware of this film but I have not ever actually seen it, so I taking the opportunity now to read it! Perhaps it will be like reading a book before you watch the film version of it? After this, I hope to have to opportunity to watch the film to see if my speculations are correct.

            One of my personal favorite things about film is the overall “look” and visual experience of the film, and this is where costume design comes in. Costume gives the viewer information about the time period, status, as well as personality of the character. Costume is a major visual guide in the story.

            Say a film opens with a man wandering through the woods. As a viewer trying to establish the setting, the location in this instance does not tell us the time period in which the story is taking place. We would rely on what the man was wearing to determine the time period. His clothes would help us differentiate if it was 18^th century France or a man from the year 2080.

            A challenge of costume design is if the film is taking place in a specific “historical” time period. If a film took place in the past then there is much costume research to be done for the clothing of that time and geographical location.

            Since this film mainly takes place in the early 2000s in New York, the clothing for the film is of this time period, meaning that the costumes they needed were already made, didn’t need to be designed, and just needed to be found. I speculate that the costume designer bought prefabricated clothes. This method seems just as difficult as designing costumes from scratch. Though, this film has many shifts in time because of Joel having his memory erased. One for example, is the opening scene that is 50 years into the future. The receptionist is described as wearing a “shiny, stretchy, one-piece pantsuit.” Also, there is a scene where Joel and Clementine are in Joel’s childhood. Joel’s mother present and they are in the kitchen. Though the screenplay didn’t specify, I suspect that because we are in a different period in time, the costumes would go accordingly to that time.

            As a costume designer/coordinator I would be on this constant search for articles of clothing that suited the character. I would analyze the script until I really understood the characters. In order for the character to be believable, I would have to imagine what clothes the characters would chose to wear if they existed. What people chose to wear is a statement of their personal tastes and reflects their overall being.  In Eternal Sunshine, the character of Clementine has a quirky and eccentric style. The first line in the screenplay to describe her character does so perfectly.

            “Clementine enters. She's in her early thirties, zaftig in a faux fur winter coat over an orange hooded sweatshirt. She's decidedly funky and has blue hair.”

            In the beginning of the screenplay after Joel saw Clementine on the beach, he recognized her in the restaurant because of her same orange sweatshirt. It is in scenes such as this where the costume for the character plays an important role in the plot. Overall, the costumes for this very “indie” and “eccentric” film are exciting and unusual, and would help make the film an enjoyable viewing experience.