Back in the good old days we’d have production meetings. Usually all the key creatives start by workshopping ideas, colour palettes, and the mood of the show. If it’s a regular scale Australian film, I would collaborate with the director, the production designer and the director of photography. On a film shoot, who do you collaborate with mostly? The yellow tracksuits were fun as I had to recreate the blood splatter on multiple tracksuits to match. I was in charge of the continuity on all the costumes that the bride wore. I was on set all the time and I was able to spend a lot of time with Quentin and watch all the magic. He talks a lot about filmmaking on set, explains what his next shot is going to be and references other filmmakers and it was actually like being back at uni in cinema studies. They were doing the big scene in the restaurant, The House of the Blue Leaves, where she gets attacked by the Crazy 88 and a lot of blood is spilled. So, I jumped on a plane literally on a Friday night and on the Monday morning I was on set with Quentin Tarantino. I spoke a bit of Chinese, but the person they already had couldn’t speak English and they wanted someone that spoke a bit of Mandarin. I was working in Sydney as a costume supervisor, and I got a call to go to China because they needed someone to look after Uma Thurman as the on-set person. How did you end up working on Kill Bill with Uma Thurman? We get to go to some pretty amazing locations in this industry always seeing new places some of which the general population might not get to see! I just really liked being in that environment. ![]() I loved being on set as a one-woman show and I loved the whole movie-making process with the crew and cast and the locations, the whole vibe I guess. We were shooting the trailer to get investment for a film, which is what you used to do in those days. We ended up travelling from Alice Springs up north to cattle stations and then down south to various amazing locations down to Adelaide. It was a trailer for a film based on a Ted Egan poem The Drover’s Boy about an indigenous girl who disguises herself as a boy and works for a drover. It was a period show, I dressed and art finished all the costumes – I was a one woman art department. Rose Chong sent me out on a mission as the on-set person to the middle of nowhere outside Alice Springs on a cattle station. ![]() Was there a moment when you knew this career was for you? I worked on Series Two and Three of Seachange and that led me to my first job as a designer working on (Australian TV show) All Saints for a year. That was my first freelance job and I was a costume supervisor. I met a lot of film industry designers and stylists and wardrobe people, and eventually one of them offered me a job on an ABC TV show called Seachange. We’d put costumes together for shows and film and TVCs. At first I was working part-time while I studied Arts at university and then worked for her full-time. Around 1989 when I finished high-school, I started working for a costume designer in Melbourne called Rose Chong, who had a costume hire shop in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy (an inner-Melbourne suburb). My uncle was a fashion designer and my mum is an artist, so there was definitely something in the family that I inherited. My grandmother was a seamstress and had a sewing room in the back of her house and I used to spend a lot of time with her. She explains how she rose to the top of her profession with no formal studies in costume design, what it’s like being on set with Quentin Tarantino, and why American abstract painter Mark Rothko is an inspiration. She has a raft of int ernational projects on her CV, including Better Man and Mortal Kombat, and a long list of local projects including Fires, Love Me, The Dry and Lion. ![]() Three decades on she’s one of Australia’s leading costume designers, winning two peer-judged Australian Production Design Guild awards this year. It was in the Australian Outback that a young Cappi Ireland found her calling in the film industry. From Sewing Room to Film Set: Cappi Ireland's Colourful Career - Docklands Studiosįrom Sewing Room to Film Set: Cappi Ireland’s Colourful Career DecemCappi Ireland
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