Costume Dept.
Well, what can I say?! In my experience one of the lowest paid and hardest working departments is the Wardrobe or Costume Department. The pay is comparable to similar jobs in the non-film world but this is much lower than some other areas of film work like ‘lighting’ or ‘grips’. In most regards the work is structured in the same way as a clothing factory with machinists and milliners, pattern makers and cutters and so on. If you love costumes though don’t be put off, because in making costumes for film you get to work on a much greater range and diversity of types of dress than you would in the ‘real world’. And if you get lucky you might do a private fitting for Orlando Bloom. Again there are ‘On-Set’ roles to develop into such as wrangling the outfits between shots, helping the ‘stars’ get costumed, and on-set repairs. On small jobs you will need to be capable of most of these jobs as you will make costumes, dress actors, repair costumes and so forth.
The Head of the Department is the Costume Designer or Wardrobe Supervisor, who has a hot line to the Director in most cases because typically the Production Designer will not have a Costume Design background. This means they will leave more of the decisionas and ideas for this area to the Costume Designer.
Armourist Best Casual Workroom /Breakdown (wardrobe) / Costume Supervisor / Costume Designer / Costume Designer Assistant / Cutter / Costume Buyer / Dyer / Extras Coordinator Wardrobe / Extras Casting Coordinator / Machinist / Milliner / Printer / Wardrobe Assistant