The Cast |
About The Production |
Credits
Designing And Lighting Muppets |
MTI Costume Design
Fencing And Stunts |
The Music
Polly Smith has designed for the Muppets since THE MUPPET SHOW days and is a full-time employee of the Henson Organization. "I have worked with them for 17 years. That's all I do and it's a full-time job! They keep me very busy!" she enthuses. "When I first got the script for TREASURE ISLAND, I researched the period and when I knew everything there was to know, I started sketching."
"I knew from the script what each character was playing and from the research I picked out little elements. I have to think about their body types, what they can handle and also what I need to hide. Usually it is a lot, because they have very peculiar shaped bodies!"
"I then got the sketches to Brian and started looking for fabrics. With a movie this size, I needed hundreds of pieces of fabric. Just having enough buttons is also a problem. Each costume can have five or six buttons plus trimmings, and you want each one to be different."
She spends a lot of time in between projects searching for small buttons that are interesting and fills bags with bits of lace and cotton trims. When you are designing for Muppets, conventional sizes do not apply. She recently found some German doll wigs that fit the tourist rats to perfection!
She starts from scratch on every single costume and keeps most of her patterns, but from experience she knows the type of costume each character would wear. "When I was thinking about Miss Piggy's outfits, I had already designed what the boars would look like," she explains. "I took a couple of trips to this fabulous feather place in New York and decided Piggy's skirt should be feathers. I don't think they are quite ostrich, more like vulture! They just looked really wonderful and I was reminded of a skirt I had seen in the American Indian Museum. Each one of those feathers had to be dyed individually and they are two-tone dipped. Her leopard skin sarong fabric was also hand-painted and her shoes hand-made. It was all quite expensive!"
The costumes for Kermit and Fozzie were also expensive. Kermit had three versions of his Captain's uniform, and each coat was hand embroidered. Polly's precious supply of buttons was nearly exhausted, as he had buttons down the front, on the cuffs, on the back, on the waistcoat, and on the pants! All matching and all small!
"I do tend to get all wrapped up in the Muppets and leave the people to the end," admits Polly. "People are really more important because they fill up a lot more space than a Muppet does. The human costumes were in the conventional pirate style and were fairly easy to make. Long John Silver's outfit was very spectacular. I also had to make the lapels and cuffs in breakaway fashion so they would fall off when Kermit gives his display of swordsmanship!"
Mrs. Bluveridge's very expansive dress was basically a lot of padding turning Jennifer Saunders into an ugly, fat, old hag. The warts on her face, the black teeth, and the lank, greasy hair made her almost unrecognizable.
Some of the funniest characters are the tourist rats who enjoy, to the fullest, their Caribbean cruise. "In my mind they are stuck in the fifties! They are more contemporary than your eighteenth century thing, but that's the period they look best in! Fred Buchholz did all the cameras and props for them and he, like me is always searching any shop, anywhere for anything tiny that could be used in a Muppet world!"
Designing And Lighting Muppets |
MTI Costume Design
Fencing And Stunts |
The Music
The Cast |
About The Production |
Credits
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