Martha “Em” Cypress (Romy Weltman) in her skull hoodie designed by Juinth Ann Clancy
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
“I love to play with tone,” producer and series co-creator Aaron Koontz said about his latest series, Revival. “I love to subvert expectations and play with the expectations that I think I would have watching it as an audience would.” I’ve been friends with Koontz for a few years, and I asked him if he’d connect me with Judith Ann Clancy, costume designer for his wonderful series, Revival, as I had approximately 500 questions I very much wanted to ask her about the character design in the series. Aarron, always a gentleman, offered to join us.
“There are all these different tricks to try to subconsciously get the audience to to think something about a character,” Koontz continued, “ even with the lighting or where they are, and costumes contribute to that. You can dress somebody in darker colors and more moody stuff, like they’re ‘bad’ but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad. It just means that those are biases that we have as we’re watching, what we’re used to thinking.”
Revival, was written and created by Luke Boyes and Aaron Koontz, and is based off of a 47-month long comic series of the same name written by Tim Steely and illustrated by Mike Norton from July of 2012 through February of 2017. The entire first season of the FX series is available to stream on Peacock, and luckily for all of us who love good television, a second season has been confirmed.
This is a less-traditional Zombie story, but it keeps plenty of scary secrets, though we quickly are quickly reminded that it is regular people who are often most monstrous. Various governmental organizations are trying to sort out why dead people woke up for a couple of days, only in the small town of Wausau, Wisconsin, a group quickly named ‘Revivors’ for obvious reasons. Mid chaos, Deputy Dana Cypress (a truly excellent Melanie Scrofano), daughter of the town’s Sheriff Wayne Cypress (David James Elliott), is doing her best to solve the mystery of who murdered her (Reviver) sister Martha “Em” Cypress (Romy Weltman, who I am still fan-girling over a little).
Em Cypress waits at the hospital with her nephew, Cooper.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
There is humor in this show, even amidst the harshest horrors, another throughline for Koontz and his Paperstreet Pictures production company have been playing with the lines between genres forever, and many wonderful, albeit rather gory, stories on film have been the result.
But before we dove too deeply into the clothing I absolutely had to ask Koontz about some, to me, fancy camera work that I noticed in the show, namely a fish-eye lens. Because, though this is not my area of expertise, it was a subtle touch that very much reminded me of the careful planning I saw in all the wardrobes. Careful planning never just happens, it is like horror vacui, at the risk of sounding like the detective from one of my beloved PBS Masterpiece Murder Mysteries; it’s a concept similar to Ian Fleming’s thoughts about patterns. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
“In particular,” Koontz explained, “that was Samir Rehem, our block three director. He loves those wide-angle lenses, they blur things in the background and there’s artifacting there, it gives more. I mean just from a very base level, it gives you a more cinematic look.
Deputy Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano) and Dr. Ibrahim Ramin (Andy McQueen) might be getting close to answers…
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
It’s also about, if we’re gonna get really pretentious about it, when Justin Black, our director of photography, and then the directors and Luke and I were talking about it being like you don’t know what is real or what isn’t, and how that starts to play with ideas about everything. But then we’re meant to be like, ‘no, the edges are literally blurred.’ You think you have a clear picture but you don’t, and we’re playing with those expectations and it forces you to keep focus in a particular area. The artifacting, which is really fun, is very rudimentary. We’re literally blurring aspects of the image to say, You think you know everything that’s going on, but you really don’t. But it’s also just pretty?”
He’s right, even when Myles Miller (Josh Cruddas), a Revivor who died in prison turns out to be missing (and is maybe eating horses?) this whole show is beautiful and I love how saturated the colors are. That color choice is a tool for the viewer, it is the starting place for a great many more cues and clues, and if you like spooky stuff and mysteries, then as soon as you are done reading please start watching the first episode now, if not sooner.
I asked the costume designer, Judith Ann Clancy, about her use of color in the character’s wardrobes because it was very clear that she had made sure to leave us breadcrumbs from the very first frame, assistance for an audience that gets dropped into an incredibly complicated situation.
Dr. Ibrahim Ramin (Andy McQueen) has a lot to be worried about.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
“We assigned color groups to different factions,” Clancy explained, “ so it was easier to distinguish everyone without overtly screaming about who was part of which group. Our Revivers, Blaine Able’s group, law enforcement, regular people around the town; it was a very instinctual choice, and then it made sense to keep them that way. The visual cue is there, and there was some blurring of lines because there’s crossover. And it is a small town, these people all do live together, and then in terms of the Revivers to our regular townsfolk, I think it was important to allow a little bit of distance. we don’t want to alienate them completely, but they are different and we needed to establish that there is a difference there.”
Obviously I loved Mayor Ken Dillisch’s clothes, he gets to wear some of the most gorgeous (or should but ugly but Judith Clancy is an enchantress) clothing in the whole first season. I was curious, and I outright admitted that I had not yet read the comics (I have ordered the first book in the compendium, and I will know all before Season Two is released) whether his personal style came from the source material, or if that was a place of departure.
Mayor Ken Dillisch (Conrad Coates) is doing is best in a really bad situation.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
“It was so much fun and it was written,” Clancy explained, “it was supposed to be an ill-fitted suit from the beginning. I think purple was the reference, and when I get to see a character written with an ill-fitting purple suit , I was like, ‘okay we want to have some fun.’ And Aaron and Luke were like, ‘yeah go for it,’ and I thought, okay, let’s dip into the 1970s.
“I know Conrad Coates, the actor, I’d worked with him previously, and he was down, loving everything, just playing with a different era. That was across the board,from Luke and Aaron didn’t really want to pinpoint the era, because that’s so important in a small town, people keep their clothes and that is the basis of what we did. We want to see a span of people’s lives in their clothing. They’re totally hand-me-downs, and that creates a thicker, more bold world. Where we don’t even have to think; it’s like these people have lives. They’ve lived hard or easy lives and that’s reflected in the clothing. Then, add on the layer of something shifting very quickly in this small concentrated area. We get to see possible development and it builds the characters up.”
“With Dillisch in particular,” Koontz said, “we changed him some from the comic. In the comic he was very, very large, he was definitely a direct comp to the Mayor in Jaws. And he had crazy jackets, which I love, and they are such a huge part of this whole show. Judith made it so everyone gets a cool jacket. Everyone has distinct silhouettes, you can look at them and just know who the character is. That was a thing that we were really going for and Judith just killed it.”
What they were telling me is one of the things that interests me most about adapting a story from one form of media to another. Choices have to be made, sometimes things that happen in written stories or illustrations are infeasible, cost prohibitive or simply impossible to recreate on film. Then the question becomes more about intention than letter of law. What is faithful to the original work? What can be left out without losing the best parts of the original work? Which are often the parts that an existing fan base can get tripped up on if a production does not make its intentions, and its respect for the original work and its fans, very clear, right from the beginning.
“It was a real delicate line that we were balancing,” Clancy told me. “Generally, that was me generally defaulting to Luke and Aaron. Which are the characters that we know people are going to hold on to, that they’re going to want to see the same? And we have to be considerate, we’re building a story over a short timeline, so we can add in extra characterization and interest and personality in some things like pajamas. But the police uniform, there was a big back and forth about what color combination was right. We kept to the color combo in the comic predominantly, so we could see this iconic figure.”
Uniforms, especially in the quantities required for a whole police department, present unique challenges to a production’s costume department. I’ve written before about the many spinning plates a costume designer must keep track of. There are questions of quantity, of continuity, but, as Clancy pointed out, none of these decisions ever affect only one filmmaking department.
Let me pause here, for just a moment, and make certain that I tell you that Carol Case’s Very Good Work on Fargo, was both a goal and a source of inspiration to the production end of Revival. Which is absolutely as it should be, Carol Case is exceptionally good at getting law enforcement uniforms to tell stories. Both Koontz and Clancy made a point of telling me as much.
“I took a clean uniform shirt and I dyed it,” Clancy said, “just to see if we could tint it down, and to see if it was a color that Luke and Aaron liked. We ended up with a blue gray, but we had to see the variance because, with color correction and any lighting treatment they’re doing will shift things, and they know more about that than I do. So it’s a back and forth, seeing where this color is going to hit. If it’s giving enough warm or cool tones for what they know their end product should be. And how does it handle blood? Because that was the thing that I thought about most, how does it handle blood and how is blood going to look on it?”
Deputy Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano) argues with her father Sheriff Wayne Cypress (David James Elliott).
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
“Budget is a real thing that we talk about because it’s part of our process,” the designer continued. “We were traveling to Saint John. I needed to get this stuff before I left Toronto so I would have at least a basis before we reorder and it was a back and forth. It was like three different versions before it settled the one and then there’s talk about the stripe or rank marking down the leg. Do we want that?Do we want to? Any epaulettes? There was a real conversation back and forth about what we need to see? What do we want to see? What can we get? That’s always the game in the costume department. We want to fulfill the creative needs, but you also have to work within a window of time.”
“I have made decisions in other movies,” Koontz interjected, “where I’m like, why did I pick a darker color for this? I can’t see the blood, it’s not going to play. So here, that was a factor early on, and by the way, Judith was a complete and utter lifesaver on the show, because nobody had it tougher than Judith.”
“We were so late in casting,” the producer continued. “We were so late in getting things done. And she was in Saint John, New Brunswick, with no resources. There’s nothing there, nowhere to get anything and I’m particular about the things that I would like to see. We were like, this looks amazing, again and again and again. She did it with a great attitude and she is an amazing collaborator, really your dream as a showrunner. When you empower someone, and you’re like, ‘I have these weird ideas, here’s what I would like,’ you want experts in their departments. To elevate those weird ideas and to take them to another level, and that is something that Judith did daily on the show and I’ll forever be grateful. Against odds that I don’t know how, so I wanted to make sure I’m giving that credit where it’s due.”
Blaine Abel (Steven Ogg) and his merry band of followers.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
You can tell when work is made by a team of people who like each other. You can see good communication silently on film when small, silly mistakes never appear. Revival is an excellent example of this. It might seem deceptively simple to think that communicating well during production leads to communicating well with an audience once a project is released, but that consideration is very much where the difference lies.
This is a timely story for many reasons, and surprisingly few of them are Covid-related, though of course that ghost will be haunting us for years to come.
Em Cypress (Romy Weltman) has a transformation I am stopping myself from saying too much about, but I can tell you about the incredible hoodie that Clancy designed for her to wear after.
“It’s like she’s going to battle and it’s her armor,” the designer said to me.
“The hood being up,” Koontz explained, “it’s like the trope of loading of a gun, I mean that’s essentially what we’re going through, and and that when you see her pull the hoodie up, there’s a moment it’s an Episode Four when you see her do that, it’s like, okay, now she’s becoming an entirely different person. So much credit has to go to Romy, because there was a meekness to her. She’s literally ducking down before this. She’s lowering her head and we put her in these big, Coats and sweaters and things. Like she wants to be a wallflower, she wants to not be noticed, and then the hood it goes up and there is this darkness.”
Goosebumps, very seriously.
Em and her Professor (Gianpaolo Venuta) – do you see how the bones look like wings? This isn’t an accident.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
I asked about all the stitching and embroidery, did it come from the book?
“The red stitching is a thing from the comic,” Koontz told me, “she gets the hoodie torn up a lot, and we we did a very weird adaptation of this, we have things at the end that are in the middle, and saved for future seasons, and what this could potentially be. But what happens is, her hoodie gets all messed up, and we had to decide, how do we enter into the scene? It was seeing the red thread going through, red stitching at different places that made it.”
“That’s a famous thing,” Clancy confirmed, “and their battle wounds, that’s what we see. That she’s no longer herself and is more than what the exterior of her shows. Those scars are on the hoodie so we see what she’s traveled through.
That’s a lot of pressure, recreating something iconic and loved, especially in an era when Fandoms are not always appreciative of choices made in adaptations. I asked how she dealt with worries like that.
Em Cypress (Romy Weltman) in her Hardore Hoodie.
Courtesy of Aaron Koontz
“My default is always going to be I don’t know anything about this, so let’s consult a person that would know,” Clancy told me. “I was told up front how important this hoodie was for the show and it makes sense. There’s something that lends to the era that this is set in, something about skulls.
But with this actor, I mean, she’s so versatile, and it was easy to make her look young and fresh faced with the long hair and bangs. And those knit sweaters and her jeans, and then shifting into the darker tones like we talked about earlier. It was great to see that transition in her with the clothing and then into the hoodie. I mean, it was a process to get to that final product. I have lovely ideas further on into a new season, to perpetuate the changing and morphing of the character with the garment. I think somewhere in between eight and ten renditions of testing and that was involving the art department with graphics to get everything right to lock it in.”
Season One of the FX series, Revival, created by Luke Boyes and Aaron Koontz, is available to stream on Peacock, and a second season will be beginning production soon.
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