The wildly original biopic of UK rock star Robbie Williams is one of the biggest films ever made in Melbourne, and was the first production on Docklands Studios new super stage (Stage 6).
With Williams depicted as a CGI monkey, the project presented unique creative and logistical challenges.
In the first of a series about how our world-class screen crew brought Better Man to life, Melbourne Costume Designer Cappi Ireland explains her approach.
We needed to design outfits that would look good on a monkey, because a monkey’s skin and fur is obviously different to a human’s.
We started by researching all the looks we wanted to put on Robbie, using photos from the late 80s to early 2000s.
We then needed to visualise how this would all look so we got a WIP 3D render image of the monkey from (visual-effects company) WETA FX and began illustrating all the looks for Robbie.
We had fantastic costume concept illustrators Sebastian and Jessie, a dynamic duo who turned out around 250 illustrations of just Robbie’s looks alone.
Around ninety per cent of the costume illustrations were actually physically made, sourced or bought.
The next step was to put the costumes on a fit model/stand in, the same size as Robbie, who was then scanned in a VFX booth, so WETA could capture all the looks for the movie down to every button and thread.
By plotting all of Robbie’s looks, it meant that when a scene was being filmed, even though it was Jonno (Davies) in a mo-cap (motion capture) suit on set, we had in our minds what Robbie would be wearing.
This initial process of conceptualising then informed us how to design the rest of the costumes for the film.
Capturing Robbie’s distinct style
Because he’s a rock star, there’s a lot of online content that helped with our research. He took risks, and loved bling and labels and getting dressed up.
He loved all the latest sportswear of the time (adidas, Nike) and he paid homage to other music genres; he wore a “Northern Scum” beanie– a nod to the music scene (Housemartins) in Manchester up north near where he lived.
He was always pushing boundaries with his fashion choices.
It was a lot of fun recreating the iconic Robbie Williams looks and the Take That outfits too–they had some crazy looks!
Filming large concerts scenes
We had hundreds of extras across these scenes, and we encouraged everyone to bring what they might have at home for the different eras. Luckily, the 90’s was back in fashion.
We also sourced, hired and bought a huge stock of clothing.
Some of the extras had some great items of their own, and we fully dressed others or we augmented what they had with our stock.
For the Royal Albert Hall shot in Stage 6, we did a line-up of extras and I would check and change anything that wasn’t quite right.
On set, I’d walk around with Michael or Oliver (Cole–Better Man co-writer) and we would move people around, to avoid clashes of colour with our main cast.
Filming luxury St Tropez yacht scene (where Robbie meets Nicole Appleton)
This gold dress was an engineering feat made by our fabulous manufacturing department. Brought beautifully to life by Raechelle Bano.
It was made from glomesh metal fabric and was a nod to the fabulous Versace dresses in the 90’s. Each individual piece had to be linked together.
It really took a beating with the big dance choreography in the scene and required around the clock attention from my onset crew but it really shone on the beautiful yacht that was built in Stage 6.
Filming at Docklands Studios
It’s always nice to be at Docklands because you have so much space.
The set up area for costume is very closer to stage 6. It’s great to have all our costumes and accessories and equipment so close by. That’s what I love about shooting at Docklands.
Fave scene
I have to say the Regent Street (Rock DJ) scene would be my all-time favourite movie making experience.
We had over 500 dancers, extras and bit parts as well as our cast.
We shot the scene in several locations in Melbourne and Regent Street London.
I loved all the attention to detail that Michael wrote for this scene–little character vignettes within the sequence.
Dressing all those characters was a lot of fun. It is a scene you have to watch a few times to really appreciate the level of detail we all put in.
From a design point of view, I’m most proud of that whole sequence.
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