Two-time Academy Award nominee Ruth Myers (Emma, The Addams Family) designed the costumes for New Line Cinema’s film adaptation of The Golden Compass. And when New Line opened up the set of the film to online journalists, Myers was a member of The Golden Compass’ behind-the-scenes team who was more than happy to discuss her part in helping to bring the story to the big screen.
On Creating the World of The Golden Compass Through Costume Design: “I had a much easier job obviously because what I came into was a world that had been created in two senses. First, in the books, it says very clearly in the beginning, it's this world, it's not this world, which is what I read before I talked to anyone. That gives you the most amazing sense of scope. And secondly, I came into [production designer Dennis Gassner’s] world which is amazing and which gave me all sorts of references to be able to work with.”
Myers continued, “One of the great joys actually about this book has been that we have been given the luxury of being able to make stuff ourselves. One of the reasons that you rent is because you neither have the time nor the facilities to make. My department has made something like 600 costumes. We've painted, we've manufactured, we've done all sorts of extraordinary things. We've taken modern things and played with them. We made period things; we moved them around. And one of the great things about working here in Shepparton is that we've had the space and we've been able to bring in skilled people to do all these jobs. This is an incredible luxury.
I myself am enormously proud of the work that we've done and I'm completely overwhelmed by what we've been able to do. It's been because we've all worked together. I've not had to go and [property master Barry Gibbs] has not had to go to somewhere to see what they were doing. In many ways, it's also made it economically a very viable thing because we've all been here together doing it. So although in the beginning a lot of us thought it was going to be very expensive, in the end I think it's been a very, very, for what has come out which is huge, it's been a very economical way of doing it. And really, it doesn't look like anything else you've ever seen. We've not had to go and hire stuff. We've been given free range of what we want.”
Finding Inspiration for Nicole Kidman’s and Dakota Blue Richards’ Costumes: “I've been doing this a long time so a lot of things came to mind very quickly. Mrs. Coulter, I wanted to essentially give you the sense of being the most glamorous woman in the world but I didn't want it to be loud glamour. So I had to go back and think what I thought the most beautiful looking women were.
Lyra [played by Richards] makes a complete journey and it was a question of where to start her and where to finish her."
On Period Costumes and Crowd Scenes: Myers described the costumes as “somewhat between ‘20s Edwardian, ‘40s all mixed in. That was the idea so that every time I thought I was going towards a period, I pushed it another way so that you got a sense of what is this. Same thing with the crowds at Wonders Pass is I wanted to give them again a sense that you didn't quite know if it was now, not now, when, how, so that you start the film off not quite sure where you are. Very, very good fun."
On Eva Green’s Character Sarafina and the Use of Fur: “Sarafina…is the sort of pure shade of night. Her group goes slightly in other direction, they're not quite as pure as she is. She has got this image, she is sort of your dream of midnight, or my dream of midnight.”
The book includes a lot of talk of fur and Myers was interested in changing things up for the film. “I was very interested with the idea of actually not using very much real fur. I like the idea that I could play with other furs and again create a fur that we didn't know. So you can only see bits of them here. You possibly see one of Mrs. Coulter's coats on the screen and things like that, but these sort of fur bits that we've really worked into [seem to have come from] yet again another world.”
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New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass hits theaters on December 7, 2007.
