Costume Designer Avery Plewes is responsible for Grace De Lomas’ (Samara Weaving) iconic wedding dress in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet’s Ready or Not, and she’s brought that same magic to the Radio Silence team’s new movie Scream VI.
Plewes took on the Herculean task of designing costumes in the brand new sequel, including a crowded subway packed with Halloween costumes and horror movie Easter eggs. The costume designer also had the daunting task of giving Ghostface a new look.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Avery Plewes about updating the killer’s iconic robes and mask. Because Scream VI pays tribute to the fallen Ghostfaces of the past, that meant creating a new, weathered Ghostface mask for the franchise’s latest killer.
Plewes revealed a surprising source of inspiration for the new mask: dolls.
“I was excited but also absolutely terrified,” Plewes said of joining the Scream franchise. “I said to the [directors], I was like, ‘You know that this is a silicone mask,’ because I’m always the person that wants to do the most accurate thing. It’s like, okay, first of all, it’s a Hollywood movie. We’re here to scare people not to do the most scientific version of how the mask would deteriorate. So, I just started experimenting with it, and I looked at a lot of images; I went to the place of what kind of face has scared me throughout time, and it’s dolls, porcelain dolls, and broken dolls. I still have them on my phone.
“I have hundreds of images of porcelain and silicone dolls whose eyes have cracked, and the plastic has unstuck from parts of itself. So I used those as references.”
Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”
Plewes continues, “Then my ager/dyer, Val, is an incredible, incredible artist. She worked with us to establish, okay, we need a crack here, and we need a burnt-out hole here. The Ghostface mask was quite literally the blueprint. I would draw on them. RJ at Fun World, who owns the IP to the mask, is super generous and sent us tons and tons of masks. We were able to develop it because of that. So yeah, it happened organically. Radio Silence and I love working together, so it’s never a dreaded, ‘oh, I have to go to the costume office.’ It’s like, ‘come look at this fun thing I’m developing.’ They would come and check in and see what Val was doing. I’d send them pictures or videos of how it looked in specific lighting. We also gave it highlights and lowlights to make it feel more hollow in certain spots.”
Plewes also explains the various mask variations, each one corresponding with each film’s killers. She tells Bloody Disgusting, “We also wanted, again, legacy being such a thing, is showing a progression from the different films of how they would’ve deteriorated and showing a timeline of how long this has been going on for. That’s where the different versions came from. We wanted the mask distinctions to be strong enough so that, for instance, when Tara [Jenna Ortega] is being interviewed about the mask by Bailey [Dermot Mulroney], she says, ‘Oh, this isn’t the mask. It looks like X, Y, Z.’ We wanted each mask to have its own distinction so that if someone described it, they could identify the details.”
It’s not just the Ghostface mask that got an updated look, but the robe as well.
Plewes details the sly Easter egg she added in, “One thing I will say with the Ghostface robe is that each sleeve has six pieces to signify Scream VI. I call it the Ghostface wings. But there are three on the classic fabric, and then we found this shimmery sheer fabric that I would normally think is horrible, but again, for a Halloween costume, it’s perfect. It goes behind it because the thing about Ghostface that the directors love is how domineering and big and bulky he [or she] feels. So when I layered that semi-sheer fabric behind it, it became more ominous and creepier. When we camera tested it, it looked strangely beautiful but terrifying, so I decided to do six panels on each sleeve to show that we’re in [film number] six.”
Scream VI is now playing in theaters nationwide.
The post ‘Scream VI’ Costume Designer Avery Plewes Details New Ghostface Look and the Easter Egg She Included appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.