Agatha All Along
Breakdowns, Budgets, & Tracking
(oh my!)
Extracting relevant information from scripts and internal production documents to craft valuable department wide resources
Before lights, camera, action…
Overview-
One of my first tasks upon starting work on Agatha: Coven of Chaos was to read and analyze the scripts and the production calendars in order to create meaningful breakdowns that would assist the design teams creative work and the rest of the departments logistical, and organizational tasks.
These organizational tools would become instrumental in the functioning of the department through the production.
Mission
Create timelines, briefs, and tracking tools for costume department.
Client
Marvel Studios
Role
End-to-end senior Costumer responsible for “breaking-down” scripts, production schedules and documents for the benefit of costume department heads.
Timeline
July 2022-Jan 2023
Step One: Breakdowns
While there are softwares and programs that exist that automatically break down scripts for departments to use, Marvel prioritizes secrecy, and therefore using those softwares was out of the question.
However, those softwares are the current industry standard for how costume crews understand and work with scripts. My first task was to break each script down into bite-size digestible pieces that would allow our crew to understand who, what, where, when and how for each episode.
First, I mapped out where each character appears in each episode. Costumers refer to this as a “Crossplot Breakdown.”
Then, I chronologically itemized the actions that happen to each character and where.
Here, I notated important actions that may indicate the need for changes, multiples, stunts, or distressing.
I broke out character costume changes based on what seemed appropriate with the content of the script.
From here, I created an estimate for how many multiples would be needed for each change. This information is vital in creating an accurate and realistic budget.
I worked closely with the designer to project which changes would be purchased, rented, and made-to-order, and used information provided directly by the scripts to justify and explain why the amounts of multiples were needed.
We also preemptively divided the workload between our two fabrication and manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Atlanta, allocating the workload based on the production schedule to allow for the items that would appear later in the production schedule to be built in Atlanta, where the majority of filming would take place. The items that would work in LA were built in the LA workroom prior to the commencement of filming.
Mapping out the workload in this way allowed us to most effectively prioritize labor allocation and as well as maximize the tax incentives that our production was benefitting from in both states.
Other helpful breakdowns I created included a Script Call-Outs document that listed out every place in the script where a note that may pertain to costumes or props was mentioned. Note the last column indicates which department the line pertains to.
While it was originally built for internal distribution only, it proved to be so helpful that this document was utilized throughout the production by not only Costumes but Props, HMU, Stunts, and VFX regularly during prep and filming.
Step Two: Budgeting
Once the first round of breakdowns were completed, I began to build the budget for the season.
The executive team asked me to put the scope of work for Agatha in context with Wanda Vision as they intended to provide our department with a budget similar to what was budgeted for WV.
I began by mapping out the changes in WV and then comparing the amount of changes in each series, and it turned out WV had a considerable amount of more changes than AAA.
After determining the amount of characters, changes, and multiples, I built the initial costume budget.
Followed by the initial labor budget.
Step Three: Tracking
After the breakdowns were complete and the budget was created, I built a spreadsheet that could track department costs in real time and show totals by character, change, and purchase type.
