INTERVIEW WITH MR DAVID PEA OF UNIVERSAL DESIGNS

David Pea is the head of Canadian costume effects company Universal Designs, and who lent his incredible skills to the film by creating a second Wraith cowl for specific use in certain scenes. This interview was conducted last year in preparation for The Wraith DVD release, but is now presented for your enjoyment here. Frank Dirscherl: Tell us a bit about yourself and how Universal Designs came to be. David Pea: Universal Designs was born from my desire and passion for costuming. As a child I’d work feverishly on my Halloween costume all year round just to get it right. It was a passion I had that just kept with me into my adult years. Probably not understood by everyone but to me it just seemed right and to me that’s all that mattered. While living in Italy and working in the clothing industry I decided it was time to start my own Costuming Company and move back to Toronto. My burning desire to do my own thing that I knew could work in the right context could wait no longer. A few months after returning to Toronto I started Universal Designs. Universal Designs mean just that…a Universal take on costuming. Sculpture, Moldmaking, Clothing design and so on. To me it was important to not focus on just one medium but many. From Latex costumes to Leather wear and soon the introduction to Foam Latex costumes. Now what was once a simple hobby has turned into a real time job with us here constantly running to meet deadlines for various clients. So who am I??.....Having Breakfast Club flashbacks now….well quite simply I’m someone who loves bringing characters that we’re used to seeing in magazines to life…It’s something we all here take quite seriously. FD: How did you first approach the task of bringing The Wraith cowl to life when you initially got the job? Was there any research involved? DP: There’s always a given amount of research that goes into everything that we do. The Wraith however posed certain challenges that until now we’d really only seen achieved in big budget full feature films. The simple question was “How do we take a 2D drawing of a superhero who wears a leather like cowl or mask and make that into a 3D wearable prop that will work on film? It has to be believable…and have an identity all it’s own. The headpiece of any costume ‘usually’ is the focal point for most people who look at a costume or watch a movie where there is a costumed character. To us, one of the strong points of this cowl was in it’s simplicity. It ‘looks’ like a leather hood…but it’s more than that because you can see the persons eyebrows, cheek bones and basic expressions come to life in this cowl. It’s not a hood, it’s not a rubber mask…yet it’s supposed to look like he simply takes a leather piece and ties it onto his face. Well that’s the beauty of comic books and the challenge to us. We proceeded to sculpt a head shell with certain expressions in the forehead, brows, cheek bone structure and nose. Then the daunting task of stretching the leather overtop to mimic all the details we had sculpted. This task proved very challenging because if not done right it simply looks like a ‘rag’ on a mans head yet the Wraith is an intimidating character full of expression in his face. I wish I could say we got it right the first time but that would not be true. We did several test cowls until we all agreed that we had what we wanted. A mask that would hide the wearers identity yet capture all the possible expressions that he wanted to convey. Simple changes in how it would be lit while filming created beautiful shadows and almost looked like different cowls based on how it was lit. FD: Talk about the various processes involved in creating the cowl? It’s only one costume piece, but I’m sure it’s more detailed then many people may think. DP: I touched on this earlier on but as simple as it looks by itself now as a finished prop it most certainly was anything but. First we sculpted an aggressive looking face to mimic that artwork we’d been provided with showing us who exactly this Wraith was. Once the sculpture was complete…and this sculpture would be the under skeleton in it’s finished form, it was molded and a rubber ‘shell’ was cast. The details in the sculpture were more predominant than usual because we had to account for the thickness of the leather and we didn’t want to wash out any of the details after it was covered in leather. Coming up with the pattern for the final leather was also a challenge because of the organic shape of this shell. After several attempts were made we finally got it sleek and just right. The funny thing is once it was done we all kind of stood back and looked at it thinking how in the world can something that looks so simple in it’s final form be so darn complex to make?? FD: How long did it take to create the cowl, from design to finished product? DP: The R&D itself was rather time cosuming. R&D means also test sculpts of how we interpret the Wraith character to be but it also means that the client must approve our direction. Fortunately it seemed that we were all pretty much on the same page once we started so I’d say that the sculpt was probably the easiest part and what took the less amount of time. Once the rubber shell was ready the headache with the leather began and that took quite a long time to get right. Overall I’d say it was a 6 week project from start to finish. We did have it longer but the man hours and time to make this probably fit into a standard 6 week timetable. FD: Were you satisfied with the end result? How does it feel to have your work featured in a motion picture? DP: Was I satisfied? Absolutely. Does that mean I wouldn’t like another crack at this????? Well, you bet. Much has changed since making that first cowl and now I’d really love another shot at it and maybe even more components to the costume. I have different ideas and believe that if this is successful we’ll see more and more of the Wraith. This first time it was fun, frustrating and great to see it come to close with a cool mask that under different sorts of lighting does what we wanted it to…consider that if there is another chance at working in The Wraith’s world then we at Universal Designs want a second go at it. We’ll be looking out for the release of this project and know that we’re proud to have contributed in some small way.

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