I was a historical judge at CC27, and I think I promised somebody a "judge's eye view" report afterward. In addition, as I told the contestants and audience Sunday night, I will answer specific questions on the results. The first is the perennial question about entering in the first place.
Why should I enter the Historical Masquerade? I'm shy, I don't think my outfit is really good, and I get stage fright (and I don't want to have the stress of losing). If any of the above applies, enter Not For Competition. This lets the judges have a break from the stress of judging* and gives you the chance to show your outfit off to everyone, not just those lucky few why happen to see you walk by. (I hardly saw any of the Con, and only went to the two panels I was schedule to do.) It also gives you free stage practice. It also lets you show off something only folks on the opposite coast have seen. It also lets you show off something that has already won a prize someplace else. *(Yeah, it's stressful judging presentation. We have mere seconds to make our stage-award decisions, then we have to clear our minds completely for the next entry. For example, the first entry up this year, Jennifer Lima's Anne Bolyn, gave us goosebumps, all three judges. Then we had to get over it and move on to the next one. Really good presentation, and it wasn't easy for us.) As for the rest of the judging process, there are three aspects of a historical costume that can be judged, and they're all important. These are the research (aka the docs), the execution (aka Workmanship), and the presentation. A Best in Show will score high in all three of these, even if another entry scores higher in one than they do. Part 1 of my observations is about the documentation. Do I need compulsive documentation? No. If you don't have any documentation, and if you're doing a period the judges know a lot about anyway (or is commonly done), and if your presentation is good and your construction is right up there, you stand a chance to get an award. You just can't get a doc award without docs. And you might lose out to another entry just as good as yours where the fact that they had docs and you didn't was the tie-breaker. If I don't need documentation, why bother doing it? The real purpose of submitting docs is to show the judges how well you did what you did. (You've already done the research, haven't you?) It gives judges something to compare with. It also expands the range of what you can do, in that if a judge doesn't know your period well your docs should give them enough education that they can see you did it right. (This is especially useful if you're doing an Anime costume for a SF Masquerade, where the judges may never have seen your show before.) What really needs to be in those docs? Show the judges what you're trying to do, so they can see how well you did it. Use primary sources whenever possible (secondary, etc, only when you have to), and back up any one source with another if you can. Document everything you did, and provide footnotes for each. Think term paper (not Doctoral Thesis). Justify any changes from original practice. If you can't afford the real thing, or it is unobtainable now, document what the real thing was and what you did instead. It is a mark of your costuming skill if you found a good substitute, and costuming skill is what is being judged here, not budget. This is our hobby, and you shouldn't be penalized for not being fabulously wealthy. Likewise, making or finding good substitutes take more costuming skill than buying perfect antiques does. If you don't want to do workmanship judging, your docs should include an image or two of everything that doesn't show from on stage. Have one shot of each whole garment and one close-up of the coolest detail. Document any period skill you learned for this outfit. This might include dying, weaving, period embroidery stitches, fabric painting, etc. Again, it is a mark of your skill if you did the work instead of buying a substitute. What can I leave out of my docs? Don't bother with the whole journal of how you made the garments. Show one image of you doing the hand sewing if you must, but historical judges will believe you did the hand sewing they see if you say you did it. And don't snow the judges with 20 examples where a few will do - they'll only compare yours to the ones that look most like it, so the others are unnecessary. Presenting your docs in what looks like a period manner is a nice touch (Anne Bolyn's docs came wrapped in parchment folded in a period way, and sealed in wax with a 'B' imprinted in it), but avoid getting cute unless your presentation is supposed to be funny. This is especially the case if the judges think you're using cute to cover for lack of content. My docs this year would have been a total of 32 Xeroxed sheets (for the SF Masquerade, and my entry had to scratch) stuffed into a binder with my name on it and the title of the presentation. Three sheets were the book covers of my contemporary sources, and each sheet from these books showed the original page number. These sheets documented the dress, underwear, corset, petticoat, shoes, stockings, sleeve detailing, hair and hair pins, and period hem length. Every garment was cited from at least two different places printed within a couple of years of the garment I was doing, or from measured re-drawings done from contemporary garments. Six sheets showed contemporary photos. In addition to these 32 sheets, I included a copy of the short sf story I based the costume on, which I didn't expect the judges to read, only notice. -- Carolyn Kayta Barrows -- Blank paper is God's way of saying it ain't so easy being God. -- _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
