Penn44 wrote:Why expend the money to hire "uniform advisors" or obtain accurate uniforms with all the awards when less expensive routes are available. If you are going to go hire "uniform advisors," why not hire "place setting advisors" for the dinner scenes, or "scrubbery advisors" for the landscape scenes. The vast majority of film viewer won't know the difference. It may upset the more obsessive among the viewers, but they've already paid the admission price so screw them. Directors are always getting some critcism from somebody so what makes the uniform fanatics any different? Remember the SNL sketch in which William Shatner tell the Trekkies to "get a life." That sentiment is often echoed by directors towards this particular type of movie goers.
You haven't addressed the question at all; in fact, you've talked around my question on profitability and I think you've really only reinforced what I was saying. I'm not getting a sense of your practical experience in dealing with costuming or historical research issues and I find your comments to be quite non-specific in nature.
You're right about one thing; perhaps no one hires "uniform advisors" per se, but you can bet your boots there is a wardrobe person on the set. They do absolutely go out and research these things; either by buying books or contacting authors/museums or online sources. Movie produtions do, however, hire "military advisors" who do the same things re: uniforms in addition to their general overall duties of training the extras to "look military." That encompasses everything from how to stand, walk and talk to how to fight to how to wear their clothing and equipment. That also covers what to wear.
No one is taking issue with your comments on how important directors feel such details are - in fact, I've echoed them myself (the Dale Dye quote above is a good one too, and reinforces my thoughts on films like
The Bridge at Remagen which I posted a page or two back now). But I'm still not seeing what your very general comments have to do with profitability. You still haven't explained what that has to do with accuracy. From my own limited experience, it has nothing to do with it. From what I can tell, you haven't been hands on with the process.
Perhaps you can give a detailed example from your own experience of a situation in which you had to forgo a "historically correct" uniform detail in the name of "profitability" because I'm still not seeing a connection.
As one example of my own experience, I was very loosely involved with the production "Heroes of the Victoria Cross" by Partners in Motion, which was shown on Canadian television for Remembrance Day a few years back; it still gets shown occasionally - my name is in the credits if anyone wants to verify it. I was never on set, my participation involved sending German repro uniforms and Canadian battledress and equipment via courier to the film set in addition to answering many questions via email. They were a small production but spared no expense in - what I thought at the time - was a genuine desire to get the details right.
I was not all that surprised nor disappointed to see minor errors of uniform detail creep into the final product. It did strike me funny, though, that they had gone to some expense of both time and money to alter uniform parts to look completely wrong, when what I had sent them was correct for the impression they wanted to make. Apparently their research was working at cross purposes - German collar badges were being altered from one type to another with fabric paint, etc. Someone took the time and effort to make the correct patterns wrong - it was a conscious effort. People don't make conscious efforts to do something like that in an effort to save money. That's not economizing - and given your comments on "getting a life", I doubt it was to reel in extra viewers...