A Quote by Donald O'Connor

Doing those costume pictures was wonderful. — © Donald O'Connor
Doing those costume pictures was wonderful.
I've worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years, and we have this magnificent photographer, Tad Motoyama. He takes these wonderful, wonderful animal pictures. All through the years he's given me copies of these pictures. Well, I have all these gorgeous ones, so I said, 'Tad, I want to do a book with your picture on one side.'
Costume is always an asset. Normal costume you have a lot to say about - if you're wearing suits or ties, and what color you want, and how it's going to be cut, and stuff like that, and whether or not you're going to wear a hat, and blah, blah, blah. But, when you're wearing a special costume, and of course, costume is probably the second ingredient in character, script being first, I always find that the costume does a lot to cement your character, to put it firmly in mind.
I think it's most important to, rather than just do what everybody else is doing, like tons of selfies, find out what makes you excited. You know, is it taking pictures and doing cool makeup and making yourself look great? If so, wonderful. Is it music? Is it teaching something? Are you great at teaching?
Little wonder that we. . .find the old pictures of openness - pictures usually without any blur, and made by what seems a ritual of patience - wonderful. They restore to us knowledge of a place we seek but lose in the rush of our search. Though to enjoy even the pictures, much less the space itself, requires that we be still longer than is our custom.
Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them, those pictures are almost impossible to get.
I love what I am doing. I have a wonderful business. I have a wonderful television show that's doing - continues to do phenomenally in the ratings. I mean, it's been really a lot of fun.
What I was doing for those assignments wasn't always directly tied to what I was doing for myself, but it gave me the space to photograph. I started getting assignments that dealt with my own interests and made some pictures in that direction.
If you look at pop culture as the main picture you see of black men, all these kind of threatening pictures and - I think those of us who are artists and who are in media have to think carefully about what those pictures are.
I wouldn't mind doing those sinister roles again, but in pictures I will direct myself.
There's this thing that publishes pictures of people out and about. So when I go out, I do see pictures of myself. I don't know where those pictures come from - I mean, I don't see the cameras. But I guess I'm just not looking for them.
I design for the movie and the character as well as the person wearing the costume. I show the ideas to the actor, then do fittings for shape and technical things such as movement in the costume. Once the costume in this form is on the actor, you have a sense of their connection with it. I then take it to the next level with the final fit.
Family photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich and just as beautifully composed (what does that mean anyway).
I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn't think, 'Ooh I've got to avoid being typecast' - you can't ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors.
When I'm taking pictures I even forget that I have a camera. When I shoot I forget about everything. Light comes, death comes, people go in and out in costume - and it's like a play.
But actually making pictures to look like my pictures, I've done it for so long, I'm kind of used to it now. So at the beginning of the process, designing and storyboarding everything, I sort of did all that. And then designed the characters, and doing the textures for the characters, and the texture maps to cover all the animated characters and the sets, I did those, because that's where my sort of coloring and textures get imprinted on the film.
My mum was a costume designer and costume supervisor in the theater and, especially, the ballet. But that was before I was born.
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