HIMYIM...in the 1960's

This summer I finally watched How I Met Your Mother (and in a span of 3 weeks). And let me tell you, it was one hell of an emotional roller coaster. It is set in Manhattan in both present day, and many years in the future when Ted Moseby is talking to his kids about how he met their mother. The show has everything from comedy to drama, and keeps you entertained every second of the episode. HIMYM has six main characters: Ted Moseby, a single architect looking for his soulmate; Marshall Erikson, an aspiring lawyer from Minnesota; Lily Aldrin, a kindergarten teacher and aspiring artist; Robin Scherbatsky, a career oriented journalist who Ted is in love with, and Barney Stinson, an extreme playboy who has a mysterious position at a bank. All of them always hang out at this bar named McClaren's, a sort of similar situation to Friends' Central Perk cafe.

So when it came to choosing a show to set in a different time period for my Production Design Independent Study project, my first thought was OH LORDY I NEED TO DO THIS ON HOW I MET YOU MOTHER. The professor running my study also thought it was a good idea, and told me to run with it. After much deliberation between different time periods (including the 1970's, 1990's, and even the ~future~) I decided to go with the 1960's, because it was a very prominent decade in terms of social issues, pop culture, in addition to the very distinct design style.

Part of the project is to take two characters and design their houses/costumes in that time period. To do so, I'll have to print out a script from an episode and do a character breakdown based on that. This will take the form of a COW sheet (what the characters say, what others say, what the writers say). My plan is to redesign Robin & Barney as characters from 60's, including their costumes and rooms. This will be especially cool since Robin is a reporter, so I can base a lot of her style off of reporters from the 60's (i.e. Jessica Savitch). Then Barney will be one of those high up business moguls (I am particularly excited to design his room because he always has the latest gadgets).

For period piece research, I will be using old Life magazines (on file on googlebooks) in addition to other periodicals that are at the Ithaca College Library! The library also has various large books telling of the cultural events of the 60's, which I will definitely be delving into.

I am super amped to get started on this project because I think it will be very enriching experience, in addition to building a hella cool portfolio of my own designs.