Halloween 2003: The Matrix

Well, Dani had the right look, the short black hair and all.  Now we needed costumes.

Of course, even though they were available on eBay, really authentic costumes were fairly expensive.  Having a girlfriend who knows how to sew meant that Dani and I ended up at a fabric store.  As it turned out, they also had patterns for "knock-offs" of the costumes in the movie.  And I was able to pick up these for a fraction of the fabric store's price by searching for them on eBay.

The original plan was to make Neo's priest shirt for me and Trinity's pants, long jacket, and bustier for Dani.  Ultimately, we ended up finding a dead-on replica of Trin's jacket at Hot Topic in the mall (they had a lame but expensive version of Neo's outfit as well, but we passed on it).

Neo's Costume "Priest" outfit:  Made from the pattern by Dani and her mom (Thanks, guys!).  The material was purchased from the neighborhood fabric store. Pants:  Something from my closet.  It isn't like you can really see them anyway. Shoes:  From a discount shoe store.  None of the dress shoes I had already were "thick" enough to match the ones in the film. Glasses:  From Wal-mart.  This style was already being imitated by discount brands. Sorry about the picture quality.  Dani didn't get around to developing the (film) pictures for a full 12 months after the fact after losing the roll at her brother's house in Mass. in the interim.

Trinity's Costume Jacket:  As stated above, found at Hot Topic. Pants:  Something from Dani's closet. Boots:  Also from a discount shoe place.  To date, I think this was the only time Dani ever wore them.  She only has three dozen other pairs of shoes. Glasses:  I had trouble finding these ovoid glasses until I found a guy selling Matrix replica glasses on eBay for ~$6 a pair.  I already had Neo's at the time. Guns:  Found at a dollar store and spray painted black, which worked much better than I had expected.  Ironically, we didn't risk carrying them with us when we went out. Gloves:  Damn it!  We never could find a cheap pair before Halloween.  There were lots of shiny lycra ones around, but none that were glossy enough to match the jacket.

Below are a few pics that I put together in Photoshop to mimic the movie posters.  In the first one (the faces), here are the elements:

• I pulled the code from a pair of fan-made desktop wallpapers.  The code at the bottom that looks like it is scrolling upward was actually inverted from one of the wallpapers.

• The "Enter the Matrix" font was one that was all over the web at the time.

• The "10.31" font was one found elsewhere on the web.  This was the best emulation I could find of the font used to indicate the date of the film's release (though not featured in the originals shown below).

• The color alterations were accomplished with some very amateurish fiddling with color levels.

• I never got around to the reflections in the sunglasses or creating the glow behind the characters since I didn't know a cheap and easy way to do this at the time.

and...
 

and finally...
 

Happy Halloween!

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