L.A.-based Margot Rada, a multidisciplinary artist and sculptor in Local 755, works in foam and soft sculpture as well as costume and tech fabrication. Pivoting between fine art, touring entertainment, film and broadcast, as well as commercial production, and design, her clients include Coach, J Balvin, Saweetie, Melanie Martinez, and Muse; as well as television and film productions with HBO, Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and Sony. She was brought onto the team of Lil Nas X’s Long Live Montero tour to design and fabricate an ultra-lightweight two-person horse costume—covered in gold leather from Coach—with articulating legs, head, and neck. Rada graciously took some time to explain her work on this beautiful and unique touring piece.
Tell us a bit about how the horse is fabricated; what’s it made out of, and how does it work?
It is made of aluminum, ABS plastics, and covered in Coach gold leather. It has operable color-changing lights for the eyes that are remote controlled. It is designed for two people to wear and operate it. The head tilts, the neck nods, and the head pivots left to right. That is operable by the rider. The legs are operable from inside by the two people who wear the costume.
What were some of the key challenges or requirements of the horse?
For the construction, we needed to construct a very specific sized costume, but there were several different people who were cast for this job, and who they were changed over time. That posed a huge challenge; a moving target, so to speak, when trying to dial in the right pulley system and the length and all of these really fine adjustments that were needed for the two dancers/operators inside the costume. Also, I think time was a little bit of a challenge. Producing a prototype for them to use while we took as many notes as we could and then to construct the final product in such a tight turnaround was very fun but also a challenge. It took us a month and a half to complete it. I wish I’d had double the time, but we pulled it off, and I am pleased with the result.
Speaking to another prop/costume fabricator what would you tell them about this project?
I suppose that creating something so custom in such a short amount of time and making it be able to do several different things is a serious challenge. With all the movement, the head, the neck, the legs. There really are a number of moving parts that went into this product and to now see it touring successfully is actually really exciting; that’s for sure.
Have you ever built anything like this before?
No, nothing like this. I’m a union sculptor and I work in film and TV. I do have my studio, so I do work on all different things; I’ll do carving, I’ll do armature building. I’ve made many props before, but nothing this intricate. I really loved the process on this, all the problem solving that went into it. I would happily do it again. I had a good team of help and good guidance and a lot of support from the clients. It all came together.
Where did you start? Tell us about your research for this horse.
I did research, looking into and discovering, all that went behind other horse constructions, specifically ones used as costumes. What was really useful from my research for my design was to see Lady Gaga’s version of this type of horse. She had ridden on a two-person horse costume for a red-carpet event back in 2013. So, I kind of dissected the construction of that a bit as I was figuring this one out. Hers was closer to what I was doing for this project. The War Horse horses were three- or four-person horses, and the way that they moved, the way that they were constructed, was a bit different than what we wanted for this iteration. Yes, the Lady Gaga horse is what we were more inspired by. You know, I found the history of horse costumes overall fascinating, and it is cool that now this golden horse, which is yet another different iteration, will be added to that history.
How was working with Lil Nas and his team on this?
It was a fun adventure; his touring team was very enthusiastic about this piece. This is his first tour and there’s a lot of ambition that goes into the first tour. They wanted to have this kind of incredible spectacle. I appreciate how ambitious it was, and it was really great to work with Hodo [Musa], the Creative Director. I’m always excited to see females in creative director roles, seeing their vision and helping bring that to life for this was fun. It was a really great process, and I was excited to see how well received the tour was; so yes, it was great working on this tour.
Learn more about Rada’s work at https://margotrada.com
