Priest Collar

For my practical this week I attempted to create a Priest's collar ahead of filming on the weekend. After doing some research I attempted making the collar. In our opening we wanted a Priest to set up to camera and then start reading scripture or something similar, so we have to think about costume and what is the best way to get it across to the audience who the character is.

I watched this tutorial by a real priest to see if he had any tips on making temporary collars out of paper:

I tried his method:

I started with an a3 sheet of paper and folded into several times until it was about 1.5 inches wide and completely flattened it so it would be quite thin. I bent it a bit so when it was put round the neck it would be a smooth circle and not have creases. Then I stuck down the sides with sellotape as the priest instructs, and apply tape to one end so I can wrap it around my neck:

At this stage the collar doesn't look very convincing and is too big for my neck.

Evaluation: 

After putting a shirt over the top, the collar looks a lot better and more realistic. Obviously, in the real thing the priest character will be wearing an opaque black shirt so hopefully the collar will look quite good. The handy thing is, that with low-key lighting and hardly any time actually focused on the collar, it should look quite authentic in our final piece.

I also looked online for existing priest collars that we could consider purchasing, for example, I saw these on eBay which could help the costume look more realistic:

However, I think the homemade one will suffice as it would be a waste of money to spend £5 on a collar when we can easily replicate it with a piece of paper, especially as it will hardly be seen during our film.