In the world of TV Production, Costuming is extremely important. For  Chicago Fire‘s Key Set Costumer, Laura Kaminski, it’s everything.

  The Set Costumer’s job is to make sure that the actors are in the right costumes at the right time and to work closely with the Costume Designer, to help make the vision of the Designer come to life. The job includes a lot of work and a lot of laundry, including the glamorous job of washing actors’ socks.

Kaminski’s first job in the costuming world was as a costume intern on The Weather Man, a Comedy-Drama film where a weather reporter is going through a midlife crisis.

Kaminski said she seems to work on a lot of these comedy films. The atmosphere of being on set is different each time, but she says mistakes and slip-ups are a whole different feel, “Not great…”. You have to tell someone they messed up, then deal with the issue.

 Kaminski has worked on other notable movies and shows such as Public Enemies, The Dark Knight,  Chicago Fire, The Playboy Club, and Paranormal Island. She said The Dark Knight, though she had a smaller role, was her favourite set to work on and was “pure movie magic. Big, explosive, just what an action movie needs to be.”  She was a costume assistant on the set, so she didn’t have a huge role in the set and wasn’t credited in the final cut.

One question costumers get all the time is “Are the actors nice?”. Kaminski said that she is very lucky to have nice actors. 

 Kaminski said she didn’t plan on going into costume or film at all.  She originally wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice, pilot, poet, or a judge, but got into the industry through” connections and good impressions.”.  Kaminski did get a pilot’s license for Hot Air Ballooning over a break. In Film, you get a break in-between seasons or whenever you have enough episodes to go for a few months.  This is something that had been on her bucket list, and she said that it was amazing, and “more work than I thought…”

 At the time of this interview, the IATSE Strike was almost in effect. The IATSE is a union that stands for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.  Kaminski said she fully supports it and said, “We have really long ,unreliable hours. Sometimes I’ll be up on Monday at 6:00 AM and then Friday up at 1:00 PM. We’re expected to work through all weather conditions, all hours of the day. We are considered below the line workers…”

Kaminski said she believes this issue needed to be brought to the forefront, and until the Union agrees with the Corporations, the strike will continue.