Ringwraith Costume

Description: The moment I saw Lord of the Rings on the big screen I knew I had to have a wraith costume! Though I couldnt do the guantlets, the rest fo the costume came out rather well I think. This costume is an amazing example and one that I looked at while creating my own.

Size: Being only about 5'7" myself I needed a bit more hight, so the hood is built up with a cardboard form.

Materials: The black cloak is black cloth, face covering is sheer black cloth, belt is made out of the same material as the cloak, and gloves are store bought black leather gloves. The sword is a knockoff of the witchkings sword,. and before I get a hundred emails, yes I know thats the witchkings sword and this is a nazgul costume. It's a big stainless steel sword and its menacing no matter what shape it is!

Electronics: Since taking electronics in high school and college, I have collected numerous junk projects, none of which seemed useful at the time, but still got filed away for a rainy day or something. Digging through my stuff one day I came across a mini stereo amplifier I made in high school. This is a device that can be hooked up to a walkman or cd player through headphone jack, and amplify it quite an amazing amount through 2, 1 1/2" tweeters. This makes any sort of music sound like crap, but the high pitched shreek of a ringwraith sound beautifully unnatural and terrifying!

The Sound: The sound comes from an old walkman, through a stereo amplifier powered by a 9 volt battery, to 2, 1 1/2" speakers. I was lucky to have a cheap old walkman to use, because it has a lot of volume capabilities (newer walkmans often can't go loud enough to hurt your ears). This worked out great, but still wasn't enough to hurt the amplifier circut. The walkman was clipped to my belt, under the robe, and stung up to the circut and speakers, which were seated in custom pockets sewn into an old shirt. This was to put the speakers closer to the mouth of the wraith and try and make it seem more like it was coming from the beast. A button was also rigged to the walkman in a temporary fashion so that it wouldn't hurt the equipment. From the walkman, a wire was fed up my chest and down the sleeve to my palm with a springback pushbutton on the end. When pushed, this connected the batteries to the walkman, which was already in play mode. This alowed near hands free activation of the sound, except for me making a fist.

The hardest part of the whole costume was recording the ringwraith scream over and over on a tape. After little luck finding a digital version on the net, I turned to the movie I had on vhs. In the end the tape was made with a tape recorder hooked up to the tv, a lot of patience, and a ton of rewinding.

The Cloak: A simple cloak pattern was used to create the base of the outfit with tattered pieces draped over each shoulder. On top of my head, I had a curved piece of cardboard attatched to a headband lined with foam. This made me about 6-8 inches taller and also kept the sheer black piece of cloth back inside the hood close to my face. Although the cloak had a small hood already, which I put up over the cardboard rig on my head, there still needed to be more. A large "T" shaped piece of cloth, was drapped over my head with one tail hanging down my back, and the two arms hanging down each side of my head and down my chest. This can't be made out in the pictures very easily unfortunatly. If I were to make the costume again, I would make the black cloth more dirty and perhaps add more ratty strands of cloth. Many things were learned in this project and its very fun to wear!

More Fun: Rolling around one day on my roller blades, I realized it would be very scarey to have a floating wraith. Next time is used the costume I put on the roller blades. Unfortunatly you could see the wheels sticking out form under the costume, but it added yet another 3" of hight or so, and when a large black cloaked figure is gliding at you fast, the message comes across just fine!
GIVE ME THE RING, YA HAIRY MIDGET!

Perhaps next year I can get my hands on a replica witchking helmet.