Equipping fantasy "Movie Star"

[cyberpuppy2015]

I'm looking to equip a "movie star" type character ["Rita 'Hayworth' Dayton]; she has $6,000 to spend - at TL 3. "Fantasy" type millieu.

[Purple Haze]

I am having trouble picturing the media infrastructure necessary for a TL3 "movie star" even in a fantasy world. How are "movies" made? Distributed? Marketed? What are the tabloid equivalent? The gossip columns?

In the real world there were a few rich and famous TL2 professional athletes. But performing artists....

[Ulzgoroth]

Also, equipment for what? Nothing stated so far points to any needs beyond clothing befitting their (unspecified) status and basic personal items.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

I am having trouble picturing the media infrastructure necessary for a TL3 "movie star" even in a fantasy world. How are "movies" made? Distributed? Marketed? What are the tabloid equivalent? The gossip columns?

In the real world there were a few rich and famous TL2 professional athletes. But performing artists....

There is no reason there cannot be actresses. Theodora of Byzantium was an actress-or an "actress"-depending on which version you believe. There can also be female bards. Or any other type of entertainer. And these can be iterant.

[jason taylor]

Court Dress-whatever design and material is suitable for attending a palace.

For work, she would have the clothes appropriate to her character role.

She could be given fencing, by the way. Not because it is needed but because having her be a dualist as well as an entertainer is an interesting twist.

[Purple Haze]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

There is no reason there cannot be actresses. Theodora of Byzantium was an actress-or an "actress"-depending on which version you believe. There can also be female bards. Or any other type of entertainer. And these can be iterant.

No, Theodora was a lady's maid to an actress/prostitute. Had she been provably a prostitute herself there is no way Justinian would have been able to marry her. She was also retired, a Christian convert, and married before Justinian met her. She certainly was not known for her acting nor her beauty. She was a complete unknown before she became empress.

I can think of very few performers of any sort that became really famous before motion pictures. Perhaps Mozart, Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

No, Theodora was a lady's maid to an actress/prostitute. Had she been provably a prostitute herself there is no way Justinian would have been able to marry her. She was also retired, a Christian convert, and married before Justinian met her. She certainly was not known for her acting nor her beauty. She was a complete unknown before she became empress.

I can think of very few performers of any sort that became really famous before motion pictures. Perhaps Mozart, Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin.

Perhaps but those examples are enough to jiggle past suspension of disbelief.

Don't forget the guy who invented The Turk, what was his name?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

I can think of very few performers of any sort that became really famous before motion pictures. Perhaps Mozart, Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin.

Richard Burbage

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

I can think of very few performers of any sort that became really famous before motion pictures. Perhaps Mozart, Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin.

Mata Hari and Houdini were famous without being movie stars. I'm sure there were famous vaudeville stars too. Opera and ballet would've been the equivalent to movies in earlier times.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

I can think of very few performers of any sort that became really famous before motion pictures.

Jenny Lind, opera singer touring worldwide.

The medium seems less important to "fame" than mass communications and travel technology.

There were quite a lot of troubadours famous in the Middle Ages. Not household names today, no doubt -- but then, I doubt anyone's going to remember Tom Cruise or Scarlett Johansson six hundred years from now, either.

Culture also matters. If performing arts aren't respected and valued, then performers aren't likely to be famous enough to survive in written records, much less oral traditions of their legend. Then there's our modern bias when looking back. It's a lot easier to display works of medieval and Renaissance visual artists in a museum than it is to "display" a performing art from when there was no recording technology, or even a way to write down music or dance.