An aspiring amateur can start off as an amateur, even as he dreams of being a mogul, and that would, by definition, make him a mogul.
Huh? Are you really saying that just by dreaming of being something by definition that makes you that something? History has proven and continues to prove that the odds of an aspiring amateur filmmaker becoming a mogul are astronomically small. This is largely because amateur filmmaking and commercial filmmaking are two different endeavours and a Mogul is someone who excels at the latter. It's logical therefore to study and practise a commercial approach to filmmaking rather than an amateur approach, which is effectively just relying on a miracle and dreaming of being a mogul rather than actually aspiring to be one.
The local department store sells suits for $500.
That's what I thought, you've just plucked a figure out of the air!
... that's the nature of intellectual discourse. I give you my thoughts, you counter, and I take your thoughts to come up with a better idea.
Agreed, that would/could be the nature of intellectual discourse. Unfortunately though, this is NOT what you're doing! What's actually happening is that you ask a question about what something costs, we counter with the fact that there are a number of filmmaking factors to take into consideration which can result in the cost being anywhere from almost nothing to some astronomical amount. You then completely ignore what we've said (IE. You do not "take our thoughts and come up with a better idea"), instead you come up with a figure/cost which does not take any of the filmmaking factors into consideration and therefore, as far as filmmaking is concerned, is just a number plucked out of the air!
Good idea, but, before I did that, I wanted to know what the others in this forum thought.
What "others in this forum" think is that many, if not all the filmmaking departments/areas can cost anywhere from almost zero to millions. There is no simple (or even not so simple) formula for working out where on this almost limitless scale any specific department in your specific film should be placed ... if there were, we'd all be moguls! What us "others in this forum" think or at least the more experienced of us think is that you need to consult (formally or informally) experienced professional department specialists (in this case a professional costume designer), gain knowledge/experience of how professional producers arrive at a financial framework within which an appropriate level of costume design can be accomplished and conversely, how to avoid the inappropriate financial frameworks of unsuccessful producers and then put all this together and come up with a financial framework appropriate for your specific film and your specific aims for it.
You appear to have a dream of creating a specific film/project AND you apparently aspire to being a mogul. Your problem, which you don't appear to fully appreciate, is how to reconcile these two desires. The easy (or rather; quicker and easier) road to accomplishing your first desire is a road which is almost guaranteed to lead you away from your second desire!
G
