Planning For Final Film: Costume Design

For our final preliminary task, we had to think about how/what the characters are going to wear and dress. The clothing is an important element of the film as it helps to reflects the characters and the personalities that they have and could foreshadow later happenings in the film which surpass the opening scene that we are going to construct.

How are your characters going to dress and how will this affect their representation?

The main character will dress in dark, bland, earthy colors as if to have the intention of drawing attention away from him.  The colours will shift towards khaki, moss green, navy blue and tan. Thus, hhighlighting the sense of him blending in to his surroundings and to avoid unwanted attention from others. The main character will follow a grunge- like appearance, possibly reflecting the dark mood or his imposition that he may/may not be carrying with him. Thus, helping to characterize and exemplify characters that are found in typical psychological thrillers.

The person who contributed to the kidnapping of his girlfriend will wear dark clothes, depicting him as being a shifty, deceitful, untrustworthy character. The character we have got inspiration from is Tate from American Horror Story, he is a character who is psychologically disturbed but hides behind this hides behind his gentle and kind personality. The clothes that he is wearing in both of these pictures helps to characterize and exemplify his personality as the top picture shows Tate as rather calm and relaxed but judging by the earthy colors that he is wearing, this could portray that he is having some dark thoughts about something or someone. The bottom picture shows Tate just before he goes on a mass-murder within his school, we can see that Tate is wearing a black coat and a black top, helping to portray his 'inner evil' and his 'dark side' that has came out to help him to wreak havoc amongst the school showing that he is a very psychologically disturbed person and the clothes help to portray Tate in this way.

How will this affect the way the audience engages with them?

The audience are given little information about the main character and therefore make assumptions based about how the costume design depicts the character. This creates an air of mystery and suspension surrounding the character which helps the audience to really try and engage with the character whilst wanting to watch on to unravel the mystery. This also helps the audience to feel a sense of anger towards the kidnapper and see him as someone to distrust as well as to feel a sense of empathy towards the main character to have his girlfriend so viciously taken away from him.