Male and Female costume ideas

We want our character to wear natural, realistic clothing as this will enable her to be more relatable, and believable to audiences. The clothing our character wears must also be appropriate to her lifestyle, as a characters costume can portray a lot about them. The costume tells the audience of the characters class, upbringing, personality, emotions etc so I researched other characters from other films costume in order to analyse whether I felt the costume was effective, helping me when choosing our own characters costume.



Mia from the film 'Fish Tank', her costume is effective because it clearly represents her personality, it tells us a lot about her class and upbringing, and suggests hobbies she might undertake.



Liam from the film 'Sweet sixteen', this costume is also effective, as it tells us much as before.



Cecilia from the film 'Atonement', much like the first two a lot can be told about this character through her costume, in this case particularly class and upbringing.

Our character comes from a middle class, working family. She attends an ordinary secondary school, lives in a three bedroom house and as the audience discovers has been raised by dysfunctional, abusive parents although it is not obvious to the outside world. Therefore our character should wear average clothing, jeans and a simple tee-shirt in order to look as realistic, and believable as possible. We will need to consider colour, or in our characters case lack of it. As our character has low self-esteem and is constantly abused and mis-treated the colour palate for her costume should be bland, simple colours that are not cliche, and will allow our character to blend into everyday life, which is exactly what she wants.


                     Male                                                         

Female

These costumes do not represent the colours or styles we may use, but are just an example of the ordinary clothing our character will wear.

Inspiration for change 'Natural Born Killers'

A film that has greatly inspired the changes made to our own is Oliver Stones 'Natural born killers', which follows the lives of two lovers, who after traumatised childhoods become pyschopathic killers glamorised by the media. The film experiments with colour and realism, often using comedy in scenes that depict murder and torture. I found it interesting reading the reasoning why behind some of the most interesting and diverse scenes, below is the stated reasoning behind some of my personal favourite scenes that have greatly inspired me to be more adventerous.
Murder of Mallorys father: The killing of Mallory's father was staged as a TV cartoon fight, complete with cartoon-esque music and sound effects, in an effort to trivialize the violence as a satirical commentary on how we have become so inured to violence, we accept it as mere frivolous entertainment.
Lost in the desert: The use of dirty black and white film stock was because Stone "wanted to make the desert strange and claustrophobic. Instead of wide open, it's small and grainy and claustrophobic."
Light changes during interview: "It creates a concept that consciousness comes and goes and flows, like circular, like moonlight, as opposed to literal."
Motel scene: Whilst Mickey and Mallory switch channels on their TV, a massive image is projected onto the sky outside their window, and it too seems to be switching channels. This was done as a commentary upon how the entire century was violent, but Mickey and Mallory are being distracted by the artificial violence on the TV and they don't see the real horrors going on outside. "Outside the window of the motel room is a panorama of 20th century violence. On the TV, there's personal violence, my own movies, Midnight express, Scarface. Outside, there's Stalin, Hitler, Vietnam, trees being destroyed; the whole century is violent, and in a sense, it is the chain of violence which kicks off their madness. But they're watching Hollywood movies and they don't see what's outside."

I struggled to find extracts that enabled me to embed the clips apart from the opening to the film, so I have added links to scenes I found interesting from youtube and taken screen shots of moments I thought were effective and inspiring.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slwpt4gtCNg - Mickey and Mallorys unconventional marriage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed0Y3D2F-ow 'I love Mallory' dinner scene

I find the red tint used in the beginning very effective.

I like the canted angle used here, and the way the images shown on Mickey and Mallorys television are being projected onto the window.

Much like the first image, I like the use of colour within this scene.

Idea change

As a group we have decided to change stylistic features of our film, as we have decided to use stop motion photographs of the character between the silhouette sequences. We want to create a surreal, dream like effect so we are planning to experiment with colour on the photos, making them unrealistic using red tints etc to depict the uncertainty and unpredictabilty of her life. We also hope to experiment with different camera angles, often using canted to portray her lack of stability.
We plan to be more adventerous and visually interesting throughout our short film and create something different to what we have previously. I feel that this idea change will greatly benefit our group in developing new skills, as its unlike anything we have attempted before.

Issues raised whilst filming

Whilst filming we have had a number of issues arrise that have affected the progression of our short film. I have decided to write about the difficulties and ways in which I will avoid them next time and prevent them from occuring again.
Loosing our fotage -
The first time we shot fotage, it was then recorded over with sound meaning a complete re-shoot of our entire film. To prevent this next time we will ensure that when we begin recording sound, it is a new point of the tape and not overwritting previous fotage. We could also use a seperate tape, one for fotage and one for sound to ensure nothing is lost.

Filming fotage that is not of high enough quality -
We filmed fotage that on the camera appeared to be satisfactory, yet when uploaded and able to view it larger we could see the fotage was not our best work, and was usable. Next time we could try uploading the fotage to the computer on location, to check its quality and thoroughly watch what we have filmed carefully. Then we can simply delete it and start again whilst being on location, which will save valuable time.

Fotage was not compatible with editing software -
After filming and trying to upload our fotage, we discovered it was not compatible with the editing software, and would not convert dispite numerous attempts. One thing we could do to prevent this from happening again is to ensure we check that the camera/tape we are using will upload, possibly by shooting some mock fotage and testing it. We could also check with the appropriate people that our fotage will definately upload before shooting.

Location unavailable -
We scheduled a date for filming but unfortunately were unable to due to the location being used (as its set in a house). I will ensure that we plan in advance our scheduled filming times, with back-up dates so that should this problem arrise again we have the next suitable date ready.

Illness within group -
The circumstance was the same as before, and the resolution will be much the same in that planning in advance with back-up dates will ensure that our filming is not massively delayed.

Silhouette idea

As a group we have thought of a completely new idea, to instead of listen to the character through the webcam the audience sees her through silhouettes we will project, keeping her identity hidden. I feel this is a much more effective approach, as through maintaining confidentiality of the character it creates a sense of deep secrecy and shame. The fact that the characters indentity remains anonymous not only allows the audience to focus on her tale, but also could depict the fact that despite what her family have done to her, she wishes no harm to them.

Originally we were going to project our silhouette onto the brown bedroom wall, but after finding the camera had difficulties focusing we decided instead to use our school cinema screen, which projects a much crisper, striking silhouette.

 

As you can see from the images using the blue cinema background allows the audience to see certain features of the character, which works emotionally because it reminds them that this is a fragile young girl. We want the audience to be able to see delicate details of the character, such as her eyelashes through the silhouette, as this emphasises and represents her femininity and therefore creates a sense of vulnerability and helplessness.

Possible film names

When choosing a film name we wanted something that would reflect the emotions and actions of the film, but not in an incredibly obvious way. As a group we discussed several ideas which I have then put into a spider diagram.
We are planning to seek extra opinions and ask which name they prefer and why, the results of which I will post later.

Storyboard 2

TO BE FINNISHED