Costume

This is an interesting article that I found when researching effective costume design in film, it discusses the meaning and messages behind certain articles of clothing and their relation to the character wearing them. This will be useful when it comes to dressing my own characters.

http://clothesonfilm.com/how-to-read-costume-on-film/20146/

When thinking about how I would dress my characters in the teaser trailer I looked at films which have characters similiar to my own main character, as well as films with the same psychological theme.

I have looked at the attire of both male and female characters that are portrayed in film with a psychological disorder, the images I have found all have a similiar theme in clothing, which helps me greatly with how to dress my character.

The character of Nina in Black Swan is clearly portrayed as having a mental disorder, which has been viewed as a Dissociative disorder. This involves disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception. This will be similiar to my own main character in the teaser trailer, as she is going through circumstances which portray the disorder. In the film Nina's main colour themes are pink and grey, she often wheres clothes which cover all of her skin and cosume her, this could act as a protection against the world she does not know outside of ballet. The layers of clothes she wears could portray the layers of her personality, she becomes lost in herself and does recognise reality.

 

The character of Susanna in Girl, Interrupted suffers from a borderline personality disorder. She often defeminises herself through wearing quite masculine attire, involving jumpers and jeans. I have found that in quite a lot of the characters studied, dark clothes, mostly layered shirts and jumpers are worn. This may reflect their dark personality, wanting not to be noticed, or as a protection.

 

This wintery/layered attire is again shown in these two mentally unstable characters, I have found that the more sinister mentally ill characters such as Jack Torrence in The Shining wear colours such as red as a sign of danger or evil. As my character intends no harm on others I will dress her in these dark layered clothes, although the child that features in my piece will be dressed in red, to portray her as a warning or sinister character. In the beginning of the piece I want my character to be dressed almost entirely in white, to portray that she is being held in some kind of institution, this will change to a summery dress in the second scene. That scene will show the moments when the character leaves their previous sane self behind and takes her journey into darkness. I have chosen for her to wear a dress as she will have a lot of skin on show, showing her vulnerability and weakness. As the scenes progress the attire will become dark and layered, showing the character going into herself and letting go of reality.