Research into Costume, Hair and Make-up - Pre-Production Planning - Sam Swinson

Research into Costume, Hair and Make-up - Pre-Production Planning - Sam Swinson

Costume, Hair and Makeup are all key aspects of mise en scene and they can help develop a piece. Additionally, they can tell the audience certain things about the character and about the mood and atmosphere. To make sure that we can use each of these effectively we need to do research into all the aspects and see the different effects they can have.

Costume:

The costume is key because it can represent a lot about a character including; class and mind state. I have done some research into costume for the protagonist and have selected items of the costume that would fit parts of the short film very well.

• Light coloured costume:
• within the piece, we are going to use the colour of the protagonist's costume to represent his mood and the feeling of the overall piece at that point in the story.
• At the start of the film in the first scene, the protagonist is going to be wearing lightly coloured costume to represent that he is happy because he is with his friend.
• For this, I have obtained light blue trousers and a white t-shirt. These are both considered to be casual clothing and most of the target audience may wear clothing similar to this because white is a popular t-shirt colour amongst young adults.

• Dark coloured costume:
• after the protagonist finds out that his friend has been killed he then becomes very sad.
• therefore, from then on we are going to have the protagonist wear a dark coloured costume because black clothing is often worn by people who are upset or morning. 
• This is considered to be a visual code for sadness because not all people that wear dark clothing are sad or upset, however, we are going to use this to better represent the sadness of the protagonist.
• For this, I have obtained a dark coloured hoodie because hoodies are often used by members of the target audience, also, I have black coloured jeans and a black t-shirt.

• Mix of Dark and Light Costume:
• For the scene where the protagonist goes to meet the person, he has been talking to on Facebook. 
• He is going to wear a mix of both light and dark coloured costume.
• For this, he is going to wear the black trousers and the white t-shirt.
• This is because at the start of the scene the protagonist is very happy, but, by the end of the scene he is very sad.

Hair:

Hair is another important part of how a character looks. In our short film, we are going to have the protagonist has a side style hairstyle. The reason for this is because it is a common hair style for young adult men. This means that if the protagonist has a hair style like it then it will represent that he is the generic kind of person who it styling to fit in with what everyone else is doing.

Make-up:

After a group discussion, we have decided that no make-up will be needed for the short film because there is no need to drastically change the appearance of any of the character. If we were showing one of the characters committing suicide then we would need make-up to make the death seem real.