Research: Costume (Ms Heath)

Learning objective 

• Identify how costume is used to represent different characters.
• Evaluate how costume is used to create meaning and responses.

Purpose of Costume

Costume has a huge affect upon how someone see's a film and their judgement of other characters which are mainly judged from first expressions.

Costumes can also reflect the different tones in a movie for example,  a dark production theme scene will have dark coloured clothes unless there is a specific purpose of the bright colour costume in a scene as that.

Some costume are exaggerated to emphasize the silliness of the scene for example guys in clown suits playing poker.

Costumes & Different relationships

Some costumes create different relationships between characters or even group of characters. For example the scene below shows you 5 guys wearing a full suit of black which suggest there are the antagonist, attacking a man in a white shirt. This suggest the man in the white shirt is the protagonist as they are known to wear bright coloured clothing. In addition, the audience wouldn't expect to see 5 protagonist characters attacking one antagonist which makes it easier for them to identify who is who.

I'm Legend Costume  Analysis

The costumed used in these scene is casual clothing which suggest that Will Smith's character (Robert Neville) may have been caught up in some kind of war which leads to him fearing for his life which could be the reason why he is walking around with a gun.

The costume Robert Neville also tells us a little bit about where he lives. By the clothes he is wearing you can instantly tell he lives in modern day as he is wearing a black leather jacket, a grey casual t-shirt with matching trousers and shoes, and also a strap back which is normally used for those who are going to work or somewhere important e.g. interview.

Conclusion
Looking at all the different costumes and understanding how they represent the character has allowed me to pick out suitable costumes for the characters who are going to be in my thriller.