Costume and Props

For our three different characters we have contrasting fashion styles which allow us to explore all elements of the fashion world. Also there are different shots and locations that are meant to be based over a couple of days and so the character must have different clothes, this are the options we chose.
 

Grunge Costume(s):

For the grunge girl we want her to match stereotypical view of her by having the character on drugs. The character is also not from a privileged background so her clothes are all similar and she wears the same thing more often.

 The character will look casual and laid-back with either leggings or jeans and boots. The jeans and leggings are items that can have so many different looks with them giving the impression she has many different aspects of her.

 

For the top half the character would have different t-shirts that would match with her jeans or leggings and show a lot about her personality. The character would have shirts that showed what she liked. For example music shirts like Guns N Roses, Eminem etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Grunge Girl would also wear a parka coat that would represent the cold weather of London as well as her fashion sense. It s a popular style of coat as well as very similar to the character. The character would have all these different items to make her completed 'Grunge' Look.

Skater Boy Costume(s):

With the male character, who will be dressed in a skater boy fashion style we want him to be a character who is friendly and easy to get along with as he is the character who's going to be the one who unites the others to become friends / team and to work together. The way he's dressed is going to be casual, laidback and calm showing him to be chilled out and not to worry to much, with this all in mind we looked in to what the characters costume would be like.

The male character would wear jeans to complement his looks and look fashionable. The blue jeans are casual and laidback which is desired for our characterisation.

The male character would wear jackets and coats to represent the cold London weather. This would range from a Red varsity jacket to a blue parka coat they are both  fashionable and stand out. His shoes will be practical trainers that are bright and fashionable for our film trailer.

The Girly Girl (s) :

For our film trailer we want our three characters contrasting in there different fashion styles and as we had two girls we wanted one to be a dark grunge style where the other to be girly girl. The Girly Girl would be in bright colours, cute skirts and fashionable outfits which would represent her character, personality and her social class. This character would be of a higher social class as she comes from a better more privileged background.

 

 

 

 

 

The character would wear a skater skirt which can be seen in the picture above as its fashionable, cute and also goes with a range of different fashion styles; like shirts, jumpers and blouses which show her girly style.

 

The character will wear a bright pink jumper to show her personality as being bright, caring and bubbly as she is sweet when defending other characters as well as being vocal and opinionated on events of the trailers. The character would also wear a jumper similar to the one on the left but with a brighter colour that gathers the attention of the audience and shows that she is fashionable.

Make Up

For the girls make up we need to shows a contrast in the way they look so we wanted to try different things out for there make up. I first needed to research in to the different styles I could use that would fit the characters and the actors would be complemented too.

Grunge Make Up Research:

From this research I discovered that the grunge girl is a darker side of make up. The style focuses on dark eye make up and lipstick. From purple, red and dark pink shades of lipsticks to dark Smokey eyes with eyeliner and mascara to emphasis the eyes and lips. Other than this two elements the make up is simple with just foundation and a slight bronzer.

With the girly girl we wanted to use natural make up to promote her fashion style and personality. When researching in to the make up I found it was a lot of the same materials. It include foundation, a bit of blush on the cheeks with natural nude colours for eye shadow finished with mascara and naturally coloured lips. This look was easy to create for our actor, Jessica Henderson.

To get even more knowledge on the make up that I wanted to use I looked into online make up tutorial that I could take inspiration from.






After this tutorials I went and had a go myself with help from a friend.

The make up was successful so we decided to use the make up as we had done as it represents the two contrasting characters nicely. 

Character Profiles

Character and Actors Profile's:

Name: Jessica Henderson

Age: 17

Occupation: Theatre Student

Character: Girly Girl

Name: Arianna

Name: Liam Sydall

Age: 21

Occupation: Part Time

Character: Skater Boy

Name: Alec

Name: Harriett Sydall

Age: 18

Occupation: Theatre Student

Character: Grunge

Name: Dom (Dominique)

The characters are all contrasting in their fashion, backgrounds and the decisions they make when given the money. We want to represent this contrast in our film trailer as we want the audience to be able to relatable to the characters. I made one individual video representing the characters and what they all may do with the money.

Arianna: Is the girly girl who with her amount of the money would go to spend it on clothes and just shop it all away.



Alec  is the boy who uses his part of the money to but a nice car like a Lamborghini and also on prostitutes to have fun.



Dom: is the one who gets uses her money to buy drugs, alcohol and party to forgot everything else.

Talent Sourcing

For our characters we needed one boy within our trailer so we auditioned 3 different actors for the skater boy character. They all auditioned separately as well as in a group with the other girl actresses as that would be who they were acting behind.

For the two protagonist actresses we had a choice of three girls; Charlotte Spicer, Harriett Sydall and Jessica Henderson each one of these girls is a theatre student and all have the ability to perform well under pressure, any character and with anyone. The girls all auditioned for us by performing improvisations together, separately and scripts.



They all were very talented and appropriate for the film trailer, we tried Harriett and Jessica together playing the different contrasting characters and they worked well with each other and made a good contrast.

We then decided that these two girls would work effectively well together as they have worked together before, there both talented actresses and can both convincingly play the two contrasting characters go grange and Girly Girl. 

Character Research Results

I wanted to receive feedback on the mood boards and the different character options. I asked people to choose their favourite male or female style and which styles either contrast each other or fit together well. The results were interesting and are listed below.

The most popular girl style was Grunge but both Boho and Girly Girl came back as being the same amount of votes so we have decided as we want two girl characters that contrast each other we would have one girl that is Grunge and the other who is girly girl and boho inspired. The audience felt that those two styles would contrast each other and conveys different backgrounds, stories and personalities which is huge aspect of our film trailer.

With the boys styles the results were much clearer, skater boy won by a landslide as people said they preferred it as it was more laid back and casual. They also stated they felt that the skater boy could fit with either girl style as its similar to the grunge girl and even though it contrasts the girly girl it can also fit with it as its so different.

The results of the character investigation have allowed us to see that the characters we will be using within our piece will be a skater inspired boy, a girly girl/boho character and a grunge girl. The styles contrast each other but also hold similarities leaving a lot to be implied by the characters intentions, decisions and the pivotal plot as to what they'll individually do with the money.

Girl Costume Moodboards

For our trailer we wanted three different contrasting characters and I brainstormed different ideas and investigated the target audience as well as codes and convention of characters. I then made a collection of different mood boards to give us a clear insight in to our character options.

Mood board of a boho chic style:

The boho style takes hippy, vintage and Aztec fashion inspiration to create a chic style that gives an impression of a someone who takes pride and time in their appearance but wants to convey that they have a relaxed attitude.

This is a mood board on a girly girl character:

This girly style has different patterns, styles and colours which portray the characters feminine, delicateness and consciousness to impress people. The style is very friendly and approachable giving the impression the person is popular. Most people associated with this style are conventional girls that take fashion as a high priority.

This mood board is on a grunge styled girl:

This grunge styles implies rebelliousness, individuality and confidence. The character is not conforming to society but being themselves showing self assurance. There keen to experiment with different styles, accessories and patterns to show there bold confidence as it shows they are sure of there character and personality and do not need to have other peoples improvement or acceptance.

With this three styles taken in to consideration I made a brief video to show more styles as well as the music element.

Boy Costume Moodboards

We want to have a boy character within our trailer so I explored different styles of boy's that we could include or have to see what would look better with our chosen girl characters and would fit our idea.

A Skater Boy:

This style is very relaxed with jeans and tops being the main aspect it gives the impression the character is easy going and likes to be comfortable with themselves. The style also hints at tattoos, smoking and drinking like in some of the pictures leaving us to be able to explore a wide range of characterisations.

The 'Swag' Moodboard:

This style is a lot more experimental and conveys a vain aspect to the characters as they care about the way they look and impressing people as they take different styles, colours and materials and try to coordinate the outfits to stand out and grab people's attention to them. It shows them as confident and bold as this style is always developing and changing.

The Preppy Style:

This style is different from the other styles as it uses different materials, colours and styles as it wants to imply they are clever and smart. It is a smarter look and shows a sense of pride in dressing well and showing people there interest in looking intelligent and standing out.

Music Video Inspiration

The music video 'I Knew You Were Trouble' by Taylor Swift gives a good insight to one of the the characters we want to portray in our film trailer as the grunge style is also a element of the music video. The character in the music video is represented as misunderstood, confident and bold. 

This music video shows a vulnerable naïve girl trying her best to appear strong, independent and confident. She is conforming to the people around her and what she thinks will keep them around.

As the music video progresses she talks about losing herself  because of her experience with him. The character gave up a lot for him by becoming someone else to impress him. This is something we could explore with in our characterisation as she is so desperate to please people she forgets about who she is. This character is seen as having her innocence taken away and she believes that he's perfect for her but in fact he's just trouble and a bad influence.

The style the character is dressed up in shows an
element of grunge as she's in dark clothes with heavy makeup and pink hair but in earlier shots of her we see her as more feminine, girly and cute. 

The characters emotional development is shown as getting worse as it proceeds as she has lost her confidence and how she's developed into something she's not. It implies that the girl at the end is just a character to hide who she truly is, in case of rejection. The character is conforming to attract the guy and shows how she needs to feel like she belongs somewhere to be able to feel comfortable.



The music video also implies there's an element to him that made her 'lose' herself. This can be interpreted as drug and alcohol taken that he has influenced her to do. The music video shows they go to a bar and a party which is both a place where this are expected so it shows how she's blinded by him to do stuff she wouldn't have done.

 

 The video represents vulnerability, naivety and lose of innocence . The video is summed up in the monologue which concludes the effect it had on her:

'I guess I just lost my balance. I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him, it was losing me.'

Music Video Inspiration

For another character option we looked in to other music videos that were different from the other one. 22 came across as a more feminine girl that could be a good character as she could contrast the Grunge character.

 

I researched and found the same artist, Taylor Swift, who portrays an entirely different character, style and concept in this fun, girl and carefree video contrasting brilliantly against the other video. 

In the music video Taylor  is seen as spending a lot of time with her friends and mucking about, dancing, singing and playing with them. The character is seen as carefree and loves spending more time with her friends than boys and just likes to forget everything and just mess about and have fun.

 

The character's outfits are a lot more colourful, fun and friendly as there's splashes of yellow, green, blue and bright patterns. Her makeup is very natural except the bright red lipstick she wears earlier on which is know to be a very sexy feminine colour to wear. This all portrays the character to be very soft caring and ladylike as she's delicate in all her colourful girly patterns and clothes.



 Some shots portray the character as carefree which connects with the grunge character as there both trying to convey to friends, family or acquaintances that there not bothered by anything and there strong, independent and just want to
have fun.

  

The character is lively, bubbly and always seeming to have a good time. Taylor portrays a girl who is well of as she lives in a big house with a pool and massive garden. This parades wealth and materialistic items and the character is seen with different nice clothes, accessories and items that contrast the grunge character who had a minimal amount of stuff and was confided to a small dark places.

The music video inspires a girly girl character who is fun, friendly, bright and carefree who's well off and portrays that's she's problem free and having fun is her priority.

This character also has some elements that connect the two contrasting characters as they both seem to give an attitude of not caring or bothering about what other people think but behind the whole façade there both insecure in some ways and use this 'carefree' attitude to hide behind.

 

This allows us to explore that our two characters may come from different backgrounds but they still share some similarities if that be attitude, insecurities or sense of humour we can explore all this different aspects within our film trailer. There similarities could also lead them to becoming close and connecting eventually.

Here's the music video that I got the gifs and character inspiration from:

Music Video Inspiration

For our other character we have looked at different music videos that have a different style, story and character that contrast each other. After looking at the girls we wanted to find a boy story that complemented as well as contrasting the girls.

Justin Bieber's 'As Long as You Love Me' music video portrays that kind of character and a captivating story which resembles crime, love and coming of age all elements we wish to include.

The character portrayed in the music video is a young teenage boy who is in love with a girl who makes thinks dangerous for him. This character is seen as strong and sure of what he wants and that he'll do anything to get it.

The character clothes are casual yet fashionable. The character wears jeans, shirts and trainers giving a laidback attitude but he's clothes and jewellery show a vain element as he's trying to appear flash showing that he has money and does care about the way he looks.

 The stand of between the two at the beginning show the young character to show his stubbornness about the situation. This leads us to believe he's not really understanding of how dangerous it is and is focusing on what he imagines in his head for the future. This is a characteristic that we could explore as the character neglects the facts and focuses on what he wants and won't stop till he gets it.

The character shows all different aspects of his personality; we see him as kind, gentle, loving but also strong and stubborn. The characterisation is a gritty portrayal of a boy and he's tragic forbidden love story that's a well loved aspect of romance to watch in films/music videos.

The two characters don't fit together as she's an innocent, pretty and sweet girl but has a very overprotective father where as he is seen to be seeking danger to keep the romance alive and would sacrifice anything for her. This sees the character mature and start to take responsibility and decisions for himself and seems him develop in to a man.

The presence of well know actor Michel Marsden portraying an over protective father gives the music video a crime element. Near the end the character gets brutally beaten and left bruised and  alone. The crime and violent aspect is something we could include in our film trailer.



This is the music video we took inspiration and gifs from: Justin Bieber As Long as you Love Me