Planning - Costumes

 Introduction 

Hello and welcome back to my blog. Today we will be planning what costumes will be used in our film opening so we will be looking into the outfits of our main characters: Emily ( young and present version ), Laura the coach, and Veronica the mother. Costumes and props are very important to how the audience understands visuals and characters and though me and my partner don’t plan on using many props, we do have a specific vision of what we want each character to portray so lets get into it.

Emilys Costume

This character will actually have two separate outfits instead of one because we want to create a contrast in emotion with young Emily from the first scene and older Emily from the second scene. This contrast in emotion will be chosen through clothes and movements.

We want younger Emily to feel more happy, free, and child like then the present her so we will show this main difference between the two through clothing and hair, makeup will remain very similar because while it may be acceptable for older Emily to wear some makeup, it will be very light and natural since wearing lots of makeup in a setting where you will physically exert yourself and sweat isn’t ideal. Younger Emily on the other hand will wear no makeup at all because she is a very young girl.

Here we have two picture examples of the light and natural makeup of teen Emily and we have two pictures of young Emily as well.

  

As for her hair, we want younger Emily to have a looser hair style while teen Emily will be tighter to signify the change in pressure that is being put on Emily and how she felt more free as a younger child. Some hair styles that can show this are a loose ponytail vs a slicked back bun since either way her hair must be up to not effect her performance in the sport. We could also show a looser maybe messy bun with colorful accessories like glitter or colorful hair ties or bows to show her freedom and joy while teen Emily will just have a slick back bun with nothing special so maybe just a black hair tie to show that she has lost some of that joy/spark. Below are some examples of this.

                                       

Older Emily may also have short nails with polish while younger Emily will not due to age like makeup but most important is their leotards, younger Emily will wear colorful clothes to show her child like sense of wonder while older Emily will wear a plain dark blue leotard to signify her seriousness and loneliness, this will be a reflection of how she feels. The dark blue and her tight bun will also both signify control since that is a critical skill in gymnastics and something that though Emily is Troy to control, it is slipping from her grasp which will be the main challenge for her to overcome in the film if we were creating more than just a film opening. This creates a drastic change from scene one to scene two since opposite emotions are being shown through costume and this concludes Emily character in own film opening.

Lauras Costume 

Laura will be Emilys personal trainer so her outfit will differ from Emilys and be more similar to Veronicas. Lauras outfit will consist of comfortable clothing that is still athletic because as a coach she will needs to be able to help run drills and practices stunts. 

The gym is also cold for the safety of students so that they don’t get heat stroke while practicing so Laura will be wearing a hoodie since the coach does not need to physically exert themselves as much as their athletes. Me and my partner also discussed the colors she will be wearing and we decided on black since Laura applies much pressure to Emily because she believes in her and knows what she can do but this causes Laura to be harder on Emily and apply more pressure which she thinks will help Emily but it is doing the opposite.

 

As for Laura’s makeup and hair, we want it to be natural look for makeup and her hair will be in a loose ponytail or messy bun since she wouldn’t want her hair to affect her performance as a coach so her hair needs to be out of her face but still in a comfortable way, this character would also be allowed nails as long as they aren’t too long so she doesn’t accidentally scratch students. Below are some examples.

Veronica’s Costume 

Last but not least we have Veronica’s character, Emily mother who picks her up from practice.

Veronica’s outfit will be comfortable less athletic clothing like sweats or loose jeans and a jacket since she is likely coming from home to pick up her daughter. Me and my partner discussed what color we would identify with this character and we ultimately landed on black and red because Veronica is the antagonist of the story because she applies the most pressure on Emily and this is shown well though red but we also want her to show some vulnerability since she loves her daughter so she will wear a darker shade of red to show some love. She will also wear comfortable shoes like sneakers since she is just driving around.

 

Veronica’s hair and makeup will be very similar to Laura’s, she will wear natural everyday makeup or less then usual and her hair will be a ponytail but tighter and either mid or low on her head. The tightness of her hair style will show that she is a bit uptight.

Conclusion 

Planning the costumes of our characters has helped us visualize our film opening while helping us apply knowledge we’ve learnt through our research like how we are applying color theory to our characters and giving each character a main color to represent their emotions and what they mean to the story. Thank you for reading and see you next time I hope you enjoyed this blog.