Costume research

Our film is based on the idea of having 4 main characters, 3 of these will be the "victims" and a escaped murderer who is hunting them. The murderers costume will be most important as it needs to convey the evil nature of our antagonist in order to unsettle the audience and make him a credible threat. It would not make sense to have our murderer dressed in a hoodie and jeans and wearing trainers as a murderer must be psychopathic and therefore would not dress casually. Therefore the costume needs to convey to the audience the idea of the murderer being crazy and therefore be abnormal. We are already planning to have our murderer in some form of mask which will help to put across the idea of his lunacy and make him a credible threat, it also conceals the murderers identity adding mystery and suspense to the character as the audience won't be able to tell who or what is under the mask. For the rest of his costume, we thought about him wearing black, muddy, worn-out work boots to as these would be conventional footwear for a killer to use. An example would be the character Zep from the original Saw film.

The rest of the killers costume would ideally be mostly black, which has the practical benefits of making them harder to identify in shots which we can use to our advantage in teasing the character to the audience in our trailer without fully revealing him. Black trousers, a black jacket and black gloves with the mask would make our killer look creepy and reveal almost nothing about him to the audience, further helping to make the character intriguing and terrifying.

For our victims, costume-work will be easier to decide on as there is a broader range of acceptable outfit. It is conventional for the victims in horror films to be relatable for the audience, making it easier to put yourself in their shoes and therefore making the scenario more frightening. This is why most of the time teenagers are the victims in these films as teenagers are the main target market for the horror genre. Our 3 victims will also be teenagers and will dress accordingly in t-shirts, hoodies and trainers. Ideally, most of the victims costumes will consist of bright colours like white in order to contrast with the darkness of the villain and to make them seem more vulnerable in a dark environment as they stand out more. Each costume should also be tailored to reflect each characters personality, helping to make them more identifiable to the audience. A good example is from the costume-work in The Cabin in The Woods, which can be seen below. You have the "jock" character wearing an American football jacket to show he is the strong, sporty and typically stupid one in the film. Then you also have the contrasting choice of costume for each of the female-characters, with the blonde woman wearing a short skirt and the ginger woman wearing jeans, making the audience sympathise more with the ginger woman as she seems more respectable and less promiscuous than the blonde woman.

We have also had an idea for a fake news report to feature in our trailer, with a news reporter setting the scene to the audience. If we end up going along with the news report idea, we would likely have our news reporter in a smart suit and tie to add to the realism, as this is typically what you'd expect to see in a real life news report.