Costume Research

We have been researching a great deal of things for this project, and in this post we will be displaying what we have learned about costumes within thriller shorts.

Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any special types of costume worn in thriller films. Almost always, the characters will be wearing plain everyday clothing, no brands, no overly bright colours, etc. However, this is deliberate. The reason being that in a thriller, the on-screen action is fast paced and very important to the completion of the plot. Therefore, the director's do not want anything to distract from said action - so the costumes should be as bland/non-interesting as possible. This can be seen in the screenshots below:

Evan Treborn (The Butterfly Effect)


















Kale Brecht (Disturbia)




James Dalton (Road House)

These shots support my point that the on-screen action in thrillers is much more important than the character development (encompassing costumes). Costume is not something intended to be focused on, hence the unremarkable features of them.

FOR OUR FILM:

Despite Hollywood conventions, we are choosing at least somewhat specific costumes for our characters, purely for the fact we believe them to be relevant for our short. The drunken MAN who assaults our protagonist, Penny, will be wearing dark clothes, to signify him as being a shady and villainous character. In contrast, Penny will be wearing lighter coloured clothes or school uniform, to signify innocence and vulnerability. Examples are posted below.

Dark clothes

School clothes

We have also had to explore the use of colour within our film. As we know, different colours can connote different emotions and foreshadow the character itself. For example the colour red, can connote danger but also lust and even strength. We may include the colour red in Penny's costume to foreshadow danger. However, the colours black and white are binary opposites and would help us exemplify the theme religion to represent heaven and hell, good and evil. For example, in present day Penny could be wearing lighter clothes to show she is asking for forgiveness for her sins and suggest that she is the angel from the film title " Angel Born in Hell." In the flashbacks however, we may use black and red, to suggest danger and evil.