Research: Mise En Scene - Costume, Hair and Make-up - Mrs. Quinlan

What is Costume (Hair and Makeup)? Why it’s an important convention? How it helps with character representation and understanding.

Costume is what a character wears in a film or scene to send a message to the audience and maybe have an effect within the film. Costume helps the audience understand more about a characters role in the film and also their emotions or feelings in the current scene. It can guide the audience’s attention to particular personalities or traits.

Connotations, Stereotypes of Characters and Clothing Types

From looking at a characters style of dressing and clothes you can guess what effect they have on the film such as Batman, the connotation of him will be when he wears his suit it’s like he is protected and comfortable but when he takes it off and wears just normal clothes he is vulnerable and less at home than in his bat suit.

Stereotypical costumes for protagonists will be something that shows meaning and reflects to the audience their character role and emotions, once again like Batman, he’s quite a dark character while being this anti-hero he perceives himself as, his suit is matte black and his traditional theme is dark blue, yellow and black, which are quite tensed colours. Also with hair and makeup this can be effective in that it shows the audience what type of character the protagonist is.

The Joker in The Dark Knight Rises has smeared face paint and wet, messy hair to show the audience he is that psychopathic antagonist that he wants to be.

Stereotypical Victim and Protagonist – Clothing

A stereotypical protagonist’ clothing would be something that shows the audience that they are protected and safe from any danger, and is quite effective as it helps the audience to understand the characters character in the film/scene.

Here let’s take Leonardo Di Caprio wearing a blue open shirt with a white top underneath, which are colours you normally associate with peace, love, royalty, quite calm colours preferred to darker colours like purple and black. This can help us as the audience understand his character and how they like to deal with their problems maybe he’s a quite active yet laid back protagonist.

Stereotypical Antagonist – Clothing

A stereotypical antagonist’ clothing would be something that shows the audience what they are and their role in the film or how they deal with their own problems, trying to move away from Batman let’s take Bane, his clothing is quite humid and subtle to show us that he is the clear antagonist. He also wears a mask which is a common convention in more dark thrillers. His mask suggests that it powers him and maybe makes him what he is. This can be considered an important part of his clothing besides his body clothes as his face is his identity and he’s covering it is as if he wants no one to know who he really is and wants to keep his identity a secret whereas some other antagonists would show their face.

Thriller opening analysis – Silence of the Lamb

The opening sequence of this film shows evidence of an effective use of costume as you can see her attire, which represents that she could be the victim or protagonist within the film from the way she is clothed, wearing quite protective gear and tight clothes which may say that she is quite closed in or she is immune to danger, also quite innocent as she is working hard to keep up to shape, maybe she never gives up or takes things lightly.

Conclusion

From the research I have done, I will be expanding my use of costume, hair and makeup definitely to settle on a specific branch that will suit to my style of opening and theme behind my opening. Also I will research other conventions of costume that can help improve my opening.