Costume and Makeup

Costume and Makeup

Costume

Rose

For the majority of our opening, our protagonist will wear dark, plain clothing to fit with our colour palette. As she is a middle-class teenager, she will wear fairly nice clothing, however, we do not want her wear very expensive garments as this will contradict her situation too much. In addition to this, we want her to wear plain clothing so that it won't distract from the focal point of the opening; the character herself.

In most of the scenes, she will wear a similar outfit to this, however, we will need to change the top (as we use mostly mid-shots, so you can only see her top) to show the passing of time throughout. 

She will wear jeans and trainers as well as this is typical of a girl her age.

For the final scene, our protagonist is seen in a hospital room, and so in order to make it seem more realistic, we will dress her in a hospital gown, such as this one. To create a sense of verisimilitude, we will also give her red socks as this is what patients wear in modern-day hospitals.

Rose's Dad

Rose's dad's costume will only be seen in one of the scenes, so he will only have one costume. We will dress him in dark clothing as well, so that he won't look out of place with the dark colour palette used throughout the rest of the opening. 

Doctor

The doctor is only seen in the last scene of our opening. She will wear a white lab coat as this will immediately indicate to the audience that she is in the medical profession. The use of white will contrast to our earlier use of dark colouring. 

Make-up

Rose

As Rose is being abused by her father, we decided to put bruises on her to create a sense of verisimilitude. We used purple, brown, red, yellow and green eyeshadow to create these bruises and test how realistic they look. We started by making a point of impact with the red, then built up the surrounding area with lighter colours. We used green and yellow around the outside to make it look more authentic. After this we embellished our bruises with other colours to add detail and make them look more natural. We also varied the depth of colour and size. As the eyeshadow we used was sparkly, we had to cover the bruises with translucent powder, which also made them more matte. 

For this, we used red eyeshadow in the outer corner of her eye. Then we used brown underneath and on top of her eyelid. We also added red on her bottom lash line. 







For this, we used red eyeshadow on top of her eyelid and brown underneath. We used a darker brown to contour the natural lines on her cheeks.




For this, we added to the make-up from the first eye. We used a dark brown on the inside corner of her eye to make it look sunken. We also added more brown under her eye and more red and brown to her eyelid. We used the same technique as before to contour under her eye. 









This is me applying the make-up to Meg's eyes. 

Camera Testing

Camera Testing

In order to create the circling motif present throughout our opening it was clear our group would have to give some consideration to how we filmed these shots.  


Our initial idea was to create a dolly system using two hula hoops, a tripod and a skateboard of some description.  However, this idea was deemed to be unrealistic as actually building the dolly system was difficult and time consuming to do effectively.



After realising the dolly system was unrealistic we decided to play around with the idea of filming handheld.  At first we tried holding the camera and walking a freehand circle making sure to keep the camera as steady as possible.  However this was very unsteady and the shot kept on getting closer and further away. 

In order to correct the shakiness of the freehand shooting we then decided to try out using wheels to limit the visibility of steps.  This made for a much smoother shot however the uneven circles were still an issue and the wheely chair which we used was not really compatible with some of the locations which we intended to film in.

After filming with the chair we decided to tryout a harness device to ensure a smooth circle around our actress.  For this we borrowed used some art binding and tied it around the camera person and an actress, originally we tested out using another person as a counter weight however we deemed this ineffective and caused unnecessary pain for the actress.  This idea proved very effective in ensuring a steady circle around the actress.

Once we had figured out a way of getting a steady circle around the actress we decided to test out practical ways of getting a smooth shot.  Our initial idea was to test out a skateboard which proved a safety hazard.  We then decided to go back to our original idea of filming on foot however this time we used a different camera person and put the footage through a stabilising application.  This proved quite effective and limited the camera movement to a manageable amount.  In the end we decided that the best way to go about filming the circling shots was by using the binding, walking by foot and using the camera stabilising technology.

Lighting Testing

Lighting testing

Tunnel

This tunnel is one of the location we are using within our film opening. We wanted this scene to have an eerie feel to it. It is also an external so we are relying on natural lighting, therefore, time of day is very important to the scene.

The first two photos were taken around 3.20 in the afternoon during February.  However, we decided that this was too bright and did not have the right feel.

We then went back to the tunnel at 5.30 once the sun had set a little and it was darker.  This lighting is much more appropriate for the look we are going for in our opening.  Although this lighting raises the possibility of the footage being grainy, there are lights throughout the tunnel to reduce this risk.

Park

For the Park scenes we wanted the lighting to have a very stark and cold feel giving quite a harrowing introduction to our film opening. The pictures taken were taken 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock respectively, due to the seasonal weather there is not much difference in the lighting so we decided to film this scene at the best time for our filming schedule.

For the park scenes we decided to film at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.  This was firstly because it fitted in very well with our filming schedule but also because during the February
time of year when we were filming our opening the cloud cover over the park gave a very even and cold lighting meaning we could use natural lighting to film our scenes.

Aimee's House

For the scenes in my house we wanted to use the lighting to complement the white colouring of these scenes and so thought it best to use white natural lighting as opposed to the yellow tinge of most electric lights.  The photo shown was taken at 5 o'clock in the after noon but we thought it was a bit too dark so we decided to film this scene during the morning/midday when the sun is on this side of the house and it is brighter.

All the scenes at in my house were filmed during the day between 11 o'clock and 2 o'clock this was so that we could make the most out of the natural lighting there were big windows opposite where we filmed both the bedroom and the bathroom scenes which enabled us to light these scenes.  For the opening shot we also used a lamp to add to the natural lighting, creating low key lighting over Rose's face.