Costumes and Props research - Lucy Clark Re-sit 4124

Costumes, props and makeup are an important part of a film and so we wanted to make sure that what we chose complied with the typical conventions of the horror genre.
For our female protagonist, Louise Chick, we decided on a white coat with work attire underneathh. By choosing a white garment, we are complying with convention, because white connotes innocence and naivety, and many horror films make use of this for their female victims. For example, the film "Scream" makes use of a female victim wearing a white jumper and "Nightmare on Elm Street 3" sees
Patricia Arquette wearing a white nightgown. The reason we have chosen to have our female protagonist wearing work clothes underneath her clothes is to keep away from the obvious nightgown or school uniform stereotype.

We have chosen to use this white coat for Louise in the opening for our horror movie. The colour white connoting innocence and vulnerability complies with the idea of women being the damsel or princess figure who needs rescuing by a man in Propp's Theory of Narrative.




The makeup we have chosen also portrays women as being vulnerable; in the flashes of film, various women will be seen tied up or bruised and bleeding. For the shots of the women in the bath, we used red hair dye to denote blood.This looks very effective because of the contrast it will be to the young women in the bath tub. For the bruising on the girls faces and arms, we have experimented using various shades of eyeshadow and lipstick to create a mottled purple-blue bruised effect. By having bruising prominent on the face, it brings it directly to the audience's attention and so is instantly noticeable. Many horror films use fake blood or makeup; the 1980's "Nightmare on Elm Street" used over 500 gallons of fake blood during filming. Although we personally aren't creating a horror film which makes use of monsters, I have researched the work of Jack Pierce who worked for Universal Pictures and did the makeup for films such as the 1931 "Frankenstein" and "The Wolf Man" in 1941. His use of makeup in the "Frankenstein" has become iconic, and is how people recognise the monster nowadays; Jack Pierce was the first to portray the monster as having bolts through his neck.



The one prop we will be using is a door key, which the female protagonist is seen inserting into the key hole of her front door.

Information from;

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/ (Nightmare on Elm Street Information)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Pierce_(makeup_artist) (Jack Pierce information)

(http://www.shockya.com/news/2010/08/15/patricia-arquette-thomas-jane-separating/)
(Photo from Nightmare on Elm Street)

Scream photo is a still from the film