Horror Make Up

We researched the make up used to signify that a person has been possessed. Although for the trailer we want the girls to appear normal in order to contrast the unnatural things happening to them, we will use a shot that shows a girl to be completely possessed for the webpage and poster and for this we would like supernatural make up.

In 'The Exorcist', the possessed girl's face becomes pasty and covered in cuts and marks that appear like injuries. The girl has huge shadows under her eyes, which are completely white. We really like the idea of  changing the face to make it appear distorted and decaying so that it appears more shocking and unnatural. The injuries on the face suggest the power the spirit has and the fragility of the human, and we would like to incorporate this idea into the possessed make up. Making the eyes unnatural also appeals, as it really makes the image appear scary as the humanity is taken away from the victim to be replaced by something unnatural. The greasy hair of the victim also adds to the effect of making her appear no longer human. We would like to replicate this look, as it is haunting and stays with the audience even after the viewing of the film has finished. The unnatural nature of the look is especially effective because the character is a child, and we hope that this shock will also be created by a similarly unnatural look on a teenager. The contrast of decaying features with a normally youthful and healthy face acts to emphasise the disturbing nature of the spirit, and shows it to be a threat even to the life of the victim, as well as normality.


We were also interested in the markings on the skin that are used in 'The Haunting in Connecticut' [pictured right], and in two episodes of science fiction television programme 'Doctor Who', 'The Impossible Planet' and 'The Satan Pit' [pictured below right]. These are effective as they cover the whole body and reflect the nature of the spirit as they seem to communicate something about its past or what it wants. In 'The Haunting in Connecticut', the markings are carved into the skin, making it more shocking and                                          
upsetting to see and creating sympathy for the victim. In 'Doctor Who', the markings are instead unnaturally branded to the skin and only appear when the victim is possessed, being removed when the possessive entity is hiding. They are a different language, creating a sense of mystery as they cannot be read, but also emphasising the supernatural nature of the possession as the markings do not even seem to make sense and instead reflect a completely different species or culture. In 'Doctor Who', the face is also somewhat changed by red eyes and discoloured blue lips, making it appear even more unnatural. We find this idea interesting and would like to incorporate markings on the face of the possessed victim, as well as unnatural decay make up, in order to reflect the spirit's link with the world and hint at its past. We are going to use ouija board letters across the girl's face in order to reflect the manner in which the spirit was contacted and maintain the theme that the ouija board plays a large part in the events that follow. They also emphasise the gothic and supernatural nature of the film as they are in the same font used on ouija boards, which is decorative and old fashioned. We are also going to edit the victim's eyes to make them appear unnatural.




-Emily

Party Costumes

For the party scene, we wanted the leader of the group to be all in black to support the idea that she is interested in gothic ideas, as was suggested by her school uniform. We have used a black vest top which is low cut in order to show her arms and chest, and a short black leather skirt with black tights underneath. This reveals a lot of her flesh but also shows her dark character through the dark colour. It could therefore suggest something more corrupt about her character which could be revealed in later events. She also has the band on her arm that was seen earlier to show that she has been to music festivals and is therefore more of a free spirit.

Her hair is curly and worn down around her shoulders, with some make up although it is not very heavy. The most prominent part of her make up is the eye liner which is heavier towards the edges of her eyes and flicks out, an expressive style that could be linked with gothic fashions.

This costume is brighter than the other girl's costume, although the colours are still quite dark to suggest a dark personality, or to foreshadow the events that will come. The clothes are plain except for the colours, suggesting a less appearance-conscious character, which was also shown earlier through the use of a vest under her school blouse to so that her bra was not visible. The dark maroon or red colour of her short skirt could be considered to connote the idea of blood and anger, while its length reveals her legs in tights. It shows her to have a nice figure, which is also shown through the dark blue top that reveals her décolletage and arms. The use of accessories such as her ring and bands around her wrist make her more believable as a character and show her to be stylish. Her hair is styled and down, while her make up is again minimal but focused around the eyes.

This costume shows the character to be more child-like in her dress due to the polka dot pattern, relating to her small size. This links to the knee high socks that she wore with her school uniform and show her to be a more vulnerable character, which could incite more feelings of fear for the character when the spirit begins attacking and therefore make the audience more invested. The dress is black and white, again using some dark colour in her costume, with a black belt to emphasise her figure. She is also wearing black tights. The higher neckline and bigger sleeves hide some of her skin, again showing her to be more child-like, although the short hem of the skirt shows a factor of her personality that is provocative. She also has accessories of bands, bracelets and rings. She has styled crimped hair worn down around her shoulders, and minimal make up except for eye liner. However her make up cannot easily be seen as she is wearing glasses. The connotations of glasses are often linked with 'nerdiness' and naivety, relating to the child-like vulnerability she has.

This costume is also dark, as it is grey. It is a dress that is baggy around the middle, somewhat hiding her figure. This is a reference to her school uniform earlier which consisted of a baggy blouse, showing her to place less importance on appearance and be more confident. The dress has patterning across the top of crystal style beads, and detailing down the fabric, supporting the idea that she is wealthy and can afford nice dresses, while again showing her to be more confident and exuberant in her dress sense. The dress, although baggy, is low cut and short, showing her chest, arms and legs and therefore supporting the idea of both confidence and promiscuity. She has few accessories, but her hair is styled and her has dark make up focused on her eyes again. The constant focus of the girls' make up on their eyes is related to the current style of make up in which the eyes are often accentuated, showing them to be modern and fashionable.

This is the costume of the main protagonist, who will survive the events of the film. Her dress is much brighter than the other girls' costumes with bright blue colours, immediately setting her apart from them and showing her to be a brighter and less corrupt person and therefore suggesting that she could deserve to live while the other characters did not. This is also portrayed through the flower pattern on the skirt, connoting grace and nature. The top of her dress is black and shows some of her décolletage, although the arms have black lace in order to hide some of her flesh while also appearing fashionable and suggests a gothic interest that could link with the ouija board. She is wearing black tights that also somewhat hide her legs, although her skirt is short enough to show them, making her appear stylish and showing a link in costume with her other friends. She has a necklace with an owl pendant, immediately showing her to be  a quirkier character than the others, perhaps in what could be considered a 'nerdy' style. This would support the idea of her being less corrupt than the others, while also suggesting that she is smart enough to survive the events of the haunting. Owls are also a recent  trend in fashion, and are often used in accessories such as necklaces or purses, so this also shows her to be a stylish and therefore aspirational character. Her hair is more natural than the others as it isn't styled as heavily, and her make up, although also focused around the eyes, is minimal.




-Emily

Costume Research - Party Scene

We examined party scenes in terms of the costumes worn so that our characters would have believable costumes while they partied.

Research of films, coupled with our questionnaires concerning appearances of characters, made it clear that female characters must be physically appealing in costume and body in order to attract males, and stylish to the point of being aspirational for females so that the target population is as broad as possible. It could also be considered that the characters have sexualised costumes in order to appeal to a sense of justice when the character dies in audiences who consider sexual character immoral. This is clear in films such as 'Sorority Row', in which the main protagonists are all thin attractive girls, and they dress in a promiscuous nature that shows a lot of flesh. In this photo, for example, they are dressed for a pyjama party, and are therefore showing a lot of their legs and stomachs. Although our party is not pyjama themed, it maintains the same standards of dress.

This is seen across all genres, such as in the comedy 'Mean Girls', in which it is noted that in "girl world" costume parties are cause to dress provocatively. This can be seen in a skin-tight leather styled cat suit and a negligee style dress, as well as accessories such as animal ears. Styled hair and make up is also evidently important.

In 'Night of the Demons', this is shown through the sexualised image of a cat shown in this image. Even though the party in our film is not a costume party, the provocative dress is obvious in the low cut and tight outfit that could be lingerie. The styling of hair and make up also acts to make the character look more attractive, and we use this kind of costuming for our party scene.

In this party scene in 'Superbad', the female characters are not in the same level of provocative clothing. However, they are still wearing form fitting clothing that reveals some flesh such as lower stomach, chest and arms. This shows the stylish nature of party clothes in that they usually reveal some form of flesh in order to be seen as attractive, although there are varied degrees of clothing. For our party scene we will include short skirts and some visible chests, although we will not go to the same extent as the image above. This is especially true of the main protagonist who will survive as she must appear more moral, so is in a less revealing costume.




-Emily

Costume Research - School Uniform

Linking with our choice of uniform costume, we examined the kinds of school uniforms used in boarding school films.

One of our main inspirations for our character school uniform costumes is 'St Trinians'. Although it is a comedy and not a horror film, it typifies the kind of school uniform that we want to emulate by mixing traditional school wear with a more sexualised image and style. It uses blouses, ties and black skirts or dresses, although there are varied styles worn by each social group. This suggests a freedom with the dress code in order to express their individuality, which we want to use in order to suggest different kinds of characters and reflect their opposition to strict forms of authority. Many of the skirts or dresses are short, revealing legs, and the blouses can be tight fitting in order to reveal their feminine figures. These promiscuous styles are reflected in our school uniform costumes. The characters also use bold make up to make themselves appear more appealing, and we reflect this although not to the same extent until they have left the school grounds. In relation to the different kinds of social groups and styles shown in 'St Trinians', we refer most closely to the 'Posh Totty' or Head Girl idea of dress, although one of our characters also incorporates ideas of the 'Goth' style in order to set her apart form the others and suggest she could be interested in ouija boards.

'The Craft' uses similar uniform ideas to 'St Trinians' in that the students seem to express their individual styles and not maintain a strict dress code other than white blouses and black skirts. They also use gothic fashion such as rosary beads, which one of our characters also uses to suggest an interest in gothic ideas and religion. The costumes consist of short skirts and blouses that are open a few buttons, revealing their feminine forms and therefore suggesting some form of promiscuous nature. The make up of the characters is more obvious than we want as they have dark lipstick and eye shadow, but we do not want to create the same degree of gothic perceptions so will use more common colours such as red lipstick. We will also not include the same amount of accessories such as braces or chokers.

Due to the ties with Japanese cinema, we have looked at manga school uniforms for girls. They usually consist of short skirts and tight fitting blouses, and here they also have blazers. This shows how sexualised the idea of school uniform can be, as in modern culture it has become a sexual idea to dress as a school girl. This therefore links to our aim to make our characters appear physically appealing, and the use of somewhat traditional school uniforms aids that due to this idea. It also makes our characters appeal not only to young males from our target audience of 15-25, but also to older men who find the idea of school girl uniforms attractive.

 


Some other boarding school films such as 'Cracks' and 'The Woods' use a school uniform that is much more traditional in that it hides their forms through baggier blouses, cardigans and long skirts. Although these are traditional, they are not seen as sexually appealing and would make our characters appear too moral. The characters also  seem to care less about their appearances in terms of minimal make up and un-styled hair. We want out characters to appear more materialistic and appearance-conscious. Therefore this kind of uniform is not what we would like to emulate.


-Emily

Private Schoolgirl Costumes

The main ideas for the costumes of the characters in the beginning were white shirts, short black skirts, ties and long socks or black tights. We let the actors customise their outfits according to the personalities of their characters, and to what we felt looked best on each girl as they are all different heights and sizes. The characters' outfits do seem to fit in well with the stereotypes of a private school girl, or even just a uniform, so that it is clear to the audience that the girls are leaving school, and they do go to a posh/private school.

This is a group shot of our characters. They are all wearing their hair down and styled, showing their materialistic traits. They are all styled slightly differently to show their personalities and also give a sense of disregard for the school dress code. Their make up is natural with some eye-liner, so that they appear somewhat respectable. This will be completely changed when they leave the school and put on heavier make up (and carry out other corrupt actions), shocking the audience and revealing their characters. The architecture behind them shows large old fashioned school, setting against their characters.

This is the girl that we have made the leader of the friendship group. To show this we have made her uniform more obviously customised, and made her personal style more noticeably gothic. This is seen in her rosary beads, festival band and dark hair. The gothic styling will link to her character introducing a ouija board later in the narrative. Her shirt is tight to show her figure and the outline of her bra, suggesting a promiscuous and feminine nature. When her shirt is later unbuttoned, it naturally opens to reveal a black bra, linking to the idea of promiscuity and also her gothic style. She is wearing a tight pencil skirt, inspired by  'St Trinians'  style clothing, portraying her as stylish and attractive.

This character's costume consists of a loose fitting shirt that is slightly transparent so that a bright red bra is visible. The red colour is linked with sexual confidence, portraying her character as confident. This is also shown by her short skirt and large belt, making her uniform customisation obvious. We wanted this look for her because she is the louder and more assured personality in the friendship group. Her shirt is loosely tucked into the skirt and the sleeves are roughly rolled back, showing her to be secure and not care about how other people see her.

This character has a small quite loose blouse tucked into a tight skirt that shows her figure. The black thigh high socks are often linked with school girls and sexuality, and thus represent her as flirtatious. The black high heeled shoes accentuate her legs and show her to be stylish. Her small frame and thigh high socks could imply that she is child-like and vulnerable, which will be important later in the narrative.

This character is the one that we have chosen to survive the events of the narrative, and therefore we have made her more conservative in order to follow the Final Girl Theory. In accordance with this, we have also made her costume slightly more masculine to suggest that she could pick up some male traits later in the narrative in order to survive. Her shirt is loose and hanging out of her skirt so that her figure is not really shown. This reflects her more moral and modest character, and coupled with the shirt sleeves rolled up portrays an element of masculinity. Her skirt is short and black to still relate to the other girls in the friendship group and the idea of school uniform. Her hair is also less styled than the other girls, showing her to be less materialistic.

This character has a short black skirt that shows her legs, and a fitted blouse to reveals her figure. However, she also has a white vest underneath her blouse and her bra is not visible, suggesting that she is a more modest character than some of the others. She is wearing a dark coloured tie that reflects the private school uniform, although it is loosely done up with some shirt buttons undone to show a more laid back attitude. The white vest and tie could suggest that she is more willing to follow the school dress code than the others, who have all taken off their ties to emphasise that they are leaving the school and also do not respect it.












- Rhiannon and Emily