AS Media Homeless Costume Practical

Homeless Costume Practical

Brief

We would like our character to wear warm clothes, as we will be filming in December and we want to make the homeless character seem vulnerable with the cold conditions.  Some ideas for our protagonist's costume include:

• A heavy mac style coat.

• Gloves, scarf and a hat.

• Worn boots.

• A jumper or a hoodie.

• Thick tracksuit bottoms or distressed jeans.

This led me to find the following items we can use for our character.

Production

From the list above I chose to buy a hoodie and black gloves as Emma is sorting out the bottoms and shoes, as she knows what will fit her. I also have my own coat, which I think would be suitable. I wish to make the recently purchased hoodie and gloves seem worn by distressing them a bit. The coat however is second hand and I believe already looks worn due to its faded blue colour. The coat and hoodie are seen below, where the coat is modelled by my 6 foot mother, and therefore, will look oversized on Emma, creating an unfitted look due to the poverty we are trying to portray of the character. The hoodie was also oversized for this look to. We used these low saturation, neutral toned clothes to add to the 'dingy' feel and a sense of drabness which helps create a depressive atmosphere.

First, I cut the tips of the fingers of the gloves to turn them into fingerless gloves commonly seen on homeless people, which is incredibly stereotypical as it implies their poverty. I left the ends unstitched so they can fray a little.

Then, with the jumper I smudged mud onto it, this didn't work very well because of the dryness of the soil, it seemed to just brush off. A slight imperfection is seen below but this would not be picked up by the camera very well.

Outcome

In the end, our group decided to just use the coat and gloves as the hoodie seemed too new still. Instead, Emma chose to use a worn UK jumper. 

From left to right: Close up tracking shot of hand and long shot.

Personal Comments

Overall, I felt the costume seemed mismatched because of the contrasting colours. As we separated the costume and didn't really organise the look we were planning altogether Emma wears a mixture of somewhat new clothes like the jeans and the bright shopping bag which are unconventional and worn gloves, coat, hoodie and trainers.

The white trainers appear bright in the shots, despite, actually being worn. However, more prominently the colours between the jeans and hoodie affect the effect desired by the use of  low saturated clothes. This would have been helped if I was able to distress the grey hoodie better to be able to use it. This could have been done by coffee staining or using wet mud. Nevertheless, although the UK hoodie and new pale blue jeans are unconventional, the UK flag emphasises the British identity commonly displayed in social realism films. Identity is used in social realisms like "This Is England" to connect to the niche target audience of that location. In "Fish Tank" and "The Selfish Giant" accents and locations are also used to enforce this. This identity helps the success of the film as audiences can connect to it, despite, the narrowcasting.