Development on Costume

There has been some development on the costume of the supernatural girl. We have decided to change the casting for her so that it is a friend of ours, Maya Masoliver, who has a stunning appearance that we can enhance in such a way to make her look supernatural. 

Another feature we have changed is her make up. Instead of going for the dark eye make up, we have have gone for a brighter look that would look more out of place than dark make up. The images below (taken from tumblr and pinterest) are two different style ideas that we will be experimenting with.

I asked a number of people what they thought of when I said 'supernatural' and they all went along the lines of pale, ghostly, someone said holographic. As a result of this, I am going to experiment with Maya, who is quite tanned, and make her paler and use a silvery/grey colour to sculpture her face and shape her lips, maybe added a purple tint to the lips as well (picture below).

Inspired by David Bowie, she may have detailing on her face that would make her stand out in a normal environment, such as a circle on her forehead, as demonstrated below by Bowie.

This next part of the blog was written by Naomi Lee, one of my group members. I have changed the pronouns and names in order to make it more personal to my blog.

Overview of the development of the ethereal creature. 

Initial Ideas

When we first began to brainstorm our ideas costume was one our key focuses. We wanted to portray an ordinary, realistic life in the boy's (protagonist's) clothing and a humanistic yet weird/alien sense of clothing for the girl. However we did not know how to maintain something humanistic and weird at the same time without making the costume of the top and unprofessional. I had initial ideas of eye make-up similar to that of the girl in Black Swan and the skeletal cheekbones similar to those of Maleficent's. Another thing that I thought would be a good idea was too keep the bright red lipstick used in both Black Swan and Maleficent which Naomi agreed to be a good idea as red has connotations of blood and danger in horror movies.

We also knew that we wanted to have the girl in very simplistic clothing in order to make her seem out of place, we had an idea of a ripped white dress as the girl in the ring has which we drew inspiration for the hair being partly over her face- which slightly discounted our need for make-up.  

(this is a mood board by - Maddie Davies)

Locket (to be done at a later date)

Dog (to be done at a later date)

Fake Blood

Naomi did some research online into different ways to create fake blood realistically and after research she found that many people actually suggested the home made recipes rather than the expensive shop bought kit as you had more freedom to decide the consistency, viscosity and colour of the blood itself.

Naomi has provided two recipes here and we will have to experiment to find the correct colouration and consistency of the blood in the shots which contain it. 

Contacts Debate

At a certain point in our discussion we were debating whether to use contacts or not. We were thinking of using complete white-out or black-out contacts to create a more unrealistic impression.  

However, further on in our discussions we decided that the contacts would either take away from the make-up, look too cliche or simply just be hidden by the hair the whole time which could decrease the visibility of the contact lenses themselves.

Further Debate

On further discussion, we also believed that the use of blood would be a little too cliche, however I suggested that using bruising instead of the blood would also work. However Naomi raised that therefore, how would the girl die? She therefore suggested that we could try and make it look like there was a broken bone sticking out of her body, causing her to bleed but not as dramatically as we were going to do before. However we soon realised we did not have the expertise special effects to achieve this. Adam then suggested that the use of a veins which look like they are carrying poison, would give the desired effect (as seen in iron man 2).

Tutorial on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czHQTYwfY0Q 

Adam also thought of using the medium of string which we could use to provide a 3D effect to the veins and make them appear inflamed and raised. Examples of blackened veins can also be found in the TV show: Teen Wolf. 

Back to my own blogging:

I have a sister who has had more experience in the area of costume than I have, and I went to her for some advice. She told me that "subtlety is key. And contouring is your friend, for an ethereal look shift lines slightly further or longer than is natural." 

I also asked her about the costume, how she would develop it and in response she asked me a series of questions:

"What is her backstory? Has she come off a UFO? Has she been living amongst humans? Has she been buying clothes or stealing clothes? Why is she wearing any clothes? Does she know a lot about human fashion? Clothing is influenced by your psychology and your environment."

After she asked me these questions I went on to discuss with my group what we should make of the girl's backstory. We came up with some ideas regarding the symbols on her face. Instead of making them black, as initially planned, we are going to make them pink, so they seem more like like tattoos and part of her culture. In order to reason the symbols, there will be similar/the same ones on the inside of the locket, so when the boy opens the locket there will be the symbols and a picture of the boy inside (the picture of the boy is still being debated).