Planning: Costumes

From our own experiences with the style, combined with the findings from our research, we were able to create a number of different outfit and costume ideas for use in our music video and ancillary texts. We felt that costume was a key factor in the portrayal of generic conventions, in both our adherence to and diversion from them in some manner. As our video is solely narrative based, we rely heavily on mise-en-scene such as that of the costume to communicate with the audience, creating a recognisable link with conventions that may be familiar to them and their own personal style, thereby creating a connection with the intended target audience.

When researching Gabrielle Aplin and her music, we found that she could fall under a range of different conventions, including the more indie stylised image as well as the highly feminine, folk image. We deduced that as her key target audience is primarily teenage girls due to the lyrical content of her songs, to market the image of the actors in our video as a down-to-earth, relatable and familiarised indie like style, which would be reflected through the use of costume.

We found that one of the staple clothing items from this type of genre was that of the checkered shirt. It is an article of clothing widely recognised as being pigeonholed in the indie-ish clothing style. We felt that is was important to include articles of clothing that would be widely familiar with the target audience and would effectively communicate the style we wanted to convey on a broader level than perhaps a more innocent and floaty folk like style would have been able to express.

We have devised 3 costume plans, for use in various stages throughout our video.

COSTUME A: SLEEP ATTIRE

• This is not incredibly significant for the female actors costume, as we don't see much of her in her sleepwear - she remains under the bed covers, and In the next scene she is already dressed. However, to truly set the scene and communicate our ideas, we have asked her to bring along some form of sleepwear of her own discretion, in order to promote realism, and support continuity should we happen to actually see any of her costume in these scenes.





• This costume is slightly more important for the male actor, as we physically see him get out of bed, and he remains in his sleeping attire during the dining room scenes. This is to show a certain level of apathy to the character, who now had given up caring in the relationship, perhaps suggesting that he acts like a slob now as he doesn't feel he has to impress her, highlighting the dejected state the relationship is in. We have asked him to bring along a pair of pyjamas, which would serve to further emphasise the element of innocence and perhaps naivety that we created for the characters. When we see his feet kicking over the guitar, he is likely to have a pair of socks on, which perhaps show a certain degree of laziness and lethargy both reflective of the character and his views of or participation within the relationship.

COSTUME B: MODERN DAY / MISERABLE

In order to elevate the feeling of misery and gloom that is supposed to be a recurring theme throughout the main narrative, we hope to play on typical colour connotations to convey this feeling to the audience.

• For the female actor, we have listed a number of ideas revolving around the ideas of bland, bleak and dark clothing, perhaps baggy and unflattering to suggest a lack of concern with her appearance - highly unconventional for the genre, where there is emphasis on the polished and the preened, therefore further implying a dejected state as enforced by the narrative content. We originally made a brainstorm of different ideas for the female outfit in these scenes and have showed this to the actor, asking her if she owned anything along those lines. She has managed to create an outfit pretty ideal for the representation of dreariness we hoped to achieve, consisting of a deep blue and grey striped hoodie, black skinny jeans and biker boots. We feel that this collaborates effectively to create a dark outfit that can successfully connote feelings of misery, as well as portraying the important relatable youthful element.





• We had a number of ideas for the outfit of the male character, mainly revolving around the whole stereotypical indie dynamic we wanted to portray. However, we didn't feel this style would be suitable and fitting for our new actor, so re-devised his costume plan. We wanted to keep his outfit quite simplistic, perhaps in reference to his character, and not conforming to a particular social group. Having said this, we still wanted to create a portrayal that would be somewhat relatable to the genre in some ways, so tried to portray him as conventional in some ways. One way of doing this was through the representations of theme of misery, so we decided on a costume of dark jeans and shoes, a white vest or shirt and a black leather jacket or hoodie. None of these garments alone would be particularly reminiscent of any particular clothing style, but we feel they will work together overall in this context.

COSTUME C: FLASHBACK / HAPPY

We wanted to make the costumes for the flashback scenes much more conventional in style, perhaps overly so in order to create an element of humorousness. This also gave us the scope to play on colour connotations in order to best represent the characters, the narrative and the genre.

• For Beth, we chose a fairly stereotypical outfit that would be immediately cohesive with the genre of music - the outfit will consist of a red flannel checkered shirt, jeans and red shoes or trainers. It is a fairly simplistic outfit, thereby reflecting the raw and simplistic element of the folk genre itself. The bright colours of the reds serve to heighten the vibrancy of the shots in stark contrast to the preceding clips, emphasising the difference between then and now. Alternatively, the connotations of the colour red could be representative of anger and danger, perhaps in a forewarning of the dangers to come within the relationship. Even in the happier scenes, she will not wear any make-up, in order to convey the conventional representation of females in this genre - they tend to be very natural and raw, in line with the type of music they create.

• To enhance the feeling of harmony between the couple, Oscar will also wear red, in the form of a red vest. This again is a simplistic garment, but juxtaposed along side the female actors outfit creates and harmonizing the two outfits together, in reflection of the union of the couple.