Narrative Costume Ideas

In terms of the costume which our narrative cast will be wearing, we have decided to have it so that the costume colours and style reflect the part of the narrative being told, this is a technique which has been used primarily in TV shows but I feel that we could really implement this into our video to show different things.

By this, I mean that colour can reflect a range of different moods, and similar to the way in which Vince Gilligan used them in Breaking Bad. This chart below explains in greater detail to what I am referring to as it has different colours represening the different characters in different states. For a music video, we do not need to do anywhere near as many colours for a 4 and a half minute long music video as this. however, the principal still stands.

In terms of the style, the costume could be used to reflect the mental state of the characters with the happier parts of the narrative showing the characters being dressed smarter and cleaner rather than the less positive aspects in the video which should be more scruffy and poorer dressed than other scenes.

Here are some diagrams of clothing for the characters in the narrative which Becca has drawn.

We have come up with a couple of sketches for the two main actors in the narrative sections of the video to show what we hope to create when we start filming.

These sketches give us a rough idea of how we want our characters to look. We have used a lot of black as we said before, to communicate the mood and atmosphere of the situations highlighted in the music video. We feel black clothing is the best way to communicate this in our video because it is all about falling into darkness with the relapse of the drug addiction etc.

We want "her" to also be in black because she is meant to be dark and sinister. She would also probably be wearing red lipstick as a symbol of tempt and seduction etc. This symbolism links in with the theory proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure about the signifier and the signified. The lipstick symbolises the temptation and seductive personality that we want "her" to have. She needs to be tempting in some way otherwise he would probably not be as interested in keeping her in his life by staying on the drugs. The red lipstick wouldn't really make as much sense without this meaning behind it and the meaning without the red lipstick also wouldn't be as effective. Saussure's theory states that the sign or symbol that we see on the screen doesn't make sense without the actual object along with the meaning it creates. We need to ensure that we do this in our video both with specifically the lipstick and also with "her" clothing in general. Doing this should help create the link between the temptation to the female and the drugs in the mind of our audience. 

In terms of our main character, we have thought about him wearing black throughout the video and decided that as the video goes on and he gets on the road to giving up his addiction, his clothing becomes lighter. Going from a completely black wardrobe, to a white top with a bit of black and then a completely white t-shirt by the end which will eventually get covered in "her" lipstick to represent her blood as he kills her which is a metaphor for him getting over his addiction.

We think this will really help us communicate the story and the atmosphere of each scene.