Ultimatum: Costume and Make-up

I would like to credit Daniel Bruce, a member of our group, for this outstanding effort in devising the Costume and make-up fundamentals of our production of 'Ultimatum' 


When designing the costume and makeup for a thriller film you have to consider the structure and context of the opening title sequence. The portrayal of certain characters through how they dress and the make up they have on can completely change their position in the film, in many cases the miss-en-scene element of the film can make or break the reputation of a film.

The first scene will picture the father played by Jack Stockman and the son played by Connor's younger brother. The first shot has to establish a father son relationship the son could be dressed in his school clothes or something that connotes youth. Whereas the father needs to be dressed in more formal clothing maybe his shirt and tie after a long and tireless day at work. The picture on the right hand side is the actors from the first Harry Potter film, you can clearly notify their young age through the way they are dressed and the make up added to make them look younger, for example Harry's glasses show youth and that fact that he may like to read, his hair style is also simple connoting that youngsters aren't bothered by how they appear.
The next scenario is the father in an everyday environment like an office or cafe, in this case the father will have to be in a suit showing the audience that perhaps he is on his break, and has a well payed profession such as a salesman. The picture to the right hand side of this paragraph is a screenshot from the blockbusting thriller 'Shutter Island'. 
Both characters are portrayed as police officers from the 1950's, a good profession which should be connoted as professional and well presented showing their authority to the audience, i myself would like this to be the representation of the adult in the scene. Also the character which i play should also represented in this way as myself and Jack have similar professions in the current scene.
A character that is often hard to show in the thriller genre is the villain, and in our opening sequence we effectively have two. The first so called villain who is played by James is a target assigned to Jack by a mysterious caller, we felt that the target should wear dark shades adding a sense of mystery in the thriller film creating a question in the audiences mind, in our preliminary task where we replicated reservoir dogs, sunglasses aesthetically improved the look of our production adding a sense of professionalism. In terms of the overall costume James could also be wearing a suit, with a black tie and jacket or coat, the colour often represents evil and a sense of death which is about to follow.
 The final characters that have to be represented are the assassins which are myself and Jack. A change has to be made from everyday office workers to highly trained assassins who are in search of a big pay off. Assassins have to be shown to the audience as serious, dark characters, perhaps dressed in all black suits with added extras such as dirty faces or balaclavas or even hoods covering the face. It is extremely vital that the two assassins are portrayed correctly, matching the thriller genre perfectly.

All of the following things must be considered in the making of our opening title sequence, and i feel that if the costumes are effective then our overall sequence will be aesthetically pleasing and appear professional to the audience. A big issue when making a Thriller film  brought up by Jake Hume and Simon Frame is how the film effects the audience, and so if they are focused on the plot rather than choice of clothing this means we chose the correct miss-en-scene elements in the pre-production stage.