Planning - Considering Mise-en-Scene For Our Opening - costume and props





Costume


We want our white supremacist group the Zyklon's to portray an unpredictable look that resembles that of the Nazi soldiers without looking racist or offensive. A good example we have taken inspiration from is the supremacist group from popular program Breaking Bad. The characters predominantly leather clothing which is intentionally ripped to create the sense they don't care about their appearance. They also have significant facial blemishes, but that can be addressed in the make-up area of Mis en Scene. The character’s costumes also look dusty or dirty as well as their hair looks greasy.

 

For our other character, a target for the Zyklon's because of the colour of his skin, will wear stereotypical modern clothes. We want to avoid the stereotype's of a black teenager and the clothes associated with them such as tracksuit bottoms and baseball caps. We want to make our character, whoever we cast, to have a more stylish look but to take into consideration that they are walking through the woods, so jeans and trainers would be an appropriate look. This means we can save money not having to purchase clothes for our murder victim. However, we may look at purchasing leather jackets for our Zyklon's and internationally ripping/ making cosmetic damage to items of clothing.  The clothes below are what we want the Zyklon's to wear.

  

Props

We want our hideout for the Zyklon's to be as realistic as possible. For us to achieve this we need a range of props in the location we are filming in. This includes pictures of infamous white leaders such as Adolf Hitler and members of the Ku Klux Klan. We want the room to be candlelit to match the somber tone of the film opening so we need enough candles to film a certain area of a room to the extent where we can use a wider range of camera shots, angles and movements. These props will be used to dress the location.

 

We need to print out the pictures of all the white leaders then intentionally crease, rip or stain them to give the audience the impression they have been battered and torn and generally used for a number of years. We can purchase the candles, but are unsure for how many we will need as we will be filming over a number of days. Another prop we need is the bag that will be dropped to create the main plot of the story. The contents of the bag are not relevant for our opening as the bag will be sealed when the Zyklon's inexplicably drop it whilst pursuing their 'targets' but we want the bag to look like it has been previously used so we will use one that belongs to one of us. 

The Zyklon's use a target list which is a cork board to determine who they have killed and who they target next. For this we want the board to be large enough for lots of pictures to fit on. Each one has to be covered in a Swastika which the Zyklon's register as a kill. Their targets and deceased list can consist of pictures of people we know but their faces will be covered in the red of the Zyklons' logo.

We also required a mobile phone for the Zyklon's to exchange text messages as a secondary option ifthe lighting for the candles and cork board aren't effective.