Research into costume and prop

Costume

For my trailer I wanted the costume to be quite faithful to the late Victorian age, which saw the transition from traditional Victorian suits to the more modern suits you see today.  For Arthur, I wanted his costume to reflect his wealth. Therefore, his costume revolved around a more modern suit, to reflect that he has noted the change in fashion, with more traditional attire, a top hat would be ideal for this and also a traditional pea coat to also add to the traditional side of his costume. The pictures below show the different kinds of suits I want to be blending into Arthur's costume. I wanted Josephs costume to have the same kind of feel to it as Arthur's as they are both men of a certain class in Victorian society. The only item of clothing I had to provide to my actors was the top hat, as my actors already had black suits to wear as costumes to use for the trailer. However the design for the spirit of the story proved to be a bit more challenging.











I wanted the spirit and main villain of my trailer to have various characteristics of famous horror movie ghosts. I looked to films such as The Woman in Black and the Others for inspiration on how to costume a convincing ghost. Especially a woman specter and a child spirit. What I found conducting my research was that female ghosts are usually centered around a wedding, being left at the alter or having dressed in a black dress as was common for woman in morning at the time my trailer is set.  The long flowing gown that looks worn and dirty is something of a convention among female ghosts, an example of this can be found in the Woman in Black's costume :

As is apparent, her face is covered by a long flowing veil, very similar to that that would be found on a wedding dress. The connotations of a veil are usually associated with mystery and morning, which comes from Queen Victoria mourning over her husband.  The look that the Woman in Black was given is designed to be very unsettling as you can only see a brief outline of her face, which ties into the mystery that the spirit is supposed to convey in the film. For the ghost of the young woman I did look into using an old ball gown for the shoot. However, upon asking the actress whether she would have one to spare the answer was no, and also upon looking at certain prices on ball gowns I found that they were way over my budget. Therefore I decided to go for the blood stained dress type look. This displayed below:                                                                                


The ghost of the woman is supposed to very bloodied to reflect the hardships of torture she had to endure, so the blood stains on her top are not only to unsettle the audience, but also to go along with her backstory and also to convey how her spirit is still left in the past. Her daughter will also have the same costume.

Prop

The only props I will be using for my trailer are two candles and some torches. I will do this to add to the general unsettling scenes of the trailer, and also candle light gives me the right amount of lighting I want my characters to have especially at night. The torches will be used for certain scenes as well, however they will most likely be used for supplying an extra amount of lighting if the camera cannot pick up the candle light.