Key aspects of mise-en-scene: Costume

Costumes:


Clothing and costumes can also tell us of the motivations of a character. Are his clothes expensive? He must wealthy, and could be a potential villain. Is he unkempt and tattered? Then poor, or a potential underdog.

Clothing can even lead us to feel emotionally invested in a character, and not just give us perceptions about the goals and ambitions. Think of a lead character who is a cop who spends some of the film in uniform, and dislikes it.

It seems a like a dead beat job, on par with being an auxiliary in an office. The uniform makes it easier for us to identify that the character dislikes his job, as office wear can work both ways. An auxiliary can look almost identical to a wealthy, successful executive due to the nature of office wear. Furthermore, most who are cops start off at the bottom and have aspirations to reach a higher rank. The time spent at the bottom is often miserable and humiliating. The very costume encompasses that. The uniform of a police officer has evolved to become something of a pejorative within film culture: anyone in that uniform is secondary and not to be taken seriously.

A great example on how costumes can pull weight on the audience's perception of a character is Batman. In film, the character has undergone several transformations.

He has been depicted on screen as both a comical nod to his comic book roots to almost thug like. From spandex to a full-suit of body armour. What is it about the body-armour that makes him look so menacing though? For starters, it is contemporary. Given the threat, the very real threat, of terrorism, in this age, soldiers are seen wearing similar gear in actual war zones. Batman's costume in The Dark Knight is representative of that threat, and hopes to project that he faces a very similar threat of terrorism in the form of super-villains.

The costumes of Batman also give insight into his character, just like Captain Vidal's pocket watch did for him. The costume from Batman & Robin has a glaring specular highlight, which is almost futuristic-like. Yet this isn't so in The Dark Knight. The latter is supposed to instil fear, and not look pleasant. It is akin to a special-forces uniform, which reverts back to the realism that it wants to portray.