Final Costume Idea

Having considered various ideas for our dancers' and singers' costume, we have brought our preferred ideas together, creating a final costume design. We were inspired heavily by the contemporary band HURTS and how they use the dancers and costume in their videos to create mood and atmosphere. In particular, the HURTS video Wonderful Life caught our eye whilst exploring existing music videos and the use of costumes. The video is shown below: 

Looklet - Vogue Magazine

From the video, you can see predominantly the use of black clothing which is what we discussed in our initial ideas stage. The gloomy colouring in the sky, clothing, building all helps to create a very effective mood on the whole performance. 



The picture to the right was taken from the Vogue Magazine website within the 'Looklet' section where anyone can 'create looks' by dragging items of clothing onto a model on the screen. An online user of this website has created this look based on the HURTS video - Wonderful Life and the costumes used in that. We were immediately interested in looking at the clothing this person has chosen up close because the video does not reflect the individual clothing in detail or clearly. 
The use of the thin netting on the neck area, as opposed to revealing flesh, is something we will use in our costume because it draws away from the women being looked at as 'sexual'. This also applies to the use of tights on the models legs. The bow tie suggests an almost masculine appearance as is cuts the necks natural elegant length. We will not be using heals for our final costume simply because it will interfere with the fluency of the dance and movement. 
The close up image to the right nicely shows the facial and head decorations. This persons interpretation of the HURTS video has included a type of small hat with netting attached to it. The use of the head decoration distracts away from the females hair which is usually styled to look very feminine and sexy in music videos. It, again, revisits the idea of portraying the female dancers in a masculine light. 
We have used all these features to come up with our own costume design. Including our final make-up idea we have designed a whole styled look which we believe will reflect 
the meaning and connotations within our ideas 
for the music video.