Costume and Makeup
The history of theater and filmmaking has its long and full of changes journey. But, there are two things that remained unchanged from the very beginning. These two things are actors themselves and their costumes. Who would ever presume that costume is an essential part of every dramatic production? But we always admire the great work of costume designers. But what makes costume such an important part of the theater and film production?
Firstly, a costume is an incarnation of a character. It can provide us with a bunch of information about a character. A costume together with the makeup helps us to recognize the century the character embodies. Also, with the help of the costume, we can assume the social status of the character and, probably, his workplace. Secondly, it is a marker of the cultural peculiarities. So, we can say that a costume and a makeup are the ways of communicating with the audience (M Abuku, C Odi, 2010).
Very often people misinterpret the meaning of the word ‘costume’. Usually, we imagine some Halloween outfit, something that is fancy, elegant, or artistic. When in reality, a costume is a usual everyday outfit. Of course, there are different kinds of costumes but it has nothing in common with Halloween (Deborah Landis, 2016). Costume usually includes all things that help to reveal the characters personality in the best way possible. It can be different jewelry, belts, hats, glasses, and so on. Makeup is defined as anything that is put on the actor’s or actress’ face in order to create a certain look. Sometimes the makeup can be almost invisible and transparent to help an actor just to look good, and sometimes it can be put in order to add scars and any other kinds of injuries, etc (Robert Vaux, 2016).
In our work, we would like to analyze the costumes and makeup designed for the movie ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. It is a movie that comprises a great variety of different species aliens. Here we should render designers their due. They really did their best. Every alien had it own costume that comprises particular clothes and objects. But, the most important and challenging thing in every alien’s costume was their makeup. Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou was the one who developed all the costumes and makeup for different aliens’ races. Every other race differs in skin color. It was a great challenge to make such a makeup that would be waterproofed and deal with dirt.
Still, we would like to concentrate on the main character of the movie – Star-Lord. We chose him because in this movie he is the only human which may seem that there is nothing to talk about. His costume is usual and there is no visible makeup. Still, he is special. At first, even his race matters. As the only human, he differs with his skin color. He wears no makeup, but in this case, it shows us that our character is not an alien and this draws attention to him. Star-Lord has 4 particular pieces of the costume. The first is a red coat that seems a little bit out of style. The mask gives him an opportunity to see in a diverse spectrum and long range. Also, it allows him to understand different languages of the aliens as there is a built-in translator in it. A meta-pistol that is capable of generating all of the four elements. And the last one is his cassette-player. In the movie, the main character always listens to the cassette, with songs of the 60s and the 70s, which his mother presented him (which serves as the only connection with Earth).
Works cited
Abuku M., Odi C. “Costume and Makeup in Cultural Development”. Creative Artist: A Journal of Theatre and Media Studies. Vol 5, No 1 (2010). Web. 25 Mar. 2016.
Landis, Deborah. "Mastering Film: The Role Of Costumes And Costume Designers". Masteringfilm.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 25 Mar. 2016.
Vaux, Robert. "Makeup & Costumes In Movie Production | Ehow". eHow. N.p., 2016. Web. 25 Mar. 2016.
