challenge
CHARACTER TYPES
The film industry is still somewhat severely lacking a female body representative, with only 29% comprising that of females having major roles and 30% of all speaking characters (figures from variety.com) and that being the same figures as 2013. This is evident of the stereotypes and conventions which the protagonist is still fulfilled by a typical male role, demonstrating that there is still a rigid system of patriarchy in place even today. However, it must be noticed that in recent years there has been great pivotal change where there is a growth in female taking the main roles as being alpha females, like Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen, Scarlett Witch and Beatrice Prior. Each and every one of these real text examples are challenging the stereotypes and conventions, astoundingly they all share a common trait: they all characters from postmodern films. Postmodernism has very much become vehicle in which it has progressed the role of femininity in film, actively keeping to ‘there is no truth’ in conventions even in character types. Therefore we went to reject their role as damsel in distress, (Propp) often as a vulnerable princess type character like Louis Lane (Man of Steel) and Elena Gilbert (Vampire Diaries) as mentioned in ‘Representation of Character types Research’ whom are weak to male counterparts so that they can always be rescued. Not only this, it is the love that the heroines have for these damsels which becomes the achilles – the fatal flaw (Domaille). This is a pessimistic negative representation of females as weak spots of males.
From the initial stages of planning of our trailer we knew we wanted to reject such conventional stereotypes, hence we incorporated a strong potential alpha female role, Clary Dale, who beholds telekinetic powers. As I learnt about ‘Black Widow’ from Marvel’s ‘Avengers’ I located that the producers made her to be socially aware of her demographic within society in the interrogation scene which the producers comment on societal representations of woman being weak still remains as she was so easily able to play such a persona to the Russians. She manipulated the antagonists in this scene with utilisation of costume and make-up to act weak. Really Widow was attaining information from the spies. We infused this to our own productions by having a character transformation in the narrative of the trailer showing her to be vulnerable to the strongest character there against the male counter-part Dr Corvus who had been restraining her.
Costume & make-up
To be able to further challenge the stereotypes we needed to disregard the usage of the conventional tools which create female characters to be seen as innocent and weak by changing the costume and make-up that create this stereotypes for both our protagonist and antagonist the head agent. Sometimes a major female role to engage the male audience predominantly see tight clothing, or cleavage to appease the tastes and very much has the ‘male gaze’ like Lara Croft with her shorts and cami top or tight leather. We disregard these types of clothing. Here is how we challenged the costume and make-up conventions:
The Protagonist – Clary
To prevent objectification of our strong alpha female we utilised clothing such as grey joggers, white top and plim soles as well as no make-up as stated in ‘Costume and Make-up Prezi.’ Each part of her costume does not objectify her in any way and no make-up while matching the fact that she is a patient and would not have this luxury it embraces her natural beauty in which she is not dolled up to be like a ‘Barbie doll.’ Plus, when it comes to her character after escaped the institution we dressed her in black jeans and a leather jacket and a top of which none objectified her in anyway. This time we gave her a thin layer of foundation to give her a bit of colour to her cheeks as we needed a distinct difference of her needing to embody more life away from repression of Censor and black mascara to give her an edgy look and harsh eyes. The harshness of the eyes is to present her as being deceptive and sort of burdened by her past experiences.
The Head Agent
Finally, using the basis of the typical stereotype costume of agents (henchmen) like the Matrix with the black suits and the research of female agents in the marvel universe of ‘Marvel Agents of Shield’ like ‘Shannon Carter,’ ‘Daisy Johnson’ and ‘Melinda May’ meant that the façade we presented would subject her to a dark connotation which was necessary so that she is equal to male antagonist and not presented as a puny antagonist but a worthy opponent. Our head agent therefore was able to project this connotation of a death bringer and oppressor with her dark coloured suit but is not objectified like other female characters who may have strength yet have this restrictive tight clothing to appease men.
Locations
An anti-stereotypical location for the sub-genre of our film is action-adventure and my fellow partner located that the meadow location we planned to implement after mood board is not a conventional location as explained in location prezi. However, we saw the benefits of the incorporation of this scene in which is features the young siblings playing together (which would be the only element of equilibrium in the trailer). Soon after this when the long shot cuts to the informant over the shoulder shot allows us to immediately dismantle any grasp of equilibrium so to position the consumers in the harsh reality of the abruptness and how something can be taken so easily without any warning. Also, we highly use this scene as the pivotal point in which the tone changes as you can see how the government organisation showed no remorse to young children.
