Costumes

The costume a character wears is very important becuase it will portray what type of person they are and indicate what their personality is like as well as their class/social status. Costumes are generally chosen based on sterotypes of what it is belived people of a certain class or personality would be like. For example, a villain in a film isn't going to be wearing bright clothes, they are likely to be wearing darker clothes that imply they are a bit sly. Despite this generalisation, sometimes characters are made to look quite ordinary, so they may be associated as a family person with good morals for example, but this may be to make the story more exciting and they may actually be the person that is up to no good.

Some more examples that are more related to soaps are:

A character that is always seen wearing smart suits and has a briefcase is going to be associated as someone with a high social status and who earns alot of money as a business man/woman. They may be thought of as a family person with a house and all of this inforamtion can be gained from the characters costume alone. In contrast, a character who wears very scruffy and dirty clothes and carries a bag with them is going to be portrayed as homeless or at least very poor - a low social status. They aren't likely to have a job or a family and possibly be associated with drugs and alochol as that is the general sterotype of a scruffy and homeless individual.

A working or middle class individual is likely to be wearing jeans and a t-shirt, a more smart casual look. They would have a work uniform or smarter clothes for work and would be associated with an average paid job not something that is as well paid as one would expect a man in a suit to be earning.

Below are some picture examples of different costumes that suggest the type of person they are.


Business man


The second picture is an example of people that are associated to be middle class or working class and their costumes suggest the type of job they are doing.


The third picture is a sterotype of a homeless person - they have all their belongings which is what expected if someone is homeless and very poor. This individual has scruffy clothes and the grafitti in on the wall implies that the area is poor and rough and possibly dangerous which means they would struggle to survive.


These characters below are the cast of the TV Drama Gavin and Stacey, and are wearing fairly 'normal' or 'everyday' clothes. This implies that they are probably working/middle class citizens, they are young so they are unlikely to have very good jobs at this stage and probably don't have very much money. They are not necessarily going to have families of their own and may still be living at home. They all appear to be 'good' characters as their costume doesn't suggest they are of a bad nature - like a villian.