Short Film Costume Design 101

Costume design is another way for you to bring your characters to life. Costumes can also help to ground your film in reality and are often what sets an amateur and pro film apart. So let’s go over some costume design basics so you can outfit your talent like a pro.

First up, make sure your costumes are appropriate for the world your film takes place in. If you’re filming a zombie movie for instance, you’d want to make sure your costumes have a grungy distressed look. While on the other hand, if you’re filming a period piece you'd want your costumes to be period accurate.

Also, choose contrasting colors that help your characters pop from their backgrounds. And colors aren’t the only way to do this, textures and patterns can help make your costumes stand out as well as feel more rich and realistic. However, when choosing heavily patterned or textured costumes, it’s a good idea to test them on camera first to make sure you avoid any moray issues.

Also, don’t forget the accessories, as they can help make bland costumes come alive. Dorthy’s iconic costume from The Wizard of Oz would just be a boring blue and white dress if it wasn’t for her picnic basket and ruby shoes. Also note the contrasting colors here again.

And speaking of accessories, pro tip if you have a character with glasses and you’re getting a lot of unwanted reflections in them, consider either taking the lenses out of the frames or having the actor wear glasses with an anti glare coating.

Once you’ve picked out your costumes, it’s time to do fittings with the talent. And if it’s possible, I also recommend doing a camera test to make sure everything is looking great on camera and again to help spot any moray issues beforehand.

And finally, if you have costume pieces that are being destroyed or potentially damaged in the film... make sure you have multiple backups of the costume pieces, so you can have the ability to do multiple takes. So now that you know the important basics of costume design, your film is sure to be the bell of the ball! And by ball I mean film festival.

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