Costume

My group carefully considered how we were going to dress our characters. Below is an annotated photograph of our three main actors and the outfits we chose for them.

Above all else, we wanted to both comply with and violate conventions of the teen drama. We complied with them by giving our characters a stereotype to fit into- they are 'geeks' or 'nerds' and we dressed them accordingly, in sensible clothes. We wanted them to wear simple jeans, plain T-shirts and hoodies (in Sophie's case, a lumpy, shapeless man's jacket.) However, the reason that we did this was to subvert stereotypes about the genre- typically in teen dramas, the main characters are the 'cool kids', and are highly sexualised accordingly. We wanted the 'geek' stereotype to assume the role of the 'cool kids' without taking on their behaviours, thus we wanted to convey our character's innocence and naivety through their clothes. We felt this also heightened the absurdity of them finding themselves in such a dark situation.

We also wanted to emphasise the rural setting of our trailer. Commonly, teen dramas are set in gritty, urban surroundings and feature streetwise teenagers taking on dark situations. In order to contrast our protagonists' innocence with the grit of our antagonists, we thought a country setting would be more appropriate. As noted on the photograph, the girl's jacket especially panders to this theme, as it connotes dog walking and a simple, rural lifestyle- quite the opposite to the drug dealers that our characters find themselves involved with!