Props, Costume and Makeup

Props

The props we needed (in order of appearance) were:

• Newspaper
• Headlining the murder Kevin is responsible for. This would obviously have to be custom made, however we did not have the resources to make a realistic broadsheet newspaper and did not want a prop which was obviously false. Instead we created an electronic newspaper using an online generator, for Kevin to read on a newspaper. This works just as effectively and reflects the digital age. 
Newspaper from jessfareymedia
• Murder weapon
• We chose to use a knife as the murder weapon. We wanted to use a knife or a gun because they were the most effective onscreen, and of the two a knife would be easiest to access. We used a kitchen knife (we took care to wrap it up to avoid as many safety issues as possible).
• Psychiatrist's certificate
• We wanted to keep this scene silent, however we had to make it clear to the audience what was going on and who Kevin was talking to. The simplest way to do this was to include in the scene a certificate of psychiatry within the office. We created this by photoshopping an online template and then framing it on the shelf.
  
• Cigarettes
• We did consider making our own fake cigarettes using herbs and rolling papers (as shown in the YouTube tutorial here), however this was not practical in terms of time and money, and the actress was concerned about the taste. Instead our lead actress consented to smoking in the film. 
• Bloody sheets
• To achieve this, we splattered old bed sheets with fake blood we made at home, using ingredients such as red food dye, syrup and ketchup.
  
• Medicine
• We simply needed to show that Kevin was on prescription drugs, and were able to use normal, over the counter medicines at home to give this illusion. We simply filmed these scenes in front of our own bathroom cabinets.
• Psychiatric report
• We created our own medical report on Microsoft Word using using images we had seen on google as a rough guide- for example typing up a typical medical history, and then attaching a handwritten analysis by a psychiatrist, purposely drawing attention to words that were relevant to the plot to enhance the audience's understanding of the narrative.

Costume

Costume from jessfareymedia

Femme Fatale: Makeup and Hair

Makeup was very important when styling the femme fatale, as we noticed from watching early film noirs that there was a very obvious style; dark eyes, pale skin and red lips. Whilst we wanted to follow this convention, we also didn't want the makeup to look too classic, but a more modern look for the audience to relate to. We searched the internet for inspiration, and decided to use winged eyeliner, which is currently popular and makes the eyes look darker and keep the skin as natural as possible. The lipstick we chose is a retro red and matte which is more traditional. This was especially important as the lipstick is important iconography. Because red connotes danger and blood, the femme fatale only wears it when she shows her true colours and turns Kevin into the police- at the beginning she looks a bit more natural and fresh faced, so we think she is innocent.

Inspiration

Some of the makeup we used

Again with the hair, we wanted to do a modern look but take inspiration from old film noirs. Classic noirs were filmed in the 1940's-1950's and hair was often worn curled in victory rolls. We decided that while we would also have curly hair, we would style it in a more natural way, taking inspiration from the contemporary beach waves trend (as the victory rolls would be more dated).

Victory Rolls, Beachy Waves and Violet's hair