Welcome back bloggers! Today's post will be discussing the first major change we have made to our opening for "Super"-Hero: Costume and prop changes! In particular, Power-Man's costume got a major facelift right before filming and we slightly tweaked the design of one of the robbers. We also had to improvise a little with props.
Power-Man's OFFICIAL design:
In Power-Man's case, originally we had taken inspiration from comic book superheroes such as Robin and Superman for what we wanted Power-Man's final design to look like. Then as we were getting the final preparations done for filming, one of which included getting the actual costumes, we ran into the issue of not being able to acquire ANY Robin or Superman costume pieces before film day. As such, we had to work with what few items we were able to get in time for filming since none of us wanted to delay shooting any further. We were able to get a white cape and red tights from Party City, and a red shirt and white boxers from Walmart on Thursday from our group member Yulian. With these materials, as well as a black cardboard P on the chest which isn't pictured here, we were able to construct Power-Man's final appearance for filming on Saturday afternoon. In a recent blog about color in our film, I mentioned that Power-Man had undergone a costume change and thus now has new colors that portray different meanings. Now that our first day of filming has concluded (which WILL be discussed very soon!), I can confidently say that this new costume was better than the Robin and Superman mix idea. Not many superheroes have a red/white/black color scheme, and along with using one of the robber eye masks, we were able to create a superhero that looks straight out of a comic book but with enough originality that our opening won't feel like a parody of a Hollywood film!
Robber redesign:
Although this looks unusual for a redesign at first, there was a reason for it. We had acquired some animal masks just in case we wanted to put our own twist on the design of the robbers, but in the end we decided that only one robber would be wearing an unusual mask, which is pictured here. We decided this because although it would have been easier to just film with all robbers wearing the same black eye masks and hoodie, making one of them stand out from the group allows us to show a unique chemistry between the robbers. These are criminals who are rushing to break into a seemingly rich house as fast as possible, and the only thing on their mind is grabbing anything valuable and scrambling out the house within the first 5 minutes of being there. With this in mind, we tweaked the opening scene by adding a small segment where the other 2 robbers react to their partner choosing a rather unwise mask to wear during an armed robbery. This allows us to build just enough of a relationship with the robbers to show that they aren't just mindless goons who rob all day, and introduce room for more development into their individual personalities, which will be shown slightly throughout the course of the opening.
One small change that we made last minute was to props for the robbers. We got the money bags easily, but the plastic bats proved to be unexpectedly difficult to get in time. The props we WERE able to get included a single plastic bat, a hammer, and a crowbar. This change actually helped us make a much more convincing opening scene, since using a crowbar to crack open a door is MUCH more believable than using a lockpick, especially with the behavior of the robbers in question. The single plastic bat served the exact purpose it was designed to do in the storyboard, that being knocking out the homeowner and eventually being used on Power-Man. The only prop that we haven't found a specific use for yet is the hammer, but we can always improvise if we want to give it a unique purpose.
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