Costume Design in Sci-Fi Films

Costume design creates a lot of aesthetic feeling in the movies, and it is also artistic mean that helps director to shape characters in the films. Nowadays, when people enter the cinema, they are not just satisfied with the particular and unexpected plots of the films, they also seek the visual and aural stimuli. Therefore, wonderful costume design can impress people deeply and improve the value of the movie. Audiences can understand the mood and story well with the help of costume design, in other words, the effectiveness of the costume design in the creation of the characters is obvious and meaningful.

However, the pioneers of the film couldn’t realize that costume design plays an important role in movies’ making. Until several decades later, costume design was accepted by filmdom, what’s more, it becomes a special type of film work and a lively artistic creation power. It is well-known that in 1948, Academy Award added the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, it is the mark that costume design has been the important part of a good movie and attract the public attention. Costume design has several characters for films and these characters show in different types of films. What’s more, they can affect people’s understanding and enjoyment of the movies.

The visual metaphor is an obvious character of costume design. In the film The Lord of the Rings, there are many races with different bodily forms and cultures. They are Hobbits, Dwarves, Men, Elves, Wizards, Trolls, Ents, Orcs, Ringwraiths and Uruk-Hais. It is not an easy thing to show these things all on the screen because they are just the fictional characters in the novel. The director wants to make audiences understand that the nine races have nine different cultures. So costume design should be on behalf of the different races’ culture and spirit. The Hobbits appears most in this film. The designer Gary Gygax uses a lot of natural materials such as cotton and hemp and uses green, yellow and brown to make the shorts and jump suits. When people see these costumes, they can understand that the Hobbits is an advocate natural race. On the other hand, the designer not only emphasizes the simple and unadorned race but also highlights Hobbits’ comical character through designing the clothes with big brass buckles and asymmetric collars. And for Elves, people can find that they wear the clothes looks like green tree bark and moss, matches with the light red silk satin and high boots. These costumes can help people to feel that Elves have the elegant temperament. The costume design in this film impresses people deeply, although many years past people also can remember the special scene in The Lord of the Rings. In short, costume visual metaphor plays an important role in Sci-Fi films because it can transfer signal to audiences about the images of the story and make audiences use their imagination to understand the situations in the film.

On the other hand, scientific and technological development has a close relationship with costume design in the films. That’s the obvious character of costume design in the present film. The world in the future can be presented on the screen with the unpredictable and wonder visual experience through film visual effect. However, the future world in the film has a close relationship with the current world, especially the scientific and technological development. In the 1980s, the film The Superman shaped a hero role as a rewarding virtue and punishing vice in the daily life. Of course, many people in the present think that it’s a funny appearance with tights of red and blue, but in the past, this image showed that what’s science fiction character in people’s mind and the image helped people know that Superman is the person who has no different appearance with common people but with super power. But afterward, another image also has the tights appears in the people’s eye. She is Catwoman in the film The Batman. Catwoman always wears the shiny black tights and blinder, shapes an image between the cat and woman. The costume design helps people to imagine that the characters and special ability of this girl. When she appears, the story enters into another wonderful plot and even more beautiful and attractive. Her clothes are the same color with Batman, so it can help people understand the relationship between her and Batman. They are both the heroes in this film. The costume design of Catwoman not only indicates that people have higher imagination about the super power and science, but also shows the development of clothes technology because more high-technological materials have been used in film costume and make the visual effect more cool than the past, just like people always think that Catwoman is more beautiful than Superman although they both wear tights. However, both the tights can show the society conditions at that time and affect people understand the story better.

In the wonderful Sci-Fi films, people can imagine the future world, space, and aliens through the costume design. Therefore, costume design becomes the important manner for directors to create the special images in the movies. In other words, wonderful costumes are a key point of a movie review. And for Sci-Fi films, costume design is more important because it can help people to understand the unknown world in a way. The successful costume design also can contribute to the storytelling and aesthetics, and it is the symbol of movie esthetic.