Costume Creating (and introducing the actor of the Figment!)

     Knowing the setting of my film, I knew costuming wouldn't be a big issue. Everything I could need is most likely already in my actors closets. The only character I was worried about was the Figment. Since I wanted his costume to be kind of clown-esque I knew this would be a bit of a challenge to costume without spending a ton of unnecessary money.

    I called the actor of the Figment, Jaden Mantis, and we discussed possible costume options. I sent him his mood board and asked him if he had any possibilities he thought would work so we could work out if we needed to purchase anything. By some strange miracle, he had exactly what I needed. When we were discussing the main points of the costume, I brought up how I needed him in red, and to dress in a way that very clearly puts him apart from the 'real people.'  Our main point of discussion, though, was that even if the costume wasn't crazy and extreme, his makeup needs to be on point. Something I absolutely love about Jaden, though, is his willingness to do outside-the-box characters. He was absolutely down to do a drastic clown-style makeup look and said yes with no questions.

    This is the costume we decided on. He will be in a white ruffled dress shirt and black dress pants, but with red suspenders, Although this outfit is fairly simple, it clearly isn't something you'd expect to see on a sort of college campus, so immediately he would stand out. Again, his makeup also plays a huge part into this though since it will determine just how normal he looks. The reason we have the Figment in red would be to specifically connect him to Charles. Aside from any meaning the color has at all, Charles is also the only human character that wears this color throughout the whole film. Although people will change into it as the film goes on, that's what will connect them to the change Charles has them going through. This is why I chose to have the Figment in red, too. Red would be the perfect color to have viewers subconsciously connect the two together even before it gets revealed he only exists in Charles' head.

Makeup inspo. for the Figment!