Affluence was a main factor in fashion. Darker colours such as greys, olive greens and black were worn by most men who had money. Their clothes consisted of: a double breasted frock coat, narrow trousers, white shirt with stiff standing up collar, large bow tie, gloves, cane, hair oiled back with sideburns, colourful waistcoat and ankle boots.
Women with money wore: dresses in nice colours such as lilacs, blue and reds, a tight fitting jacket with two lower flaps edged with lace, petticoat, shawl, caps, parasols and dainty low heeled shoes. Also they wore cages under their dresses to give their dresses a more uplifted look about them.
Servants wore very general types of clothes, women wearing black a white cap and apron over a plain long black dress. The men or boys wore a waistcoat and trousers with a plain white shirt.
This is only a small look into the costumes as when we know who and what we need for the production, we will look further into the subject and what it consists of. This, I think will suffice for the moment whilst we work out what we want included in this film!
These are a couple of pictures of the famous Pride and Prejudice, set in the time we are looking at possibly doing if we feel it is capable to pull off.
Language used I feel in modern films such as Pride and Prejudice mix modern with 19th century. Language reflects how society has changed and over the past two hundred years, many laws about women have changed. This goes into my English course as I am studying language change, which is very handy as it links in perfectly. Over the past hundred years laws like against beating your wife and equal rights has come into play. However back then, women had to be married off as soon as they were of age. Reading and studying books such as Jane Eyre and watching programmes such as Emma and films like Pride and Prejudice, it is obvious that women and men refer to each other through their last name and status’ such as ‘Miss, Mrs or Mr’. It is also a very upper class language, with idioms not used in modern day language found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_19th_century_English_language_idioms.
My research uncovered a borrowing of Latin and French words such as:
• Opprobrium meaning a disgrace, which is Latin• Propensities meaning Latin for confident
• Tabernacle Hebrew for a dwelling place for divine presence
Also there are many archaisms in the language:
• Alas – sorrow
• Festoons – string or garland
• Ere – before
I will have to be careful as many word have broadened, been clipped or changed their meaning over time like:
• Borne – born
• Arrested – broadened to an authoritative meaning
• Missis – Misses
Therefore whilst writing the script I will have to think about the different language changes and society changes.
Side note: Also downloaded a new programme called Celtx to practise my scriptwriting on, and it will hopefully aid me in getting my perfect script and teach me ways to get it really up to scratch! I will Blog about it at a later date, see how I am getting on!
