When Alex arrived he showed us a variety of props that could make him look like a woman, however they just made him look like comical, for example he had brought a dark brown wig, which just made him look like a drunk 'cross dresser'. So we used Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker as inspiration. Instead of looking like a woman, we just decided to make a cross of both man and woman, to embody his confusion and conflicting personality. For example the male items of clothing on him, include a waistcoat, a shirt and a neck tie as well as some skinny brown jeans. These all combine together to reinforce to the audience that The Killer is trying to really dress himself up and look just right. Even though Alex brought a wig, we thought his natural hair suited the role fine, however it needed to be in a different style, as if, the Killer wants to make himself look 'perfect'. We didn't just want it to be the hair that gave that impression either, the idea of the fingernails was another suggestion to make him look more womanly.
An element of his appearance that would have to be kept in whether he was a cross dresser or not was the Lipstick, due to his sick trademark on his victims. Unlike the Joker's unique painted smile, we decided to go for a frown, to suggest the misery of the character, the isolation he suffers. Because of this, hopefully audiences will connote it is his misery that has led him to kill. Personally I wanted his appearance to be the thing that makes people who watch our Thriller Opening really wonder who is the actual Protagonist and who is the Antagonist, because a convention of Thrillers is sometimes to have an anti-hero for example Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'.
Another make-up feature we added to Alex was eyeliner. We needed to make him look like he's really troubled, for whatever reason is left up to the audience but we felt we couldn't just let him look insane and evil, he had to have some features that revealed despite his sick nature, he is still human. Which is where the eyeliner came in, we used it to make our Killer appear tired and worn, we couldn't let him look pure like our lead character so we needed to give him unattractive features, encouraging some sense of empathy with audiences. We want audiences to connote that maybe he has been beaten, maybe it's Jake that has done it.
The Killers Abode
I made the suggestion that we made a similar scene to 'Buffalo Bill's' basement scene in 'The Silence of the Lambs' (Without using his famous line, obviously). In which Bill puts make-up on his face truly believing that he is beautiful, this was exactly what we wanted to show. We also wanted it to reflect and recreate the mind of the killer, and show the damage. This wasn't an easy task as we were filming in Jake's bathroom again so we needed to make sure audiences didn't recognize that we had given Jake and Alex the same bathroom. We wanted to cover the mirror so when Alex is putting Lipstick on like a normal girl would, the audience is uncomfortable watching. However the bin bag covering, although unsettling and original was boring and didn't do enough to distract audiences from noticing the bathroom location, so we got two candles and photos of Jake and created a shrine of 'the Lonely Boy'. The pictures have all circled Jake's face with Lipstick, this is similar to what 'The Dark Night' used to advertise the film, it had graffiti of the Joker's over the Batman posters . This idea was genius as it created this sick thought that the Killer is obsessing over 'Lonely Boy' making his death, all the more perverse and uncomfortable whilst also creating more of a connection between the two characters plot-wise.
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