Betsy Murray

My FMP is focused on the idea of the trick of the light theory and how people’s perception of things tend to change when they’re alone in the dark. I centred my project around the 1908 novella ‘The House on The Borderland’ by William Hope Hodgson, designing a costume for the character of ‘The Swine Creature’ who torments the man who lives alone in an ancient house that he believes to be on the borders of hell. My theme is all about the psychology of how the human mind reacts in the dark, I researched this through interviews with people who suffer with sleep conditions such as insomnia and sleep-paralysis, looking at how their perception of the dark may differ to others, as well as conducting a wider questionnaire asking people what scares them most about the dark. I found that the feeling of vulnerability due to lack of visibility along with the anticipation of something hidden in the shadows was the main fear people had of being alone in the dark. I translated this into the design of my costume, creating an eerie pallid, skeletal swine creature that lurked in the darkness, biding its time. The choice to film and photograph in black and white was made after studying the visual light spectrum and finding out that in extreme low light we can only see most things in black and white, I therefore thought that this was the most appropriate format to present my work in. The choice of colours for the costume were made based on the fact that it was going to be filmed in black and white. By looking at the colour wheel I developed a colour scheme that fit the right grey scale for my film.