Visual style, particularly that of the star, is key when creating a marketable 'image' to accompany the music. One important part of this, outside of the filming/editing style and visual iconography in the music video, is the way our artist is dressed. After research into Jamie T's (the original artist) style, and that of other frontmen in similar bands, we took test shots of a number of different outfits for Freddy. We wanted to use several costumes in the video and yet still be able to create a continuous, non-conflicting visual style for the character. We drew on a number of influences (see this post for more information), yet always focused on the idea of 'ordinary', as establishing a relatable, down-to-earth artist is much the convention for this genre, rather than the idea of a godlike, distanced superstar.
Costumes of other characters in the film were decided on through the same process - favouring normalcy over incredulous wardrobing - such as the Letdowns in the opening pub sequence and the background characters in the club. This is not to say however that our attitude was simply to 'film people in whatever they happened to be wearing that day', as we did focus on making sure each outfit met our weak adolescent criteria for fashionable.
However, there were some stand out outfits, such as Devil costume (used to provide a humorous counterpoint to an otherwise dreary and pessimistic opening), the police costumes (metaphor of age/maturity/lifestyle), the child's 'normal' wear (to contrast Freddy's clothes), and the girl's leopard print jacket (carrying connotations of seduction as well as animalistic threat - she does give him an STD after all).
