Portfolio Project 2021: The First Mood Board!

Femme Fatale... A mood. 

Good evening everyone! Today I created my first mood board for this project on Pinterest and I’m so excited! The purpose of this mood board is to capture the essence of the femme fatale trope and aesthetic. I love using Pinterest for any and everything, especially projects. I knew that I wanted to create this board to help me develop my character and get inspiration for costuming to make sure my main character looks the part. Creating this mood board has actually inspired a few other ideas that I have for this project! But let’s discuss the mood board first!

This is my current mood board for the femme fatale trope! Mise-en-scene elements are my favorite aspects of a production to research, develop, and analyze so making this mood board was a riveting experience. Starting with costuming, this character clearly has a very dark wardrobe but still embraces her femininity and uses it to her advantage. A few adjectives to describe the femme fatale are scandalous, manipulative, witty, charming, desirable, and daring. Costuming is one of the most crucial elements of a character regarding conveying their traits so I’m definitely going to enjoy developing this mise-en-scene element!

I created the collage above to assist me in visualizing a character. The images of the two women in this collage represent key aspects of the femme fatale trope: sexuality, promiscuousness, and sophistication. The stereotypical bombshell is what immediately came to mind when I saw these women and this is another element of the femme fatale trope that I've come across. The phrase "seduce and destroy" is what the femme fatale trope is about. These women use their sexuality and femininity to their advantage to get what they desire, wealth, status, power, etc., and destroy men in the process. This appears to be the overall mindset of these kinds of characters and I am so glad that I came across this phrase because it helped me comprehend this trope even more.

This is another collage that I made and I chose these two images to make it because they complement each other. The woman in the image on the left is smoking a cigarette surrounded by alcohol and money sitting in the dark. This image is powerful because of the way she's sitting, the facial expression she's making, and the items she's surrounded by. Her appearance: hair, makeup, and dress all contribute to her femininity but the stack of money, cigarette, and alcohol add a sense of dominance. Females are typically not associated with dominance so this picture really spoke to me as I began analyzing it. The question "...how bad can a girl get?" stood out to me because there is a deeper meaning to this question and it can be implying numerous things. I'm considering this being the tagline of the film actually now that I'm thinking about it! I would change the wording of this phrase but it would still have the same effect.

If you don't know by now, female empowerment is my favorite concept to implement into my projects because representation is crucial in my opinion. Women being underestimated has been seen countless times in history and is still a common occurrence to this day. I chose to work with this specific trope because these women are seen as fatal antagonists but when you look deeper into their stories and lives, it's difficult to place them into one category. There are two sides to every story.

I’m not done with this mood board! I will continue adding images and videos for inspiration because you can never have too many on a mood board. I’m looking forward to adding a lot more to this Pinterest board and referring back to it frequently to be inspired, develop the main character, plan out costumes, etc. I am thrilled to have remembered this trope because I am already having so much fun thinking of themes, a plot, characters, conflict, and of course.... costuming! This will certainly not be the last mood board for this project, get ready guys. See you in the next blog!