Sample Paper
The Truman Show
Production design in The Truman Show visually communicates the world of Truman Burbank through costumes and location.
Costumes
Costumes play an important role to help explain Truman’s character. The combination of colors, textures, and materials paint Truman as a likable person.
When Truman first leaves his house, he is dressed in a brown wool tweed sports jacket, beige khaki pants, a yellow sweater vest, and a warm blue/green shirt. Brown, yellow, beige, and green are all warm colors. The sweater vest is fuzzy in its texture. We know from this costume at the beginning that Truman is a warm fuzzy guy.
When Truman gardens, he is dressed in a cotton striped shirt of red, mustard yellow, and olive green, with red shorts — all warm colors. He later wears a yellow jacket, with a red diamond patterned sweater vest with beige pants. Again, all are warm colors.
Red is a color that is repeated throughout the film. Even at the end, when Truman is dressed all in black, he wears red tennis shoes. As a child, when his father supposedly drowns, Truman wears a read striped shirt. More than once, Truman even wears red socks. Since red is the color the eye naturally gravitates towards on film, the costume designer could have used that color to make Truman the focal point in each of those scenes. After all, Truman is the star of the television show.
At the dance, Truman is also the central focus when all the other men are dressed in black tuxedos, and Truman is in a white dinner jacket. His costume sets him apart from everyone else. While Truman’s costumes are in good condition, the style choices suggest that Truman is a person of middleclass socio-economics not to be taken too seriously: in other words, Truman is not a dark brooding character. For instance, he wears a plaid bowtie to a formal dance. In another scene, he wears a red t-shirt over a grey polo shirt with red plaid shorts. When Truman follows his wife to work, he wears a red, yellow, blue, and white plaid shirt, and shorts, with a tweed jacket over top. Many other choices of clothing that he uses in odd combinations suggest that Truman doesn’t take his “look” too seriously.
The use of stripes is repeated throughout most of Truman’s costumes. He wears striped shirts, striped ties, striped vests and even a striped jacket. In earlier days, convicts in penitentiaries wore striped clothing to identify them as prisoners if they ever escaped to the outside world. The constant use of stripes for Truman suggests that he is a prisoner of this make-believe world.
Location
The location that represents Truman’s home of Seahaven, paints a picture of nurturing through the materials of bricks, siding, and wood. The roads are red brick instead of black concrete. Red is a warm color, and bricks are associated with fireplaces and brick ovens — both warm associations. The houses not only have a uniformity of similar designs, they all have pastel-colored siding, suggestive of wood. The yards have white picket fences and trees. None of the buildings are skyscrapers, which creates a feeling of openness. Truman’s world is warm and inviting. Truman lives in a warm, friendly town, and wears warm fuzzy clothing.
We like Truman — the designer tells us so. (555 words)