Planning Characters - Miss Miller

Planning Characters

The purpose of the including of characters is important as it people need to build relationships with the audience to make them enjoy the film a lot more and be more intrigued in what they are watching. Planning them needs to be done carefully as each character needs to play a specific role in the sequence. The more planning done, the more accurate the characters are and closer to what they are intended to be like. 

This is evidence of my group planning our characters:

The antagonist (played by Alfie) is a male character named Marius. This is quite a foreign sounding name and suits the way he acts as an antagonist, making him more suspicious. He has dark hair, dark eyes and is about 5'11 with an age of 26. However, this will not be visible in our sequence as his identity is going to be hidden throughout, to create more suspense and tension for the audience to feel. He does have a scar across his face which is  very distinctive to his character and suggests the rough way of life in which he leads - this will make the audience weary of him, giving them an insight as to what he could be like. He is a mentally challenged individual who has recently lost both parents and put on the psychopath register. He's out for revenge against anyone who has ever offended him - eve from childhood days. He will be stalking the protagonist and seeks her death among him. Marius is stereotypical to the thriller genre as most antagonists in thrillers have some kind of mental instability. Therefore, the actions that he commits may not be accounted for as his fault, but it creates controversial opinions between audiences asking if the actions he takes are really him. Mental individuals are extremely unpredictable and don't give much in the way of clues as to how they are going to act next. This makes the narrative unexpected and full of surprise, shock and suspense, further supporting it being conventional to the thriller genre. 

In our sequence the protagonist is an innocent, female student named Chloe (played by myself). Chloe is 25, has dark hair, blue eyes and is roughly 5'5. She appears to have no enemies of her knowing, with a stereotypical nuclear family making her unpredictable for the antagonist to want to kill - creating suspicion and wonder. She is around the same age as our target audience meaning that the audience can relate a lot easier to her as she is so alike to them, which makes the relationship between the two, stronger. Moreover, they can imagine themselves in her position and so feel worried and sympathetic but also empathetic towards her. Chloe is a typical vulnerable female victim and throughout portrays her lack of hope in getting out of a heart-rendering situation. She is conventional because of these reasons and the fact that there needs to be a weak character, who happens to be the victim so that the audience can feel sympathetic towards a character and also that a sense of foreboding is created. Her innocent and vulnerable ways could make the audience feel more of an impact as they may get frustrated with the way she goes about situations as they may have done differently. This is from the way the audience can witness more than the character themselves, so want to try and help the character the best they can but know that something bad is going to happen anyway, simply because of Chloe's nature. 

There is also the antagonist's assistant (played by Danny) named Tony who is a male, aged 36. He has dark hair, brown eyes and is roughly 5'10 and owns a dog which is with him throughout the sequence. Tony is very much known in the town for his reputation of being 'the local drunk' who is rarely out of the pub. Furthermore, he doesn't have much in the way of family with no wife or kids, or evidence of any other apart from his dog (as mentioned). Tony is also unemployed and his age and background suggests he may be reckless as he doesn't have much to loose which makes the audience weary and suspicious of his character. He will be in the forest throughout our sequence, helping Marius to stalk Chloe and from the frequent appearances of his the audience feel extremely suspicious and so begin to take notice of him. Chloe will be able to see Tony, however, his full identity is hidden. Tony is conventional to the thriller genre as there is always a shady character in a thriller that appears to have no significance when in fact is part of the reason as to why some events occur. Without Tony, Marius may not be able to commit some of the actions he undertakes. A relationship is built between Tony and the audience, as Tony just appears as a normal man walking his dog in the forest when in fact he isn't. When the audience recognise this they are worried for what's to come as they realise he isn't normal.

All of our characters are conventional to the thriller genre in different ways from their specific characteristics as mentioned. Therefore, they will emphasise the genre of the sequence as audiences will be able to recognise each particular character and begin to notice how they work and their way of thinking. The planning for the characters has been helpful, as it has made it clear what way in which the characters will be acted in our filming and also has created a more accurate, true and genuine picture of what we intended each character to be like.