Planning Characters - Miss Miller

The purpose of characters in a film is to help the audience relate to the narrative and to help them stay engaged in the film by using characters they can relate to. Additionally, if there were no characters in a film then the narrative would not make sense ad there would not be a plot for the audience to follow. Therefore, planning our characters is important to do before filming our sequence so that we know what we want the characters to look like as well as how we want them to be portrayed.

My Groups Characters Planning Sheet

Our first character is a female victim, she is age 17 and her name is Jenny. She is a sixth form student who does well in school, achieving the highest grades. In our thriller sequence she will be wearing a dress, which is white. By her wearing a dress it fits in with her being clever as it is a smart outfit for a young women to wear. Additionally, by her wearing the colour white it symbolises to the audience her purity and her innocence, which lets the audience know she is the victim and that she is vulnerable. Jenny’s figure and structure is quite small and petite, this emphasises that compared to her the antagonist is stronger and more dominant and as a result she wont be able to fight back. Moreover, Jenny’s character is stereotypical to the thriller genre as she is presented as being weak, vulnerable, hopeless and innocent because of this she is then an antagonist’s obvious target within a thriller. Furthermore, this then causes the audience to build a strong relationship with Jenny’s character as they feel sorry for her and fear for her life knowing she is the victim and that she is going to be killed at some point by the antagonist.

My other character for our thriller sequence is the male antagonist, age 32 and because he is unknown the victim and the audience he does not have a name. In comparison to the victims clothing, the antagonist will be wear a black tracksuit with his hood up, this is intimidating towards the victim and the audience. Also, the colour black resembles dark, power, evil and death. This is conventional to the thriller genre and the antagonist as he has a twisted evil and dark mind, this leads him to carry out a murder as well as this he also has power over his victims. Moreover, he will wear a clown mask to keep his identity hidden so neither the audience nor the victim knows who the antagonist is throughout the sequence. This creates and enigma for the audience as they want to know who he is and what his motives are, which is conventional to the genre. The antagonist’s character is mentally unstable this is due to the fact he did not have a good up bringing as he did not have a father figure to look up to when he was a young child. This leads to why he’s victims and all females and as to why he has many pictures of women in his room because when he was young he was always around females. Furthermore, the antagonist is a stereotypical character to the thriller genre as his murder weapon is a knife, this is a common weapon used by antagonist throughout thrillers. Also, he will be portrayed to the audience as a stereotypical character as when he knocks out and kidnaps the young women or when he kills her he does not hesitate, as he is not afraid to her hurt and actually enjoys doing this. In addition, his character wears a mask, this creates tension for the audience as they don’t know his true identity and so it keeps the audience engaged, as they want to watch and find out more.

In conclusion, I think that our two characters in our thriller sequence are stereotypical to the thriller genre as they are what the audience would expect to see. This is due to the way they are dressed and presented to the audience and their role within the sequence is obvious. Both the victim and the antagonist will emphasise the genre of the sequence as the victim is a young, vulnerable female and the antagonist wears a mask and also carries a knife. These main aspects of the characters help in creating the main conventional elements in a thriller, which are shock, surprise, suspense and tension. In addition, the audience will stay interested and engaged in the thriller because of this. Moreover, I found planning the characters before filming helpful, as it has helped me and my group to think about the characters individual personalities and make character profiles on them. Also, with the female victim we can imagine she is like outside of the situation she is put in once she has been kidnapped and with the antagonist, we now know his reason for killing young women, as we know more about his person life. As well as this by planning our characters before we can also now imagine what the characters will look like and how they will act.