Planning Characters - Miss Miller

The purpose of characters and the planning of them in a film is important because it helps the audience to relate to them. This keeps them engaged as they are more interested in the narrative after relationships with the characters have been built.                                                                                    

Our opening sequence will feature only two characters who each play an active role in the sequence. The first being the victim that will be played by Kerry Boyne because she fits the description of this character and as she is a member of our group, she will understand the narrative more clearly. She will be presented as a normal teenage girl  with long dark hair which fits in with the description of all of the sequences antagonists victims as his mum had dark brown hair and he has a resentful past with her. Our victim has been stalked and then captured by the serial killer. She will be wearing a long white dress and white shoes to portray her innocence. This character will be stereotypical of the genre because victims tend to be female as they are presented as more innocent and vulnerable.
She will scream several times in the sequence which is also stereotypical and conventional because screaming ia a sterotypical female response to fear and it will portray how scared our victim is feeling.
Another reason this character representation is stereotypical is because she is a young girl who has found herself in danger which is something she is not used to and therefore is more fearful and unknowing of what will happen next. This regularly happens in thriller films as it leaves the audience feeling unnowing anfd fearful also because they have built a relationship with the antagonist. Because they do not know what to expect, suspense is increased which puts them more on edge.
Certain features of this character will help the audience build a relationship with her. Such as the fact that she is just an ordinary person; a female student. This allows the audience to relate to this character as they feel that they are similar and so think that what is happening to the character could have happened to them.  The audience imagines themselves in the victims position and at times watches the film from her perspective, causing them to feel empathetic towards this character.

The only other character in the sequence is the antagonist who is a serial killer. This character will be played by Eddie Woodley because we believe he fits the characteristics of our antagonists appearance; although he is younger than the antagonists estimated age, we believe he will look older because he is quite tall and has a big build which is conventional of a representation of a killer.  He will be presented as a psychopath who has had an abusive childhood, this leads to him carrying out these murders.He will be wearing an all black outfit of a tracksuit with gloves, red dirty trainers and a white mask. The black and white is representitive of good and evil, him wearing mostly black represents that he is more bad than good.                                                                                    However the white colour of his mask could portray the innocence and vulnerability he felt in his traumatic childhood. The red of his shoes is a connotation for blood. This emphasises on the gory acts and murders he takes out on his innocent victims. This is stereotypical to the thriller genre because he will be carrying a knife which suggests murder and danger and reveals that he is about to hurt someone as well as focusing on him as a potential killer. This creates suspense and keeps the audience engaged as it depicts something bad is going to occur.
He will be wearing a mask as it is typical for murders to hide their identity as it builds suspense because the audience does not know what to expect and it is conventional for an antagonist to be a male as they are portrayed as more dominant. Obsession is a regular theme in a thriller and our antagonist will be obsessive as he stalks his victims before capturing and killing them.
The audience will be able to realte to this character because they may beable to empathise with him when they discover he had experienced a traumatic childhood.

I believe that our character representations are conventional because we watched examples of other successful thriller films and carried out research to find out that having a female victim and male antagonist was conventional and most successful. The colours worn by our characters and iconography such as a knife was clear to be conventional also in our research. I hope the characters emphasise on there representations when filming the sequence. For example, the victim must come across as vulnerable while the antagonist must come across as dominant.This planing has been useful in preparation to filming because it has allowed me and the rest of my group to discuss different representations we can include to make our sequence as conventional as possible.