Planning characters- Miss.Miller

The purpose of characters is to make the narrative more appealing to the audience as the audience will start to build a relationship with the characters which will make the scenes more interesting. The main purpose of planning the characters of a film is to ensure that the characters fit the narrative as the narrative needs to make sense in order for the audience to watch, it also allows us to create a more in depth background of the characters and control the characteristics that we feel that they need.

We have three characters named Zak, Nicole and the last is unknown as the identity of this character is concealed.Each character plays completely differently roles in out thriller sequence for example our character "Zak" plays a small role at the beginning of the sequence when he gets into an argument with his girlfriend in an obscure car park however his role is short lived as he eventually drives off and leaves his girlfriend stranded. This is relatively stereotypical as due to his actions he makes the the audience feel sympathetic to the female which fits in to the general stereotype of the females in thriller films as they are often a victim of some sort of situation. The characteristics of this character may not necessarily help the audience engage more with narrative although it may make them feel even more sympathetic to the female characters as "Zak" is a male. The audience will not have much of a relationship for the character as he is only part of the opening sequence for a short period of time, the only relationship that they will form is a spiteful relationship as the audience see the character break up with the female character due to actions which leads her to feel hurt, so the audience immediately have hate for this character.This character will be wearing casual clothes as a costumes as we need to ensure that he looks like a regular person in order to have a a greater effect on the audience as makes the audience realise that this character is a normal person like themselves.

The female character who is named "Nicole" is the main character of our opening scene as she plays the female victim throughout as she first gets into an argument with her boyfriend and short after into a chase for her life from a stalker who now wants to kill her. A female victim is extremely stereotypical and conventional of a thriller as majority of the victims in thriller films are female as this often makes the audience realise that the victim is less likely to escape as they are female and less likely to get away from a male antagonist.The gender of the female character will have a large impact on the audience as like i've previously mentioned this makes the victim even more vulnerable which is the start to the close relationship that the audience and this character will most likely have. The viewers will probably feel a sense of remorse for this character as she has been hurt by her boyfriend and is now trying to save her life from the stalker which makes this the strongest relationship between the characters and the audience.Aside from feeling remorse the audience are already inclined to feel compassion for her due to the mishaps.The background/environments we have decided to use will create more shock,suspense and surprise with the audience as the female character will have trouble getting out of such obscure settings.The costume this is character will being wearing is very similar to the character "Zak" which is casual clothing as we want to send the audience the same message which is that "Nicole" is an ordinary person as this will create more sympathy for her.

The unknown characters role in this scene is to be the antagonist through the second half of the opening sequence which will eventually lead into a chase. An antagonist is stereotypical as every horror film needs one however our antagonist is more stereotypical as we have made sure this character is male and also has a concealed identity so the audience are left questioning who the antagonist is.All the characteristics are concealed however the audience will be able to tell that the antagonist is quite tall.To aid to the concealment of the antagonists identity the costume we have selected for him is all black and baggy so the only physical feature the audience can see is the height of the antagonist this adds to the mystery and therefore makes this character seem a little more intimidating. The relationship between the antagonist between the character will slowly develop as the sequence unfolds however it is not similar to the female victims relationship as the audience will most likely feel hatred towards the antagonist as he is trying to murder and innocent girl which would also imply that they may form no relationship at all apart from the emotion of hate.

The characters we have chosen are immensely conventional as both the gender of the antagonist and victim are considered to be conventional. The antagonist is almost always male in thriller films which have seen in our previous research as males antagonists are considered to be more superior and can quite often have a far greater impact on the audience in regards to creating more shock and disturbance. The victim in this opening sequence is a blonde female both words being conventional components as during the same research all the victims were female and in fact blonde as this represented that character was innocent due to the light nature of the colour, the difference in genders makes the female character more weak and vulnerable.By ensuring that the characters chosen are conventional to thrillers this should make our opening sequence more successful as we are able to transmit the emotions of shock, suspense and surprise which are all essential in creating a successful film.