Planning Characters - Miss Miller

Planning Characters

We use characters in our piece as it gives someone for the audience to build relationships with and so give someone for the audience to support and become more interested in as they will be watching how they deal with situations and if they will hinder or help the progression of the narrative to a happy ending. They also allow the audience to engage further with the narrative as the audience have begun to like the characters and so want to learn more about what is in store for them in the narrative, and think about how they are going to deal with these upcoming changes to the narrative.

We have planned for our killer to be very conventional and fit into the narrative. The killer will wear a dark hoodie and mask, he is around the same age as the victim, teens, and disguises as a regular school attender and is a male. We want the killer to wear dark clothes and have a mask in order to disguise his identity from the characters in the film and the audience in order to increase the mystery around him and who he is actually is. He will also disguise himself in order to get closer to the victim without her or the audience knowing in order to increase the shock of the plot twist as they don't know why her friend has turned on her. This is conventional of the killer in a thriller film as the audience expect to see a masked killer in order to raise suspicion around him and enhance his sinister presence as they do not know who this person is and why he has chosen the victim to be his first kill. His costume will create intrigue in the audience as they want to know why he is wearing such dark colours and what he intends to do to the victim while wearing them, as darker colours have a more sinister connotation than lighter clothes. His age and gender engage the audience in the narrative as they don't know why someone so young has turned to killing people and so they feel the need to watch closer in order to pick up information in order to find out more about him and why he has decided to take such a sudden change in his life. His age and gender also creates a relationship between him and the audience as they know he will be physically capable to carry out the murders and kill the victim, making the audience wonder if the victim will be able to escape him and how, as he is physically dominating, while his age makes the audience question how someone could grow up so disturbed at such a young age. When he is disguised the audience become more engaged in the narrative as, when he is disguised, he comes off as quiet and shy, so when he appears to the audience they want to know more about him to determine if he is the killer or not and what effect he will have on the narrative. This helps to build a relationship with the character as they are unsure if he is the killer or not, as he seems too shy to be the killer, with the audience thinking he might just be a red herring for the audience.

We have planned for our victim to be a conventional character in the narrative. The victim will appear in a school uniform, to fit with the setting, with a white blouse and little makeup while her personality will be shy but friendly and caring. She is also a teenage schoolgirl. The uniform, blouse and makeup carry the connotation of the victim being an innocent character as the audience wouldn't associate a schoolgirl with someone who deserves to die, and her personality has been noted as friendly and caring to represent how she will be determined to escape and stop the killer in order to stop him from hurting anybody else. Her age makes the audience think that she is too young to be targeted by the killer, as she would be thought of as being young. The audience expect to see the victim in white and a school uniform to represent her as being innocent and causing the audience to consider why the killer would be targeting someone who, on the surface, hasn't done anything wrong. This helps to engage the audience with the narrative as they want to see if there is any reason why she would be targeted, usually surrounding her past, due to her doing something bad that she has tried to cover up. This creates a relationship between the audience and the victim as they want her to survive the killer due to her being an innocent character and, due to the audience's morals, wouldn't want her to die for not doing anything wrong. The audience expect to see a younger female victim as it connotes that she will not be able to survive the killer targeting her and will struggle to escape, creating suspense as they won't know if she will be able to get away or not. The helps the audience to engage in the narrative as they want to notice something about the killer that she will notice too to use against him and survive his attacks on her. The audience become concerned for this characters safety due to her age and gender not being enough to physically dominate the killer, meaning that she might not be able to get away from him.

We have planned for the victim's friend to be a red herring. The victim's friend (VF) will wear a grey suit as part of his school uniform, he is the same age as the victim, and will come off as creepy in dialogue and mannerisms when he is talking to the victim. The grey suit will be used to confuse the audience on whether he is good or bad and lead who the audience think is the killer astray. By having the same age as the killer it will mislead the audience to think that he is not the killer as he is too young to be capable of committing such heinous crimes, yet by having a creepy personality he will tempt the audience to think this way as he has the personality of a killer and seems capable of it supported by the fact he is a male who are stereotyped as being stronger than women. The audience expect to see a red herring in a thriller film to lead them astray in the film in order for the victim to take longer to find the killer and give him a chance to kill again, leading to an all new set of clues for the victim to find, in our film this will be shown through the VF's grey suit and creepy personality. This engages the audience in the narrative as they pay more attention to the narrative as they want to collect as much information on this character in order to decide for themselves whether he is the killer or not. The audience build a relationship through this as they want to know as much as possible about this character in order to make an educated decision as to whether he is the killer or not and whether the victim is in danger or not. Other elements of the VF's character are the same as the killer in order to confuse the audience as to if he could be the killer as he would have the same physical attributes as a potential killer and, if it came to it, he could overpower the victim.

I think our killer is conventional as he is physically capable and stronger than the victim due to him being a male, stereotypical killer gender, and so being able to put the victim into real danger that she will have to overcome. I think our victim is conventional as she has the two things that the audience expect in a victim; a likable personality and innocence that will make the audience want her to survive as she will be able to stop the evil that is the killer due to her morality being her greatest weapon. I think my characters will emphasize my genre as they are what the audience would expect to see in a thriller film, as there are a traditional victim and a traditional killer, with both characters being opposites of one another and creating suspense when they are in scenes together, as the audience want the victim to survive due to her likable personality whereas the audience know that the killer is stronger than her and will be able to kill her if he wants. We have decided to plan our characters out before we film in order to make sure that are characters are interesting and conventional for the audience with enough time to change anything should we need to.