Character Planning - Miss Miller

Intro:

Carryout a group discussion regarding the planning of the characters is essential to our thriller sequence. During our group discussion, we described what their age, gender, appearance and background would be. Each character is stereotypical to the thriller genre. The first victim (Gemma) is a blonde, innocent girl, and the antagonists identity is hidden until the very end. Both of these characters is what you would expect to see in an stereo typical thriller.

Victim one- (Gemma)

Gemma is the victim that is killed in our sequence, she is a young girl in her teens, roughly around 18. She is stereotypical to the thriller genre as she is a young female victim, this is one of the main conventions that a thriller would normally include. This is in order for the audience to create a relationship with the victim as we went them to sympathise for her, building tension as we worry for her life. We are then hoping that this leads to the audience really engaging within the film as using a young female victim makes the audience see her as weak and vulnerable whereas if we used a male victim, we wouldn't get the same outcome as it is not conventional.

Victim two- (Holly)

Holly is Gemma's friend, she is the second victim in the sequence but is not killed within the scene. She is also a teen that comes across as quite shy. She is stereotypical to the thriller genre for the same reasons as Gemma, being a young female victim, this creates suspense and it makes the audience question what is going to happen knowing that it is certainly not going to end well.

Antagonist-

Our antagonist is going to be a male in his 30's. His identity is not shown throughout the scene so all the audience will be able to see is his build and the clothes he's wearing. To give the audience an insight as to who the antagonist could be and what he looks like, we will dress him in certain clothes that will make him seem quite powerful such as chunky army boats and a long thick coat. The reason for this is we want to get the audience thinking about what is about to happen, knowing that the victims wouldn't have a chance in surviving if he was to approach them. This is stereotypical to a thriller as the antagonist is male and not female, it shows the power that the male has over the female, and as his identity is hidden it creates enigma, helping the audience to engage within the film as they want to find out who the antagonist is, this builds tension as when the antagonist is finally revealed within the film, it leaves the audience shocked.

Conclusion:

We as a group sat down and considered what our 3 characters were going to be like. It took a lot of thought as we tried to make the characters be as conventional to the thriller genre as possible in order to making it successful. We think that using 2 young female victims is a good choice as it represents them as being vulnerable and scared and we want the audience to be able to see this for this to feel sympathy.  It was also the right idea to use a male antagonist rather than a female as it gives an insight on the audience about what is likely to happen, if the antagonist was in fact female it would make the audience wonder what will happen as it could go either way.