Characters in our Thriller

Character One:

The focus of the opening of our thriller film is on a character name Eva. She is a young adult living in a house with her parents. This character is anxious and reserved which is shown through her smoking and being alone in the opening. We chose to have this character smoking in first shot as smoking is a common convention of film noir that conveys anxiety. The first location we see Eva go to is her family home. We she her enter the safety of her family home in the first few shots and by the end of the opening she is in a shed which is in an unknown location. The locations alone reflect the change in this character’s emotional state as she gets taken from the safety of her home, which is a clean and pure location, and ends up in a dark gritty shed.

The costume for this character was quite simple with our goal being to establish the comfort of her being in her own home. When the character enters her home she is wearing jeans, a long sleeved top, a scarf and a jacket but when she gets in she changed into baggy tracksuit bottoms and a loose jumper. This brings light to the idea of her feeling comfortable in her home. At home she also removes her makeup and takes down her hair displaying that she is now vulnerable as she is more exposed which emphasises the idea of having a lack of power. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve in the opening of our thriller.

Our Thriller is loosely based on the film ‘Alice Creed’. This character however is not like the girl that gets abducted in Alice Creed. Our character is comes across as more immature and vulnerable, whereas Alice is a dark, strong and mature girl that is taken which shows the vulnerability of every type of person as you would not expect such a strong character to be put such a compromising and dark situation. Our character is wearing light coloured clothing with blue eyes and blonde hair which is tied up in two ponytails. This shows her innocence and will make the audience empathise and feel sympathy for her.

Characters Two & Three:

These two characters abducted Eva. These characters have clearly gone through the act of kidnapping previously as they are very precious in the way they prepare. We made sure this was very clear in the first few shots we see of them and we focused on the details of what they were doing to reflect the level of concentration they had to their task. The objects the character’s handle consist of hammers, cable ties, knives, and other sharp objects. These props elude to danger as they are recognised offensive weapons. This creates a threatening atmosphere. The female assailant is the more dominant of the pair and this is noticeable when she is clearly ordering her accomplice to do things and when he does something out of line she is quick to correct him. In turn this makes the male character seem clumsy, inexperienced, and ignorant. The fact the male assailant is clumsy further emphasises that the female character is obsessive about detail and order. It also makes it apparent to the audience that she is efficient with a clear goal, but at the same time a sinister character.

Both of the assailants wear identical clothing. This is black jeans, black boots and a black zipped hoodie. The dark colours reflect the darkness and dangerous act they are going to carry out. The black clothing was chosen to make the assailants inconspicuous and not easily identifiable. The dark clothing also makes the characters seem unwelcoming which is perfect as we want the audience to feel uneasy about these characters and feel discouraged to feel sympathy for them. The use of dark shadowing also associates with corruption and criminality.