Main Task: Applying Character Research

Character Research: Victim

As the creative producer it was my job to do a little bit more research on the 'typical' stereotypes of a female victim. Traditionally there is always a female victim that is seen as 'the damsel in distress' these women are usually kidnapped or murdered by the killer for committing a sinful act that they believe is wrong in their own physiological way.

As the appearance was very important for our opening we tried to focus on the conventions of a female victim, this consisted of the victim being a 'dumb blonde' I say this not in a offensive way but going down the stereotypical route. They normally act very unaware of their surroundings and their own thoughts; this leads them to be killed in a more gruesome way as the killer will have lost patience with their mentality, but also their choice in wardrobe can come across as very 'provocative' and 'seductive' which appeals to the opposite sex. 

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Considering the victims are always heavily made up before they are attacked they are normally abducted from a night out or a social event as this is when they are more at risk and vulnerable . 

Now as a group we decided to break some of these conventions because we did not want our opening to be 'predictable' per say. 

Yes we had a female victim but she was a brunette we choose to have this colour hair as it would enable the audience to relate to the average 'next door' type of girl. Now usually you would see the victim wearing a very short red dress which have connotations of being very sexy but also dangerous, they would also be showing a lot of skin (cleavage and legs). We choose to dress our victim in a black lacy short dress which exposes her chest in a heart formation from the cut out in the dress but her legs were covered and so were her arms.  

Female character on set of the opening.

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 Character Research: Killer

As everyone knows there will always be a male killer, they come in all different forms from the demonic possession to a monster (werewolf, vampire or zombie)

If the killers are human, in the majority of horror films they will always be wearing a mask, this enables them to keep their identity hidden but also stops them from showing emotion towards the victim. Being that their face is covered this creates enigma and leaves the audience clueless as it also plays on the fear of the unknown.

Scream Character

Character from movie: Halloween

Hannibal Lecter 

We choose to stay to this convention and we did mask our character as he was playing a psycho doctor that was just released from a mental institute. Now as you see from the images above the killer is normally a middle aged man who has the stamina to keep up with their victims we choose to include this in our character but also making him tall and skinny so from the audiences point of view he has the main authority.

Martyn Thomson, our male actor playing the psycho doctor.

Reflection

Getting the character correct can be very easy when you choose to do the horror genre and when I say easy I mean predictable. Being that we have done research I believe straying away from the typical conventions has opened my eyes as a creative producer and as a group that you can still create the same effect even if you change the little things.