Week 5 Lecture notes

Character

Heart, soul and nervous system of your screen
It is though your characters that viewers experience emotions
Emotional impact on your film it must connect with your audience

THE CHARACTERLESS CHAIN EFFECT

Without character, you have no action
When there is no action, there are no conflicts
Without conflict, you have no story
Without story, you have no screenplay.

When developing a character ask yourself
- Who is my character?
- What does he want?
- What is her quest?
- What drives him to the resolution of the story?

Memory
(Things that happen to you in the past and the things that are happening to you now can be a good tool to s story telling)

• Your memory is a wonderful cabinet of past incidents which you have experienced or been told
• These memories are points of references to your past experiences.o Write what you don’t know
• Memory play an influence to the film
• write about what you dont know

• Use certain elements of your memory to expand on

CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE A THREE DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE:
1. PHYSIOLOGY
2. SOCIOLOGY
3. PSYCHOLOGY

1. PHYSIOLOGY (how they exterior appearence)

• gender
• age
• appearence
• skin colour

2. SOCIOLOGY (how they interacts with the social surroundings)

• Class : lower, middle, upper
• Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, attitude towards organization, suitability for work
• Education: amount, kind of schools, marks, favourite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes
• Home Life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated / divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect, character’s marital status
• Religion
• Race, Nationality
3. PSYCHOLOGY (how the character thinks)

• Personality: extrovert, introvert
• Abilities: languages, talents
• Qualities: imagination, judgement, taste, poise
• I.Q

Interior and Exterior

Interior

whatever happens before the film starts. the elements that make the character who he is.

• How old is he when the story begins?
• Where does he live?
• Does he have siblings?
• What kind of childhood did he have?
• What was his relationship to his parents?
• What kind of child was he?
• Is he married, single, widowed, separated or divorced?

Exterior

It is a process that reveals character from the beinin of the film to the end.

The main plot of the story.

• Who are they and what do they do?
• Are they sad or happy with their life?
• Do they wish their life was different, with another job, another wife?
Taxi driver (Robert Deniro)

SOCIOLOGY (How characters interact with their enviornment)

• Class : lower
• Occupation: Taxi drver, 12 hour a week ,6-7 days earning less than 400 a week suffers from insomia. and take sleeping pills to get res, visits the cinema sometimes to watch porn , and writes about his poesonal life most of the time.

• Education: very litle, hardly even
• Home life: single, spends most of his time working , driving his cab around.
• Religion : none
• Race, Nationality : American, was onec a soilder
• Place in the Communit: taxi driver who does not have much friens, or even hardly.
• Political Affiliations:none
• Amusements: reading magazines and writing about his personal life in his diary /journal