Developing a Character

End of Beginning?

  As the main part of my film opening research comes to an end, I've been gathering just about everything up to create the perfect storyboard and layout for our film intro. We as a group have been aiming to have an elongated planning section of our project, so when filming begins, we know exactly what to do with no questions asked. So, detailed research and planning is what we've been doing! 

    We have already began discussing just about everything in a group chat we made, such as filming dates, random ideas the pop into our heads, and little aspects of our genre that haven been used in other films that we want to incorporate in ours. And after all this exploration, this is luckily the last post of this very long, long week.

    I've chosen to end this week off with deeper research on the art of opening a film with the approach of developing characters (because, well, we are striving to use this tactic!).

Character Development

    One great source I found even references Children of Men, a sci-fi film I've been researching since a few days back! In this character development article, it lists the many crucial steps to think about when writing your character. Author Jeanna Veillette Bowerman discusses the necessity to include parts of your character, but only if its needed. These parts could include style of clothing, age or dialogue. Making one character unique could hold a memory within the audience and is something to always strive to have. Whether that's expressing this through personality or detail to their actions, whatever sticks to the mind (in a good way) should always be used.

    A quote by Author Margaret Atwood reads: 

"Every character needs to speak with purpose. When your characters are speaking, they should be trying to get something from one another or make a power play."

    Not only does this stick to my mind but delivers such a strong message. Writing our script is going to be one of the hardest parts of our production process, with the stress of developing a specific character, and the precarious thought of repetitive dialogue because of our time loop idea. Another article I found focuses on the importance of good dialogue and tips to achieve it the best way possible. A big thing I learned when reading this article was the importance of a pithy script. 

Sources:

Bowerman, J. V. (2020, April 30). 30 Days of Tips for Character Development: Writing Character Introductions and Dialogue. Script Magazine.

Magazine, S. (2019, October 30). Make Your Dialogue Writing POP: 5 Expert Tips on How to Write Dialogue. Script Magazine.