Characters and Casting

For my opening I am only properly introducing my protagonist. This links to the fact that the opening is one big narrative enigma and how Emma is the only person the audience can actually trust in the film.

Emma
Female
18 years old
One sibling
Orphaned during the course of the film
Attacked but survives the murder attempt, goes on to help try and find the killers

I have cast my friend Lucy as this part as we both attend a drama school together and she has auditioned for many major casting directors, been extras in TV programmes and films and has taken GCSE and A-level drama. I trust her to do a very good job as my lead role.

Lucy is in her first year of A-levels so one year younger than Emma but can definitely pull off looking 18. Female characters are very rarely protagonists in crime thrillers and when they are presented they're seen as quite vulnerable stock women and, in the crime thrillers I researched, almost always blonde. This is especially evident in Zodiac, Pulp Fiction and Gone Girl.

I never had a set look in mind for Emma, other than the fact that I wanted her to be a young female with a slightly vulnerable, 'normal' look so that she would be relatable to my target audience and defy the generic structure of having a male crime thriller hero as I think it's important to stop gender stereotyping if we are ever going to achieve equality. This also means that when she appears as the strong, intelligent heroine it is a slight shock for the audience because she isn't sporting any particular signifiers (glasses to show intelligence etc.) However, I like the fact that Lucy defies the physical stereotypes set by these films - she has long dark hair so is less stereotypically innocent and therefore represents a stronger, less recognisable character. Mostly I wanted Emma to be a relatable character to try and reach out to as many of my audience members as I could to show them they didn't have to be anything particularly extraordinary in order to be strong women. Not having her as a stock character means she isn't pigeon-holed and makes her more mouldable to her situation and relatable to more audience members. It also makes her interesting as you can't immediately tell who she is so she is a much less predictable character.

My protagonist is white. This is not a conscious decision and has nothing to do with what the character is required to do for the story, it is simply because Lucy is white. However, in the rest of my film I would like to represent a wide range of representations. For example, Emma will have a particularly close relationship with the chief investigator who comes to be a mother figure to her in the wake of her parent's deaths. I imagine this to be a black woman to show that race has no bearing on your position in society, the workplace or your relationships with others. I like the idea of her becoming a significant maternal figure to the orphaned white children to show racial inclusion and highlight how families don't have to be related through blood, it can simply be a matter of the heart.

There is little to no speech involved in my opening scene so I wasn't worried about the accent of my actress.

The only other character I'm introducing in this scene (that's not an extra) is Emma's sibling. I teach Saturday morning drama class for 3-6 year olds so I am hoping to use one of them in this role. Their gender is insignificant to the story as they are a pretty minor character, what is important is that they're young enough to evoke lots of sympathy in my audience and have a huge sense of vulnerability. Their role in the film is to represent the innocence threatened by the killers and to make the murders seem even more barbaric as they threaten the most naturally vulnerable, innocent character there ever could be - a child.  However, I can't use a child that is too young as I need them to be able to actually act and maintain a persona for one long opening shot. They also need to look as similar to Lucy as possible in order for them to be believable siblings to achieve verisimilitude. To do this I have cast Alannah from my morning drama class after auditioning a few of the children. This is because she can act to a high ability for her age, remember her lines and looks enough like Lucy to make a believable sibling.