2. Age
In our film, the main character of our story is supposedly meant to be 30 years old
despite the actor we used only being 17 years of age, as we found it difficult to
acquire more adult actors or anyone older to fill the role. Despite this, we tried to
make our character look as old as possible. The representation of age presented by
our character is not clear as we do not know very much about our character until we
see him first walking through the woods on his own. The audience can gather from
this that older people may be more unpredictable and more likely to be more
independent and somewhat lonely, preferring to be alone than be in the company of
other people. The unkempt hair and facial hair say something about our character’s
age and that older people are likely to let themselves go following a traumatic
incident.
3. Gender
Our production only shows masculinity as opposed to femininity as there are no
female characters throughout.
Masculinity is represented as: quiet, fearful, independent and lonely in our production
which in such a genre as psychological thriller, is not what you would normally expect
from your main character. Whilst many protagonists seem to show men as brave,
threatening or destructive, our character has less character than most, his spirits
having seemingly been crushed by the loss of his wife and daughter and his time
spent in prison. The main character seems to show men as lonely and broken,
frightened and alone whilst walking through a forest on his own, showing his more
emotional side compared with normal conventions of a man being strong and tough.
The facial expressions seen by our main character in the close up tracking shot
shows his fear and unease.
4. Mise-en-Scene
The Mise-en-Scene used in our production helped to portray some of the themes I
have discussed, the viewer only really being able to determine much about the
character’s personality through the use of it. The clothes that the character are
wearing show something about him, the dark button up shirt giving a sense of
maturity and that the character is somewhat intelligent as often it is only people with
office-jobs who wear button up shirts, the dark colour of the shirt possibly suggesting
a withdrawn personality.
