Hey everyone! Today I am going to give a thorough description of the 3 main characters in our film opening video. Remember, our video will include three main characters, and these are the three different ages of our one main character, Claire, as she grows older.
First off, in producing descriptions for Claire's stages of life, my partner and I discussed how we wanted each stage in her life to become darker, as she grows miserable and angry about her situation in her toxic household. This will represent how her living conditions highly affected her character, as she starts off as a little innocent girl and finishes as a dark, dull, angry young adult. For each character, we decided to make a mood board that would properly describe each character and helps characterize differences that we want to see in each one as time goes on. Next blog I will discuss costume design, props, etc., so getting good details about each character will highly help make that process a lot easier and more efficient.
Let's start off with 7-year old Claire, the first main character that viewers are introduced to. Young Claire is an innocent child, who likes coloring, playing with dolls, and everything that a normal 8-year old would like. Introducing her like this will help viewers see how she began as a normal child. However, we do see some factors that are partly caused by her arguing, anger, and sickening household. For example, she likes Monster High, dolls who are monsters and dark, rather than the classic Barbie dolls. She faces anxiety at a young age and is becoming used to always hearing her parents arguing or mean to each other. She is often alone, with nobody to play with but because this is all she ever knows, she doesn't mind it too much. Her room is rather empty, with pale walls and a few old, crooked frames that symbolize the absence of proper parents/caretakers. Here is our mood board for young Claire in order to give a better picture of her:
Let's move on to older, 14-year-old Claire. Claire is now showing a lot of signs of depression and sadness, as she is old enough to understand that her household is one that you would not want to be part of. Her sadness represents how she is miserable, lonely, and truly wishes that her parents would be better. She dresses in dark, dull clothing, which represents her mood, and often hangs around her bedroom all day with her headphones on, trying to ignore reality. She is a good student, despite that others might think otherwise because she never talks at school. However, she likes to draw depressed human beings, bloody fight scenes, and other negative topics. At this age, we can see how young teenage Claire is becoming darker and more messed up, but still has time to change if she were to have a change of household/parents. Here is the mood board for 14-year old Claire:
Finally, the last stage of Claire is her 18-year old, freshly new adult stage. Claire is now very, very dark, and has turned her depression and sadness into anger, fury, and rage about her life. She realizes how her parents have shaped her life into one that she does not want to live in, and turns these feelings into anger that triggers violence. She stopped trying at school and dropped out after high school. She found friends that are like her, as she thinks that they are her allies because they can understand her. She is ready to move out of her house as quick as possible, not having a plan of knowing where she will go but only focused on leaving. She wears all black, and in recent years has often done drugs and drank alcohol in her free time with her friends. Her parents are often drunk and are now even more invisible than they were before. She concludes that this is a good thing because they at least do not fight much anymore, as they are always laying around. Here is the mood board for 18-year old Claire:
I am super happy that we set aside time to produce these mood boards and character descriptions because I know that it is going to help us a whole lot in producing a character that shows growth and changes over time. This will help lead the film opening into the film plot of adult, messed up Claire leaving her house into the real world, incapable of knowing what is bound to happen to her.
Next blog I will be describing our costume design, props/set design, lighting, etc. of the first part we will be filming next week (young 7-year old Claire). Yay, let's do this!
As always,
Natalia Ballinas
