Gaining valuable advice from industry specialists is vital to the success of your outcomes and in the case of my Final Major Project I reached out to a working screen writer and director to gain some her advice and experience on creating characters.
Catherine Linstrum is a writer and film director living in Wales, she began her career writing screenplays and then went on to co-write an award winning film 'California Dreaming', she now writes and directs her own films; currently directing her most recent film 'Greenland'.
She has years of experience in creating characters and I felt that she would be able to give me lots of advice about how she creates her own characters for her work and how she feels I should move forward with creating my characters for each of my fairy tales. I contacted her via email with my questions and she replied promptly with her extensive answers.
Thank you for being willing to answer some of my questions. As part of my final major project I am creating a book based on the darker side of fairy tales using five of the original Brother's Grimm stories, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, Cinderella & Snow White. I am at the stage now where I am going to begin designing my characters and their looks and I'd really appreciate your guidance on how I should go about creating an overall persona and look for each character.
- Do you base your characters on real people or find actors / models that best fit into the character?
- Do you have any advice on how I should start the process of creating looks for my fairy tale characters?
Thank you for your help and I look forward to reading your answers.
Rhianwen
- Characters actually tend to jump out as whole things to begin with and then I change them as I go along. It's important for me to be open to change. I don't create a big back story for characters but work out what I need to know about them in order for them to make sense in the story.
- Images are actually very hazy. I don't have clear idea of what they look like. I find this a useful approach because it allows them to change as I write and it also makes the casting process much more open and flexible.
- I almost never base characters on real people or actors. Once or twice an actor will come into my head but, again, it's important that this is just a guide for me and doesn't become fixed.
- I always think that the trick in creating vivid characters is to have one or two specific qualities about them. This might be to do with physical appearance which then filters through into a character trait. For example, someone might have quite thin hair on top and this means that they're constantly fiddling with it to cover the bald patch. Female characters,tent, traditionally, to be more bland than men (because most have been written by men who think of women as love interest/whore/mother etc) so if you're faced with someone like Rapunzel or Cinderella you really need to work extra hard to find something meaningful and deep to make them stand out. Having said that, the fact that they're traditionally bland means that you've got more scope to show your individual approach.
Hope this helps, and good luck with it all.
Catherine
As you can see the e-mails hold a lot of valuable information that can help me when designing my characters for example finding one or two specific qualities about the characters that stand out and then exaggerating and using these to tell more of a background story about the characters. I will now use Catherine's constructive advice in moving forward with my the designing process of my project.
Catherine Linstrum is a writer and film director living in Wales, she began her career writing screenplays and then went on to co-write an award winning film 'California Dreaming', she now writes and directs her own films; currently directing her most recent film 'Greenland'.
She has years of experience in creating characters and I felt that she would be able to give me lots of advice about how she creates her own characters for her work and how she feels I should move forward with creating my characters for each of my fairy tales. I contacted her via email with my questions and she replied promptly with her extensive answers.
Hi
Catherine,
Thank you for being willing to answer some of my questions. As part of my final major project I am creating a book based on the darker side of fairy tales using five of the original Brother's Grimm stories, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, Cinderella & Snow White. I am at the stage now where I am going to begin designing my characters and their looks and I'd really appreciate your guidance on how I should go about creating an overall persona and look for each character.
- When you are writing a screenplay how do you begin to develop
your characters?
- When does
the image and appearance of your characters come in to play?
- Do you base your characters on real people or find actors / models that best fit into the character?
- Do you have any advice on how I should start the process of creating looks for my fairy tale characters?
Thank you for your help and I look forward to reading your answers.
Rhianwen
Hi
Rhianwen
In answer to
your questions:
- Characters actually tend to jump out as whole things to begin with and then I change them as I go along. It's important for me to be open to change. I don't create a big back story for characters but work out what I need to know about them in order for them to make sense in the story.
- Images are actually very hazy. I don't have clear idea of what they look like. I find this a useful approach because it allows them to change as I write and it also makes the casting process much more open and flexible.
- I almost never base characters on real people or actors. Once or twice an actor will come into my head but, again, it's important that this is just a guide for me and doesn't become fixed.
- I always think that the trick in creating vivid characters is to have one or two specific qualities about them. This might be to do with physical appearance which then filters through into a character trait. For example, someone might have quite thin hair on top and this means that they're constantly fiddling with it to cover the bald patch. Female characters,tent, traditionally, to be more bland than men (because most have been written by men who think of women as love interest/whore/mother etc) so if you're faced with someone like Rapunzel or Cinderella you really need to work extra hard to find something meaningful and deep to make them stand out. Having said that, the fact that they're traditionally bland means that you've got more scope to show your individual approach.
Hope this helps, and good luck with it all.
Catherine
As you can see the e-mails hold a lot of valuable information that can help me when designing my characters for example finding one or two specific qualities about the characters that stand out and then exaggerating and using these to tell more of a background story about the characters. I will now use Catherine's constructive advice in moving forward with my the designing process of my project.
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