S number 4- Stock Characters

A stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes, but they are often more narrowly defined. Stock characters are a key component of genre fiction, providing relationships and interactions that people familiar with the genre will recognize immediately.

STOCK CHARACTERS IN M.M.2

• news reporter
• killer (antagonist)
• victims-(protagonist)

Character 1- The first character we see in the trailer is the news reporter who is played by Mary Adebusyi. Marys position as a news reporter was to inform the viewers of the many deaths that has been taking place in the form of a news report. In order to establish the location and make it seem as though there had actually been a murder there, we bought black and yellow hazard tape in order to suggest a blockage of the area due to the death. As Mary is not a member of my Sixth Form I phoned her on several occasions and discussed days in which she will be available to come to the school and film as our shooting location was nearby. On the day of the recording, I supplied Mary with a script and she helped to stick the tape on the brick walls which was difficult as they were not sticking properly. As it began to rain, both I and Mary were beginning to get stressed as we had to do many takes in order to decide the best one and also I had to film shots from many different angles. Overall, Mary was happy with the clips I had recorded of her, she said:

'I felt comfortable with what I was asked to do because I was given the script beforehand so when it came to recording I was ready for it. I hope I look good on camera, thats the only thing I'm worried about (laughs).'

The character in which Mary plays is important in helping the viewers understand what is happening (massacre) in our trailer.

Character 2- The second stock character in our trailer was a victim who was played by Chantel. Her scene included her running away from the antagonist in a dark corridor. Chantel was a useful character as she also does performing arts which meant her acting skills were polished. The importance of professional actors cannot be stressed enough as we felt that it made a great difference on the trailer as a whole. For this reason we decided that we would not use any children in our trailer due to their inexperience in professional acting. We recorded Chantel running in a corridor panting deeply and also building suspense for the viewer. As Chantel attends the same Sixth Form as us, it was easy to locate her and organize shooting times in comparison to Mary. Once we had filmed the scenes involving Chantel, I asked her how she felt about it in which she said:

'I'm quite happy with what we recorded today but I think it was a bit time consuming because we had to stick black sugar paper all over the art corridor windows to make it darker. Apart from that I'm happy with everything else'

Character 3-This role of another victim was played by Jessica (Jess) another friend of ours who also does performing arts. Initially, she was meant to play the antagonist however she did not have the right costume required of this role. Jess was featured in another running scene to emphasize the amount pf people the killer had killed. We were also pleased with Jess playing this role as she had short hair in comparison to Chantel in which we felt the audience would make a clear distinction between the two victims. We also used Jess to take still images in which we could use for our magazine.

Character 4- The role of the killer was played by Harrianne (Harri). The costume of the antagonist was important and as Harrianne had many clothes which fit our description of the killer, we decided to allocate her to this role. She wore a lace blazer, a long grey skirt which was pleated at the hem, patterned tights and reed heels. The heels were the most important asset to us as a group. As we wanted the viewer to immediately identify that she was a women due to the significance of womens portrayal in other various media in which women are shown usually as users of make-up, wearing red lipstick and dominantly wearing colours such as red and pink and therefore we decided not to challenge the conventional stereotypes.

Also, all four actors in our trailer are FEMALE. We decided to do this in order to make our horror trailer different as most horror depicts the killer or villain as a man due to the stereotypical connotations of men being strong and aggressive. However by using a woman as an antagonist, we felt that it would bring out a different side of our trailer in the sense that it would stand out from others.