Portfolio Project: Character Development

 

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CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!

Welcome back to my blog covering how my team is creating our short film opening! Today I'll be covering our character, Vienna's, development through the opening.

Who is Vienna?

Vienna, known to her work colleagues as Agent Vienna, is a secret agent for an even more secret government organization that's targeted around finding the worst of villains and stopping them from doing harm to society. She is very well planned out and knows each one of her targets inside and out before even getting within a mile of them. She at times plays a role making the targets believe she is completely inept as a mask to hide her plotting and real plan. This behavior takes inspiration from the "The Dark Knight Rises" rendition of Catwoman, played by Anne Hathaway. In the film, she is very calm and calculated but wears many masks in order to get (or often steal) what she wants. 

Example of Catwoman's behavior

How Does She Develop?

Our plan for Vienna in this short film is for her to come into the scene as a kind of silly, clumsy unserious character just coming to the diner to make a simple trade (unbeknownst to both the antagonist and the audience). As their interaction continues, their dichotomy in how serious they are taking the situation becomes the main source of humor. Once they finish that trade and Vienna departs from the table, we'll show a quick shot of her shifting in facial expression as she walks away, maybe side eyeing the antagonist while looking the opposite direction and a drop in her eyebrows. This will establish her act dropping, similar to how Anne Hathaway's sweet innocent persona changed as soon as Bruce Wayne figured out she was stealing. As the antagonist opens the suitcase he just exchanged, expecting a sum of money, he finds he was duped by Vienna and looks to the exit only to find she just left the establishment. He goes to chase after her and confronts her outside from across the street. Now, not wearing the "playing dumb" mask, Vienna stares straight back at the antagonist and puts on a smile. She has now shown her cards and become Agent Vienna.