Character Plan

My short film will only contain two characters, the female character who will be our protagonist, the leading character according to Goffman’s character theory. For the name of my female character I researched the most popular names from 1994 in the uk and found Lauren as the most popular girls name, which will make my character the same age as my target audience and make the character more relatable to my target audience because they could know someone from that name. I also did the same for my male character who will be my deuteragonist, or secondary character according to Goffman’s character theory, and found that the most peopular name from 1994 in the uk was James, also making this character easier for the audience to relate to. Because my film will be a drama about love I have looked into Propp’s character theory that mainly focuses into fairytales and folk tails. My protagonist Lauren will also be classed as the hero, this means she will be romantically linked to princess, but usually as a reward. However because according to Propp the hero should be a man this is adapting his theory in some way. This means my deuteragonist character James will mainly fall under the character type of the princess, however because he is a boy he will be classed as the prince, because he will be romantically linked to our female hero (lauren). An example of this could be from the film Sex And The City, with Carrie being the female hero and My Big being the princess/prince.  

Propp’s character theory is very outdated because it does only base around fairytales and to other narratives based around quests and it does not apply to all narratives. With my genre being a romantic drama it can link into props character theory with the theme of the romance between the princess and hero, however with the princess/prince dying before the film begins this means that they will not end up together going against Propp’s narrative element of the ending of the recognition, because the hero will not attain the reward of the princess/prince. I have even shown that the Propp’s character theory is outdated in the sense that in modern day film, the hero character can be a female and the reward can be a man. 

My protagonist Lauren will have the idea of the girl next door style, which is mainly represented in chick flicks, this will make her easy to relate to because she will be represented as a normal character who could be like any girl they know. I aim to break usual feminist theory with making my character a combination of both the whore stereotype and the virgin stereotype, which are both unnatural stereotypes, to make my protagonist relatable to the audience.