Practical Task - Actors

The plot of our film opening requires a cast of three teenage girls and an adult male. Fortunately, we can use ourselves to star in the film, and for the most part the characters will look realistic. 

We chose to have the victims as teenage girls, as this conforms to the conventions of the slasher horror genre. It is common for teenagers to be among the main cast of slasher horrors, such as can be seen in Scream. Furthermore, we wanted the victims to be female as this conforms to the common representation of women as being victims and vulnerable in circumstances such as this. 

We chose Tia to be the main victim, partially because she volunteered and partially because she has the most athletic build and the character is jogging in the film. We filmed the all of the shots of the girl running in the forest next to Tia's house, and so practically it was a sensible decision to use Tia as the main the girl, as she could film any extra shots we might need after the initial dates of filming with ease. 

For the other two victims,  we used Amy and I. We did this because it was easier in terms of accessibility for us to use group members as actors. Amy and I seemed like the obvious choice, both for this reason and also because we both fit the features of a teenage girl in a horror film, both being teenage girls ourselves. Using ourselves also meant that as well as us being at filming anyway, we wouldn't have to rely on other people for the role.

The only actor we faced some trouble with was the killer. The killer is an adult man, and so the actor playing him had to look like an adult man, however we didn't have an adult man we could use, and so instead we used David. David's build can pass for that of an adult man, but if you see his face it is clear David is a teenager. He is also blonde and baby faced, which means he doesn't look scary or intimidating at all. As a result, we decided to have the character masked at all times. This actually worked out quite well, as it added an enigmatic tone to the opening as the identity of the killer is unknown. It also makes the whole scene more realistic as a film opening, as the killer's identity would not be revealed right at the beginning of the film. This also turned out to be helpful when we had to use Tia's boyfriend to step in so we could film a few extra shots that David couldn't make it to due to prior engagements.