Acting

As I was mainly the only character in our film opening sequence the decision about the acting was up to me. Before deciding on my character’s persona I looked at many different media resource to get an idea of the sort of character I wanted to portray. I studied the femme fatal characters in films such as fatal attraction and obsession, to inspire my acting throughout the opening sequence. Generally the conventions that consist of this thriller sub genre are what appears to be a sane every day woman but underneath she is desperate for attention and affection from men sometimes just one man in particular. This desperation will define the type of femme fatal she is driven to either the traditional a bunny boiler, or scorned woman with more of a sociological problem rather then violent this taken from my research has been important for the motivation for the character I wanted to portray.
I believe that the audience should know immediately that there’s something not quite right with her. Not quite knowing what but something. Many films that come under this convention show her as sweet and gentle at first look so that the audience get more of a shock when they see her again and the cracks start to show. We played with this common convention showing our character first to break down and the go back to the start to show the audience the path that she took to get to that point in her life. We used the watch on a chain to show this time going backwards to the start.
The props and music were also created to help with this effect. I looked at several films with character using the femme of a femme fatal. The helped me to get into the mindset of the character, I also looked at other thrillers to get a better idea of the sort of characters that are in this particular genres. We wanted the character to look almost normal, but something there is obviously not right, this wasn’t just created through the acting but also the costume and makeup. Through the acting I wanted it to be mainly about the eyes. I feel that acting; can be done just by using eyes this I think was very effective.
Another main part of the acting was the way the character uses gesture such as the twirling of the knife, this conveys a thought to an audience, the character has the knife for a reason, and this question plays through the audience’s minds, keeping them interested. These two main attributes in the acting are made more dramatic due to there being little speech, during the start, this makes up for that and the woman’s silence adds to the effect.
During my time playing this character my experience doing GCSE drama did come in handy. Thing like knowing how staging could be set out to create the best affect was very important. I used my facial expression to show contempt and anger looking into the mirror and at the picture, which also gesturing with the knife showed I mean business and shows the audience what the character is feeling.
In the second half of the movie the most crucial moment when you see the whisper, catches the audience attention and will keep them enthralled as there are still unanswered questions. The second half was a lot about body language, being under the tree and the looks she gives him while sitting on the bench. Create a shock for the audience after seeing what she becomes.