Character Introductions
First Impression matter — a lot!
The first time you show a character to your audience you leave an imprint in their minds. How do you want them to react to him or her from that point of the story onward? Are you properly directing your audience’s attention to the essential aspects of your character? You only get one shot to exhibit your precious main man or gal; let’s make memorable!
First off, lets us remember that film is primarily a visual medium, that means we will get our primary character’s cues from what he or she looks like, and what they do and say. In a book, you might have the inner monologue tool to explore who a character is. In cinema, you don’t (usually).
How they act and react to what’s going on around them will tell the audience who the character is.
“It’s not who we are, but what we do that defines us.” — Batman.
Solid screenwriting advice from The Dark Knight, as always.
Let’s watch a clip:
Fantastic scene. We get almost all the information we need about Jack Sparrow in that brief interaction in the boat. He is a smart, careless, charismatic and resourceful pirate of which we want to know more. Perfect. Just what a character presentation should be like.
The context we chose for the first time the viewers meet a character is vital. We want to make it interesting. Their surroundings can tell us a lot about who they are, and how they react to it will give a solid first impression without revealing everything.
Unexpected situations and problems give characters opportunities to reveal to us who they truly are. A character waking up and going to brush their teeth is OK, but what if we start with the character reacting to something different or really important? That will tell us more about them, and it will probably be more exciting for the audience too!
The first scene with Neo in The Matrix does just that. The first two or three shots tell us who the character is without saying a single word. He is a super-tech-nerd surrounded by computers. Then words appear on his screen addressing him directly. This is unexpected to the viewer, but the way Neo reacts to the text tells us that it’s surprising for him too.
A mystery for both audience and main character. Empathy.
Then there’s a knock a the door — We discover that Neo is not only a super-nerd he is also some sort of techno-dealer. A hacker! Then he interacts with the customers and Neo’s dialogue reveals he’s still thinking about that mysterious message in his screen
“Follow the white rabbit.”
BOOM! He discovers the white rabbit tattoo on the shoulder of one of the customers and decides to go out with them.
3-minute scene and we know that Neo is a lonely hacker in search for something… and he will go after whatever clue to get it.
After that first scene, we get a great sense of who the character is. He becomes an excellent anchor for the viewer. Someone to follow into an incredible story.
Another important aspect of character introduction we need to learn how to balance is “mystery.” A great character can be introduced with a shroud of mystery and danger around him, like Aragorn in Lord of The Rings, but that works because Aragorn is not the main character. Could you introduce Frodo the same way? Nope
Enigmatic characters are fun when they are surrounding the main character. If the main character is enigmatic and mysterious, that means we are just delaying the introduction, and no character growth can happen until we’ve introduced the character and its flaws. Significant growth in a mysterious figure could be confused with a character reveal, which is very different than growth.
Growth =/= Reveal.
While we are in the subject of growth and character flaws, you don’t have to show the character’s weaknesses the first time we meet them; it might be too much information for the viewer.
The first time we show a character we have to focus on:
- Where they are
- What they are doing
- What happens that reveals to us who they truly are.
If we get those three things down, we got ourselves a fine character introduction!
