Thriller Planning - The Cast

This is a post to detail the cast of our thriller opening sequence and why we have decided to cast them. Refer to the previous posts on Casting and Character Profiles.

On the left is a picture of the actor that plays the main role, the Detective, Beth's brother, Jacob Warne. Although we wanted the Detective to be nearer the age of 30, Jacob looks a lot older than he is, and at 6'4" he has the right build for the role, tall, with an average, slightly more slim build. Also he was available most of the time as he didn't have any employment commitments, just University. We have dressed him in a long, high-collared coat to match the character profile of the Detective; typically in films such as "Shutter Island" and "Seven", this is a typical Detective costume, shown by comparing it to the image of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in the top right. We decided he was right for the role after producing a brief script for him to act out, mainly to see if he could recreate the correct facial expressions, stances and reactions we needed of him to show his fear and anxiety in the opening sequence.

Next is the actress for the girl, Charlotte Adams, and she is played by my sister, Ellie Weston. Ellie is 13, which enables us to match thriller conventions such as portraying young girls as vulnerable. We thought the costume for this character was very important. The character is portrayed as psychotic through the Detective's eyes despite her innocence, and so in order to make sure Ellie was right for the role we needed to make sure she could replicate blank expressions and off-putting stares for her brief appearance at the start of the sequence. We also needed to ensure the costume was correct for this character - through studying films such as "Orphan" and "The Others" we knew that the costume needed to be old fashioned to create an eerie effect, by contrasting modern clothing with older clothing helps to disorientate the audience and create confusion, as detailed in the character profile. She draws a lot of parallels with young girls in other thriller films, remaining as expressionless and emotionless as possible to not give away anything about her character, as in "The Ring" where the character is portrayed as almost lifeless. Contrasting these expressions with the costume creates a very eerie atmosphere where the audience cannot decide if the girl is the villain or victim, creating an enigma, conforming to thriller conventions.

Above are images of the three actors to play the Shades in our opening sequence, from left to right: Josh Marshall, Elliott Doyle and Nathan Harding. Nathan was used throughout but we only needed Josh and Elliott from the forest onwards. Little acting capability was needed from them so we cast the actors on their build, and as you can see they are all a similar height and build, and are all dressed in black (Josh changed into black trousers during filming): this creates the effect of there being multiple, identical Shades, adding to the confusion. They are dressed in all black as black has connotations of darkness, evil and mystery, all typically associated with the villain in thriller films. This makes it clear to the audience that these characters are the villain. They are more of a presence in the film, occasionally taking slow, menacing steps towards the Detective. We dressed the Shades almost identically to the Detective as, although it is not fully revealed in the opening sequence, the Shades are a symbol of his guilt, and in the process this creates an enigma to their identity, as to whether they are real or not, or if they are a cover up for the truth - later in the film it would be revealed that the Shades are in fact a character the Detective has made up, as in fact it is him who has kidnapped the girl - this red herring is similar to in "Shutter Island" where the main character invents many characters to cover up the truth. This also adds to the plot which I found from my audience research, is preferred to be more complex to leave the audience thinking and engaged.

I believe that the casting decisions made were effective as each actor matches the character profile we had for that role and allows us to match thriller conventions through the narrative, the costumes and the acting throughout our opening sequence.