Characterisation and Character

It's down to these elements that allow the audience to make assumptions about certain characters before they even say one word. If a character comes across as perhaps to un-human then the audience will be unable to relate to them. By adding feeling and emotion it'll be easier for the audience to empathises with them. Specific devices have been and are used to establish characters such as:

• What they say
• Facial expressions
• What they wear
• How they look
• Mise - en scene
• What others say about them
• Their actions
• Sound motif
• Editing

The protagonist and in some cases, the antagonist is/are one of the first characters to be revealed to the audience and based on how they act, how others act towards them and what wear; the audience are able to build expectations as to what they'll be like. For example, take Tom Cruise's character in 'Minority Report'. As Tom Cruises character John Anderton enters the building he is greeted several times by different people, interacting differently towards each character we can assume that hes had a past with them. We can assume that within the work place he's very respected and he seems to have a high stature. Once he has arrived his work station he gets straight to work, putting on the very futuristic gloves and facing the screen, he talks very quickly and with smart words that seem to be associated with his job. This shows that he knows what needs to be done and that he understands what the other people in the room have to say.

He works for a team or 'precrime' police officers John uses these special gloves to watch footage on a screen of a crime before it happens, the gloves allow him to pause, fast forward, rewind, zoom and change the camera angle in order to try and figure out who is involved in the crime, stop it and or get the people to safety. Now the way he uses the gloves is with great precision, he's very clear with the movements he makes and uses. He's very focused and determined to do his job as best he can. John tends to wear dark clothing which could suggest that if he need to be he can potentially be quite a dark character, which may need to come in handy later in the narrative because as a cop they need to be aggressive in integration scenes.