Choose one (1) character from any film, and you will spend two to three pages doing an an in depth analysis of how that character is portrayed, what s/he says and does, how they behave, etc. Any character from the film "Singin in the Rain."

In writing a character analysis, it is useful to select an individual with whom you are genuinely interested. Your task is to examine this character inside and out. You should want to find out how this character fits into the film's story. What, for instance, is the reason for his/her existence? How is the character made available to us? What is given directly and what is implied? Can we venture beyond dialogue to measure the character? One approach to such an enterprise is to adopt the STAR system: what the character says, thinks, acts, and reacts. The suggestions below go a bit further. Moreover, you will notice that the four emboldened categories have to do with strictly cinematic values: shot composition, lighting, and editing. I have not included other such categories as Costuming or Dialogue because they are implicated in the section titled Factors. Your ability to use these factors in answering some of the issues and questions that follow in the outline below will reflect your cinematic awareness. What I will look for in your paper will be your overall cinematic awareness of how a character is built; and, therefore, how it can be understood. It is this cinematic awareness that will define your cinematic intelligence.

For many of the questions below, consider how each of the cinematic categories may have influenced your perception of the character:

Four Cinematic Categories

  Framing or shot composition: How is the character visually conveyed? Does movement within the shot lend any impact to the character's significance? Are the shot's components (characters and objects) visually organized to imply character meaning?
  Lighting: Either in a single critical sequence or generally throughout, has lighting been applied to enhance the character's significance? Is light normally distributed evenly among other characters and objects? Does there seem to be an emotional response toward the character abetted by lighting?
  Music: Is there a short, recurring musical phrase (called leit motif) occasionally accompanying the presence of the character? What feeling seems to be evoked by this musical framing of the character?
  Editing: Does the juxtaposition of shots in which the character appears in at least one in a series, have anything to do with suggesting that character's meaning?

Factors

  Exterior Factors: What is the character's name; does it have any significance? How does the character look, physically; does appearance suggest anything? How does the character sound: friendly, unfriendly, serious, comic, etc.?
  Interior Factors: What seems to drive the character: goals, hopes, objectives, pursuits? Which emotions are primarily expressed: fear, anger, compassion, anxiety, love? Is there something beyond motivations that control the character's actions? What are the character's main personality traits, including sense of confidence? Is the character ethical?
  Relationship Factors: To whom is the character significantly related? What is the nature of such relationship(s) in terms of democratic/nondemocratic, equal/unequal, etc.? How is/are such relationship(s) established, changed, stabilized, destroyed? How is/are the relationship(s) tied to the film's essential vision?
  Messages, Actions, and Reaction Factors: What does the character say? What do other characters say? How do other characters react to the character under review? What action does the character make? How does the character react to others. Is there a single utterance, or single act, or single reaction which crystallizes the essential meaning or significance of the character under review?