Characterisation

In Psychological Thrillers, the behaviour of characters usually represent  psychology, as the characters often battle their own minds, e.g. trying to determine what is real, or who they actually are.

Typical Characters in psychological thrillers include:
Characters with Dark pasts- Silence Of The Lambs
Psychotic Individuals- The Shining
Menaced Women-Sleeping With The Enemies
Innocent Victims-Hear No Evil, See No Evil

The Characters psychological state is the driving force of the plot line, and often there is a first person narrative allowing the viewer to better understand the characters psychological state of mind.

Typical Characters in Psychological Thrillers:

Here is the mood board that covers the topic of Characterisation in our teaser trailer.  We want to focus on the transition of our character from before he takes the drug, to after he takes the drug. We therefore collected photos of TV and Film "villains" as well as "heroic"  and "anti heroic" characters for our mood board, to portray the change in personality our protagonist will face in our teaser trailer. We focused on the character Bradley Cooper plays in the Film "Limitless"  and his character change  after he takes the drug, as it is a similar transition. This shown through the image on the mood board of a close-up of him holding the drug in his hand, and the image to left where he has blood over his clothes. 

Originally we wanted our protagonist to be a male, so we focused on looking at male characters when creating the mood board, however, after creating a survey, and asking people what gender they would want the protagonist to be, the majority chose female, so we decided to change the gender of the character. It is stereotypical of Psychological Thrillers to cast a male protagonist so we have decided to subvert this. It will challenge the audience's expectations and this is one of the criteria a film of this genre should conform to.