What Makes a Character Sympathetic? This Video Essay from Screentakes Explains
http://nofilmschool.com/2014/06/what-makes-character-sympathetic-video-essay-screentakes
"But instead of being concerned with making your character likable, perhaps a better approach would be to make them sympathetic"
"One of the most challenging aspects of screenwriting is creating multidimensional characters that your audience can identify with, relate to, and be entertained by."
Is making you're character "relatable" and "likable" the right way to go? In this article from No Film School, the author discusses why we end up liking the characters of a movie, even if they have a dark side.
Jordan Belfort, Michael Corleone, Jake LaMotta, and Henry Hill. What do these characters from iconic films and tv shows have in common? Bluntly, they're all scumbags. They represent the dark side of humanity. Violence, drugs, anger, hateful, vengeful. All the list goes on. But why do we like them? Is it because we find them relatable? Not necessarily. Being a relatable character doesn't mean you can connect with the audience. Not everyone has suffered some type of tragic loss. Not everyone has trained in a secret organization of skilled assassins and of course not everyone is a billionaire that fights crime at night in an ultra cool suit. Like Batman, most characters aren't relatable. The audience, however simple sympathizes with them.
Even if the characters are total scumbags like the bunch listed above, the writers use the exposition part of the story to make you feel connected with the characters. Sympathizing with them and making the audience rooting for them to make the right choices. So instead of making characters that are relatable, make characters that the audience can connect with in a sympathizing way.
I have read some articles about the same topic, so, although it's not an original idea, this article does make some good points. This idea of making characters easy to relate to is extremely important to make sure we know as burgeoning film, video game, and product creators. Your short little reflection does a good job at emphasizes that well.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the topic is quite interesting, but I feel the subject of what makes a character relatable needed to be expanded upon a little further. How may a film correctly execute the portrayal of a character so that the audience effectively relates with him/her? What techniques are used to effectively portray the type of character that you want to convey? How does this connect with us subconsciously?
ReplyDeleteThis topic is important for film because if an audience doesn't connect with a character, then they will react to it somewhat negatively. I like how at the end you stated you opinion, and I agree with you not every relatable character has to have a sad story or be relatable.
ReplyDeleteI like this topic very much, if the audience cannot relate to the characters then the story line can come off as very boring. I think you did a very good job on elaborating on this topic, and I like how you shared your opinion as well.
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