The Creation of a Good Character...

Lester Burnham - American Beauty

An Ariel opening shot of a suburban landscape, with the houses being in straight lines. They are all very neat, tidy and formatted, straight away bringing the idea of entrapment, with the use of the lines, we can relate these to bars, to being in prison, we already develop the idea of a character who is trapped in his life. In the background non-diegetic music is playing (non-diegetic means that as audience members we can hear it, but the characters cannot therefore do not react to it, diegetic means the characters can hear it and do react to it).  We then get narrative over the top, where the character introduces himself, and that "in the next year i'll be dead", this straight away makes questions come to the audiences mind why is he going to be dead? Is it suicide or murder? we from that point already put together our own ideas of how the film could end. The next scene is of the characters Lester, face down in bed, the lighting is only from the natural light through the window which lights one side of the bed (his wife's), symbolising that he is always on the darker side, meaning he could be the more pessimistic character. The shots of his wife, is of her always in light, she is in the garden with a perfect rose, showing how she like the rose, puts on a show in the light shes perfect but in the dark she is wilting. The fence around the garden again demonstrates being trapped and boxed in. The scene of the family in the car, allowed the audience to conclude that Lester is a non-respected character as he is sat in the child's seat is the back, whilst his daughter sits in the front with his wife, there is a clear separation between him and his wife/daughter.