In the studio were were told to create a character based on the look of a person from the casting list. I chose Dario Quiroga. I decided to name the character Victor/ Victoria because of the bizarre story that emerged. Below is a description of the character: Vic is a struggling magician that is a failure in his magic career. He has struggled to pay the rent in his tiny one bedroom apartment and has had to pawn what little is left of his personal belongings. He was brought up by his mother, his father left a long time ago. It was his disappearing act. His mother died last year of cancer, he is now crippled with debt from taking care of her, the hospital bills. He had to sell the family home. He has nothing now. No family, no house, just a passion for magic and nowhere to go. One night, after visiting a club where he was spruiking his magic abilities, he saw a poster. Female singer wanted, “cash paid” per song. He has always been told he had an effeminate voice, and he enjoyed singing in the shower. When he went home he contemplated his plan. He opened his mother’s closet. She was a big, loving woman. He reached into the closet and found a sequined dress that his mother used to wear. He put it on, it was strange how well it fit. He looked down, his hairy legs poking out from the sequenced dress. He then takes off the dress, shaves his legs and next thing you know he is auditioning for the job.
Vic has suffered. He had been through a lot. As a kid he was always the odd one out. He never really fit in anywhere, and the popular kids always teased him. It wasn’t a surprise when his father left him and his mother. His mum said that he was dead, but Vic saw him leave. He just disappeared one night. Vic had never let anyone close enough to hurt him. He keeps everyone at arms-length. The only person he truly loved was his mother, and she dies six months ago from cancer. He has been there for her every step of the way, however the debts were too much. He had to sell his family home which didn’t even cover all of the costs. He couldn’t make ends meat as a magician so he got a boring admin job in a big anonymous company. He still goes out at night seeking a gig or two so he can practice his craft for an audience. It had been a long time since he could do that.
He never got over his dad leaving, in his mind it is him leaving that killed his mother. She was never happy after he left. There was always something sad in her, even when she smiled. A sadness that zaps the life out of everything.
Possible plot points:
- Becomes a night club female singer
- No one knows he is really a male
- He becomes popular and makes some money
- He is happier, however troubled because he has to hide who he really is
- A man from a record company comes to see his gig and offers him a meeting
- Vic accepts however is terrified at the prospect of coming out
- Then is exposed to a woman
- She helps him hide his identity
It was actually easy to create a character based on the initial idea. The story emerged based on the basic premise, however I was surprised at how depressing and dark the story ended up being.
It was ironic that we were doing this exercise now, because at the same time we were developing the characters for our group project. I found some of the prompts on the character building sheets interesting, especially questions relating to the characters own backstory. However the questions I found less important were the ones involving the character’s favorite colour as it does not really inspire original thoughts about the character. I will use a similar process for developing a character for our project. We aim to develop five characters and then associate each character to a particular genre and explore the conventions that form audience expectations. This process will also be handy in the future when it comes to developing characters for other similar projects.
