Cyclone Blaze

First of all, I feel honored to have the chance to send questions to somenone that has been in the film industry. I'm an animation student and I plan to participate work the film industry. And here are a couple of questions:

1- In your experience, what's the key for creating a good character?

2.- Which characters are preferable for a story, bidimensional or really complex characters?

Karlamon

Here is Simon's reply:

1) "Character is really in the writing. Good performance animation can support the character, just as good voice acting can deliver on the promise of the written word - and even find nuances in the script that the writer hadn't considered. But fundamentally you can't make a superb character out of a lousy script. Character is not simply the statements that person makes, however. It has to stem out of the REASONS why a character chooses to do the things they do. That is by far the hardest thing to figure out. As Bob (Robert) Zemeckis told me, after you have figured out your motivations, the rest is just logistics."

2) "I think it was Hitchcock who said you can only remember five people you meet at a cocktail party, so there should only be five principle characters in a screenplay. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it is generally true that you only have enough time in a movie to get to know a small number of characters with any depth. Your main characters should have complexity, contradictions, subtlety, and nuance. Secondary characters tend to have simpler defining personalities, and a question and answer kind of arc, if they have any arc at all. Tertiary characters are usually simple archetypes, easily recognized and with characteristics that can be inferred."

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Karlamon	August 05, 2015
	Questions mod
	Slack Pack

Here is Simon's reply: 1) "Character is really in the writing. Good performance animation can support the character, just as good voice acting can deliver on the promise of the written word - and even find nuances in the script that the writer hadn't considered. But fundamentally you can't make a superb character out of a lousy script. Character is not simply the statements that person makes, however. It has to stem out of the REASONS why a character chooses to do the things they do. That is by far the hardest thing to figure out. As Bob (Robert) Zemeckis told me, after you have figured out your motivations, the rest is just logistics." 2) "I think it was Hitchcock who said you can only remember five people you meet at a cocktail party, so there should only be five principle characters in a screenplay. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it is generally true that you only have enough time in a movie to get to know a small number of characters with any depth. Your main characters should have complexity, contradictions, subtlety, and nuance. Secondary characters tend to have simpler defining personalities, and a question and answer kind of arc, if they have any arc at all. Tertiary characters are usually simple archetypes, easily recognized and with characteristics that can be inferred."

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