Environmental Character

?? How environment can serve as visual externalizations of character ??

Characters are narrative focal points, lenses through which audiences emotionally engage with stories. Compelling characters are layered with complex, conflicting, and even contradicting aspects that help drive plot forward while deepening audience engagement through believable psychology.

Yet characters are not real--they are by necessity dramatics constructs economically designed to serve in the telling of the story. To sustain audience engagement, character complexity should be dramatically revealed across the telling of the story. While aspects of character complexity is revealed through appearance, relationships, choice and action, it can be also revealed externally.

Much more on dramatic character in future posts!???

As in real life, believable characters do not exist in a vacuum--they are part of their world--dynamically shaping and/or being shaped by their surroundings. Environments, then, act as a form of character description, complimenting the positive space of characters through the negative space impression they make and leave on the world around them.

Environmental character in this manner provides an economic, immersive extension of dramatic character capable of deepening audience engagement through both the rhetorical veracity of visual exposition and through the lean-in mental engagement of assembling visual clues for what they mean.?

Just some of the ways environments help convey character:

• Character extension: where environments act as a simple reflection or exaggeration of character, such as the Fortress of Solitude acting as an extension of the majestic and pure alien nature of Superman or the Bat Cave as a dark, subterranean extension of Batman.?

• Character Reflection: Using the same examples, how the two very contrasting cities of Metropolis and Gotham City reflect the optimistic, soaring nature of Superman and the shadowed, fearful nature of Batman.

• Character Revelation: Living spaces can economically reveal aspects of character including personality, values, motivations, fears, memories, and backstory. Bob Parr’s den in The Incredibles acts as a secret showcase of the forgotten glory days of his past, just as Carl’s home in Up reflects his past he has imprisoned himself within, as WALL-E’s home reflects his curiosity and longing for connection.

• Visual Relationship: Environments similarly act as extensions of character relationships. Think of the contrasting homes of detectives Summerset and Mills from Seven--one organized, cultured and 'lived in', the other disorganized, raw, and 'innocent'; even their shared office space reflects the same qualities of character.

• Character masking: Environmental contrast can be used to mask true character, such as how psycho Patrick Bateman hides his killer nature behind his meticulous apartment in American Psycho, or how wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne masks his identity as Batman through his illusory playboy existence at Wayne Manor.

Environments provide a dramatically effective way of conveying character. As you watch films, read comics, or books, pay attention to character's environments for clues of character. Notice what you are able to learn without the need of exposition. What insights you can glean about a character’s past, personality, motivations, goals, hopes, dreams, fears, or relationships.?

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