Anthony Mair

"Untitled" investigates and challenges our ideas that when it comes to making a film, story-telling is the most important aspect. In my view, the characters are just as important as the story or in other cases more important. In this paper I will first define story, then define character. Subsequently I will further investigate characters themselves; the different types, their purpose, their importance to stories and ask such questions as: are characters more memorable than stories, what makes them good, can they fit into any situation, can they exist outside of a story and is a character what sells? By researching these statements and questions through the media, articles, websites, and books, I hope to show the immense importance of characters and confirm my proposition that a character is just as or more important than a story. Along with this paper my thesis project is an animated film called “Untitled.” This film will further stress the idea that all you need are good characters, and it is the characters that make the story. I will support my idea visually by purposefully putting my characters in a film that lacks a story and through this we shall see how a good character can turn nothing into something.