Character Analysis

The Protagonist

The main character of our short film is a young Caucasian female named Lucy Merrill. She is a 17-year-old student with brown eyes and dark blonde hair, living with her mum and dad. Lucy's family have moved house so she is facing the challenge of settling into her new home, the area around her and ‘fitting in’ at her new school. In her previous life, she was surrounded by childhood friends with similar hobbies and interests to her. Because of the move, she has had to disconnect from her previous friends and start her new life alone. She finds it incredibly hard to make new friends as she becomes quite anxious and shy. Due to her timidity, the students in her year group do not like her. They believe she doesn’t fit their ideal 'norm' teenager criteria. Lucy is considered a 'nerd' as she enjoys photography and reading books. She is also aspirational, hoping to achieve a profession in journalism. This ambition poses a threat to the other teenagers.

Lucy's upbringing was full of privilege, causing her peers to believe she is a materialistic person who has anything she wants to be handed to her on a plate. This is where the cyberbullying stems from. Living in a semi-detached house in London, England, Lucy and her family are considered wealthy, isolating her further from students at her new school as the school is situated in a rougher environment than what she is used to. Her peers are threatened by the life that she lives, when in fact she is not the stereotypical snobby person. These bullies pick on her because she is different to them and cannot relate to their nurturing.

The character has straight, long blonde hair and blue eyes, portraying her as a typical innocent 'child' and symbolising the brightness within her. She is taller than average to make her stand out from the crowd even more than she already does, and has a high/medium register voice, stereotypical of young, fragile teenagers. We constructed the name 'Lucy Merrill' through the use of a name generator, as Caucasian female typically have generic names. Additionally, the name 'Lucy' is short, implying she has an innocuous personality.

The Cyberbullies (antagonists)

The element of jealousy stimulates a one-sided rivalry between the cyberbullies and Lucy. The cyberbullies are typically portrayed to be uneducated teenagers as they live in a rough, urban area - closer to their school than Lucy lives, she lives on the outskirts of the area - and they talk in 'text slang' when picking on the protagonist. They pose a threat to society due to their vicious demeanours and statures. The cyberbullies do not have specific genders so that negative stereotypes about one gender aren't conformed to. It is up to the audience to decipher which bully is which gender, but this is irrelevant to the narrative.