Analysis of mysterious rider

Our opening sequence involves a mysterious rider hunting down the boys and sabotaging the Yorkshire Dales annual bike race. This part was played by myself (Freddie), we wanted to present to the audience a character they could fear on the behalf of the boys, and interpret as evil, threatening, and dangerous. We also wanted this to unsettle the playfulness and innocence of their child-like bike race, and turn it into a much darker affair.

Red hoodie

I decided to wear this hoodie for the opening sequence, because me and the other members of the group intended for the character I was playing to come across to the audience as threatening, dangerous, and bad. I wore red because it opposed the other characters' costumes, and made my character stand out. The colour red is often a connotation of blood, and blood can represent death, and murder, etc, and so you get the drift of what we intended the audience to feel. I also wore the hood up for the scenes i was in, because we felt the character was hiding his identity, (this created interest for the audience, and also a worry for who this person could be) and also added to the threatening and dark feel I felt I had really already accomplished.

Black trousers

I think the colour black represents evil in a lot of films or animations, such as the Grim reaper, or, Darth Vadar from Star Wars, every character put in black is almost always bad, and evil; this is why we wanted this character to be wearing black trousers. So that as soon as they saw him for the first time about a minute into the opening of the film, when he's crouching behind a tree in his dark red hoodie, with the hood up, and these dark trousers on, holding a brick, the audience suddenly think, "oh no, he's bad", obviously the brick projects a lot of this, but the costume also coincides with the evilness of the character.

- Freddie Meade