Dyer proposes the ten signifiers of character in film:

Audience foreknowledge: The spectator comes to the film with preconceptions about a character, based on the following:

• Familiarity with the story, particularly with films based on books (e.g., Gone with the Wind).
• Familiar characters that exist across a span of films (e.g., Tarzan, Dracula, James Bond)
• Promotion of the film in the media and in theaters: advertising in the press and on television, trailers.
• Star/Genre expectations.
• Criticism and reviews.

Name of the character: The name labels the character and may suggest character traits: class and ethnic background. (e.g., Stanley Kowalski vs. Blanche Dubois).

Appearance suggests personality:

• The physiognomy of actor/character often corresponds to cultural opposition, such as old/young, sensitive/crude, etc. Types of faces can become generic: the mother figure, the intellectual, the coward, etc.
• Dress: clothes and aspects of dress such as hair style and accessories are culturally coded and assumed to be indicative of personality. Dress places character in historical period, age group, class, occupation, etc.
• The star image impacts our reading of character.

Objective correlatives (character suggested by setting and objects):

• Decor and setting: a character’s environment may be seen as expressing a character’s personality.
• Editing can associate a character with other images.
• Symbolism: the character is associated with symbolic objects within the frame (e.g., Norman Bates/birds of prey).
• Character’s attitude and control over things (e.g., different way of holding a gun in westerns)

Speech of character: Characters are suggested by what they say and how they say it. Direct commentary: what a character says about himself; indirect commentary: what a character betrays about himself. (The spectator tends to give more credence to the indirect.) Special case of the voice-over narration by a character: the position of narration tends to lend credence to the commentary.

Speech of others: What other characters say about a character and how they say it. (Belief is again problematic.)

Gesture: A character’s gestures reveal personality. There are voluntary gestures which are socially regulated; there are involuntary gestures which give unintended revelation.

Action: What the character does in the plot.

Structure: The character’s function in the plot.

Mise-en-scène: film uses the rhetoric of lighting, color, framing, composition, placement of actors, choice of angle, etc.

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