Claudia and Quentin Ideas

Once I decided that I wanted to do Claudia and Quentin for my characters, I started thinking about what television series I should do I thought about possibly doing Bates Motel, as I am a big fan of the series but struggled to come up with what I could do for the characters and what make-up effects I would be able to do for them.Due to this, I decided on American Horror Story, not only because I am a big fan but also I felt that there was a lot more I could do with the characters.

The brief for our characters was quite similar to a story line in the first series of American Horror Story, Murder House. This is due to the fact that a teenage girl, Violet, moved into a new house with her family and is very into the idea of ghosts and the paranormal. She meets a boy named Tate who she eventually ends up with but he turns out to be dead, quite similar to the idea of being imaginary.

I decided I wanted to do this series but I did not want my characters to just replace Tate and Violet, I wanted to add them into the series instead so I thought about different ways I could do this. The character of Tate was killed after the police shot him due to his part in a school shooting. So I thought about the idea of making my characters two of his victims.

I decided that Quentin could've been shot and killed in the shooting and that his girlfriend Claudia also went to the school and witnessed the shooting but survived, and couldn't accept his death so she believes he is still alive and with her even though he is dead.

For this reason, I picked the phrase 'Red Rave' for Quentin, as it echoes the idea of lots of red and blood in a shooting. I chose 'Save Us' for Claudia, not only because she was a victim of the shooting and wanted everyone to be saved, but also to show how she and Quentin are stuck in this weird reality and she longs for things to go back to the way they were.

The shooting tales place in the 1990's, so I wanted to keep this in mind when creating the characters. I liked the idea of them being quite a 'grungy' couple so liked the idea of going to a messy hair and make-up look for Claudia, also to make her look like she has been crying and not really taken care of herself, and the idea of Quentin having bullet wounds from the shooting.

The original idea behind the shooting in Murder House was the Columbine shooting, so I as to look into and do more research on this.