I have been researching thrillers by watching more types of thrillers to gain more of an insight into what makes a thriller and how thrillers vary. We are making the opening of a thriller so I watched the opening of Donnie Darko and commented on the features it offers.
It opens with credits in an unusual font which alerts up because it is different from what we are used to seeing. there is then an extreme long shot panning across a forest. The camera comes to rest on a body laying in the road, this brings up questions and we almost immediately we jump to the conclusion he is dead because of what we know of these films. As the camera moves closer we see a bike and assume the person has been knocked down but he moves and sits up which would be very confusing as it is unexpected. The camera provides a close up of the boy before cutting away to the landscape again. The boy enters the shot unusually from the bottom and he then turns and laughs, this is very unexpected and rather creepy. This would pose many questions to the audience and make the character very intriguing but we do learn his name on an assumption as it comes up across the screen as he leaves the shot. The sun becomes brighter and the screen fades to white, the director does this to jump settings and time to the boy on his bicycle riding along. The director focuses on a sign by cutting to it to show us the date and place where the action is set, this is also intriguing because we learn that it is Halloween and bad things happen at Halloween. The time seems like morning and he is wearing pyjamas which poses the question as to whether he has been out all night and where has he been. The family are shown as a happy typical family apart from the boy who is dark and mysterious. The opening finishes with the boy as calm as can be walking into his house and going to the fridge like nothing is out of the ordinary.
The cinematic techniques are very important in this film. The first shot is the normal establishing shot of the long shot of the setting panning into a tracking shot The long tracking shot used as a zoom on the character gives a strange feel because it is not a zoom but a tracking shot. The director includes a lot of long shots during the opening, and cuts between them to keep the action moving along but the cuts show how the time passes as it takes him a while to get home. There is a lot of non-diegetic sound in this opening, mostly from nature, thunder and birds are used at the start. However there is some sad music which shows that something is wrong , but this contrast with angelic music as he stands up and the upbeat music towards the end. The song was called “The Killing Moon” which shows how the mood of the movie will pan out.
There is also some interesting aspects of mise-en-scene in this opening because of the book being read is “It” by Stephen King who is a horror writer this shows how the film will pan out but the most noticeable is the message “Where is Donnie?” on the fridge which seems creepy and makes us asks the question of who has written it and why.
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