'The Dark Knight' analysis

For the first part of our project, we worked in our groups to analyse the opening of a film of any genre. After a while, I came across the opening of 'The Dark Knight' in which the Joker and his cronies rob a bank - how original! Because Jess was away p̶l̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶v̶i̶d̶e̶o̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ on an ICT trip, Skye and I were left to present our thoughts of the opening without her.

Firstly we talked about the camera angles and what effect they had for example:

This close-up of The Joker's face is used when he takes off his mask and reveals his face for the first time. It is used to ensure the audience's attention is solely on him, and also focuses on the smaller details of his face such as the iconic make-up.

This Birds-eye-view shot is used to establish that this is an action/adventure as it makes the characters look tiny compared to their surroundings, showing that they're in a dangerous situation. This also helps to set the scene as it shows it's based somewhere in a busy city.

We also talked about the sound, both digetic and non-digetic. The music keeps the tempo upbeat when the action is occurring, but when there is important dialogue or the action stops momentarily, the music slows down. Because the tempo needs to be high for an action-packed opening, it is fast cut.

We also briefly talked about the mise-en-scene of the opening, which was set in a bank in the busy city of Gotham. All the thugs are wearing similar costumes and also use similar props, namely guns and clown masks. Interestingly, all but one of the clown masks had smiley faces on then which definitely made them nice and friendly... The one mask that had a sad face belonged to The Joker himself, allowing his to standout in a subtle way.

This analysis gave us some good ideas of how we could film our own opening if we decide to do our own action/adventure opening. Until the next post!