Donnie Darko Film Analysis

In order to help us with our research, We watched Donnie Darko in class. These are the notes I took down from watching it. This has influenced my opinions as there is no dialog, which shows that the opening scenes don't always need to have dialog on them. 

Camera:


- Panning / Tracking Shot - This is used to help show the action without having jumpy cuts. The panning/tracking helps to follow the story line and action, and if they are moving it helps to follow the action. 
- Extreme long shot - establish location and showing the different characters.(a man and bike)
- Far away to close (not cuts)
- Panning mid-shot
- Pan of landscape


Sound:


- Thunder - off screen (not seen) (Non-diegetic)
- Birds (Non-diegetic)
- Ominous Music - Deep Sound (sad music to replace thunder) - now on hillside
- Sad Music - Melancholy
- People Sing (angelic) when he stands up
- Upbeat Music at the end - shot change.
- Song is call "The Killing Moon"

Editing:


- Fade in to first scene
- Slow Opening - continuous with no cuts.
- Fade in then fade out - slow but powerful
- Faster (Cutting) - shot changes.
- Completely changes location.

Mise-en-scene:


- White titles - black background (contrast)
- Lots of negative space left
- Text hand written (old style)
- Man in mid of road
- Looks like he has fallen off of his bike
- Just wearing his PJs
- Characters looks confused - have a confused expression on face.
- Character starts to laugh (make the audience ask more questions as they don't know why hes laughing)
- Jumps Location
- Sign setting the place, time and event (Halloween - shows the genre)
- American suburbia - Wide Streets, People running, big detached houses.
- 'Where is Donnie' written on fridge - could mean mentally and physically.
- Woman reading book - 'It' by Stephen King.

Godzilla Trailer.

Camera:

The Godzilla trailer opens with an establishing shot of city skyline. This shows where they are and what time of day it is. When you first see the man in a high angle shot, you see him as he is about to walk down the pier. Because they use a high angle shot, it shows the man being smaller and suggests that he is part of the lower class. It gives a feeling to the audience that they are in charge and are above them because they know what’s going to happen. As the man continues to walk on the pier, the camera goes to a low angle shot and uses tracking. This shows the binary opposite to before because now the camera is showing the man to seem bigger than he is, as though he may know what’s going to happen.

The next shot shows the main character sitting on the edge of the pier fishing, and this is a medium shot. The shot is now showing the man at eye level. The camera then focuses on the fishing rod in his hand, perhaps identifying that something suspicious will happen that includes this object.

The camera then shows a medium/long-shot which shows the man in front of water.

After this shot, the director went into an extreme long-shot where the man is running along the pier. This indicates what’s going on in the background, but also so you can watch what is happening in the foreground. The camera then flips to a birds eye view which can show all the action happening at one point in time.

You then see the titles, and then see a person in the back of a car that includes debris flying around at the back. This is done through a point of view shot.

Editing:

During the trailer, the pace is slower because there are little cuts. This creates a calm mood. More cuts occur when the action starts, which indicates that the scene is more developed and creates a sense of time passing quicker than it is.

Sound:

The audio for the opening of the trailer has a calming background music that is smooth and has the normal conversations over the top. The audience can relate this to their lives, creating a normal sense, which will not indicate any sort of event to occur. The music then speeds up and gets louder, which shows that action is going to happen. The music becomes jumpy and includes sudden stops, instead of being smooth as before. The voices stop and you cannot here them anymore, and when the word ‘godzilla’ comes up, you hear the background noise of screaming. This makes the film seem scarier for the audience.

Mise-en-scene:

When the film starts, you see that it is set within a quiet fishing village, this is the first time you see the outside and is not somewhere where you sense that action will happen. Instead of being sunny, it is raining, which creates a darker tone and that the main character is bad. You do not see Godzilla until the ends of the clip, which then you only get to see an eye of.

Typography:

Godzilla words are the first piece of text that you see. These words have a green and white glowing effect behind them and are mainly in black. ‘Size does matter’ in white, glowing letters which are big. These are the only words that are bigger than the Godzilla letters which suggests that the phrase is more important than the film title itself, and indicates that it’s the most important thing in the film and will come up again.

Survey 2

We decided we needed to follow up our survey number one with a better survey - which we simply called survey 2. We found that we asked a better range of questions that helped us find out more about our work. This is good because we found out more information about each genre, and also found we could research the genre ourselves.
We asked around 5 questions to each person, each with open endings that would make things interesting.
1. What are your top 5 favorite films?
2. Pick one of these films and explain what you enjoyed about it
3. What are your favorite types of films? select 3:
Comedy
Musical
Horror
Fantasy
Animated
Sci-fi
Mystery/Suspense
Action
Romance
4. Do you prefer a title sequence of for the titles to be superimposed over the opening scene?
5. Do you prefer a movie to go straight into the action or do you like there to be a slow build up?



This is Luke's survey. We decided to ask Luke because we thought that he might be able to give us a range of different answers to what we were normally expecting. Luke gave us descriptive answers that we found useful towards our research. These were interesting as I found a different perspective to my own, as Luke watches different things to me and we got to find out what he wanted to see.




This is Hannahs Survey. We decided to ask hannah because we thought she would be able to give us information which we perhaps didnt think off. These answers were interesting because i found out some information which i wouldnt have thought of before, and this also helped us along with our research.



This is Cameron's Survey. We decided to ask Cameron because we wanted another males opinion. We found that Cameron gave answers which helped us along with the information we wanted to find out, and because he was a male, we got different answers to what we would have thought had we not conducted this research.


This is Nina's Survey, I found that she gave typical answers which we would have thought of anyway. Even though we conducted this research, i still feel we were able to get positive answers which will help us make decisions during our planning stage.

I feel that these surveys will help with our thriller opening because it is valuable information and we can use it to the best of our abilities.

ILP Day Evaluation - Continuity Task

In our ILP day, we started our Continuity Editing Task. We were in our coursework groups so my group was Me, Avey, Rhiannon and Alice. Our task was to storyboard and script the following shot list - aiming for a completed piece around 60 - 90 seconds in length.

 The technical requirements of the task:

• You must not break the 180 degrees rule
• You must include a shot-reverse-shot
• You must include a variety of appropriate camera angles
• You must edit so that continuity is apparent and meaning is clear
• You must include more than one location
• You must include some interaction between characters
• You must include some non-diagetic sound

Firstly, we brainstormed ideas for the task, this included characters, situations, conversations and ideas for different things such as location. this is our brain storm. 

We then had to devise a Shot list. this meant we knew what we were going to do with our camera, and how we were going to shoot it. This shot list also included our character movements and conversations. 

We then had to select our actors, who were Avey as Character A and Rhiannon as Character B. We then had to create a story board of events for our camera shots and sequence of events. This helped us when we came to shoot our Continuous editing task.

We then devised a script of what we wanted the characters to say to each other. Although this was a short conversation, we didn't want to give too much away and tried to make it as brief and simple as possible. 

After finishing all the detailed work, we then started to shoot. We shot everything from every possible angle to make sure we had a variety of shots to choose from when it comes to editing it. We also made sure we shot each thing more than once in case something wasn't right when we came to editing and we could then cut and paste parts that we wanted. The actors we chose were Avey as our main character, being the person who found the note and so we made sure the story was based around her. Rhiannon was person b, and she was the victim or the other person in the room, you could also say she was targeting Avey. Rhiannon did a lot of the shooting, as well as Alice and I. I found that I ended up becoming director for most of it, and tried to get people into position and when to cut each scene. I enjoyed shooting the most as it helped us learn more about camera positions and the 180 degree rule. i found this was the most difficult thing to stick too, yet i think we managed to stick to it and we will be able to see this when we are editing. Overall I think the day was extremely worth-while and I learned a lot. It also helped me understand how hard filming is going to be when we start our actual task, but I believe our team works well together, and we can feed of each others ideas, creating the best one for us and our film.

Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark - Horror Thriller Analysis

I recently went to see the film 'Don't be Afraid of the Dark' which fits into the Horror Thriller genre. The opening was different to what I was expecting, as it went straight into the film without any title sequences. The film is a rated 15 because of the scary themes in the movie, and the fact that they do not want younger children to get scared.

The first thing we saw was a panning shot that went into a library, and then went into a medium shot of a woman. The beginning of the film is set in the olden times, with music that is quite jumpy and suggesting that something is happen. Another sound effect is the bell, which rings as soon as music stops. This denotes that something important is going to happen and sound effects start up, such as creaking on the stairs and sound effects when the character moves around. 

The setting of the old house and the use of candles at the beginning sets the theme and genre of Horror and a thriller. This is because it has low lighting, a spooky, empty house and is like all the other horror films. The fact that the candle is used shows that it was an old film beginning, but was also a different entrance to other 'typical' horror thriller films. 

The first entrance clip then finishes and a title sequence comes on. The writing was white and quite spooky, almost as if its dripping off the page. The music that goes with the title sequence is fast paced, trying to get tension within the audience. 

Seeing this film has helped me understand more about the horror thriller genre. This is because I know what people are expecting, and what kind of things will be expected if we decided to do a horror thriller. I will take this research back to my group so we can look more into this type of genre. 

This is the trailer for the film, 'Don't be Afraid of the Dark'.

Mise-En-Scene

Mise-en-scene is a French term and originates in the theatre. It means, literally, "put in the scene". Mise-en-scene is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story" - both in visually artful ways through direction. The term was brought into film by a group of French film critics in the 1950s, many of whom would become directors and constitute the French New Wave in the 1960s. One of these critics-turned-directors, François Truffaut, used the term negatively to describe the directors of the French "Tradition of Quality," the rather stodgy French films that appeared after World War II.
Mise-en-scene has been called film criticism's "grand undefined term". For film, it has a broader meaning, and refers to almost everything that goes into the composition of the shot, including the composition itself; framing, movement of the camera and characters, lighting, set design, and general visual enviroment, even sound as it helps elaborate the composition.


Mise-en-scene can be defined as the articulation of cinematic space. Cutting is about time; the shot is about what occurs in a defined area of space, bordered by the frame of the movie screen and determined by what the camera has been made to record. That space, the mise-en-scene can be unique, closed off by the frame or open providing the illusion of more space around it.

Mise-en-scène concerns the shot, though we need to keep in the back of our minds that editing—putting two shots together—affects not only how a film's narrative is structured but how the shots are subsequently understood by viewers.

Mise-en-scene includes:


1. The dominant which means where is the eye attracted first and why?
2. Lighting key. High key? Low key? High contrast? All of the above?
3. Shot & Camera Proxemics. What type of shot (Long Shot. Medium Shot, Close Up)? How far away is the camera?
4. Angle. High, low, or eye-level? What effect does this have?
5. Color values. What is the dominant color? Are there contrasting foils? Color symbolism?
6. Lens/Filter/Film Stock. How do these distort or comment on the scene?
7. Subsidiary contrasts. What are the main eye-stops as taking in the dominant.
8. Density. How much viual inofmration is packed into the image? Stark, moderate, or highly detailed?
9. Composition. How is 2-dimensional space segmented and organized? Is there an underlying design?
10. Form. Open or closed? Is the frame a window or a proscenium arch?
11. Framing. Tight or loose?
12. Depth. How many planes are in the image? Does the background or foreground comment on the midground?
13. Character placement. Center? Top? Bottom? Edges? WHY?
14. Staging positions. Which way do the characters look vis-a-vis teh camera?
15. Character proxemics.  How much space is there between the characters? What does that mean?


 This research on Mise-En-Scene helps me know about what I need to think about when me and my group are filming. I will need to think about the 15 questions above and answer them in my head when I think about filming. I think this will help me a lot because I can look more into each point and research more deeply into them. I think the most important thing about mise-en-scene is the lighting and the camera because this is what will effect what most people see. I will take this research back to my group and we can talk about how we are going to answer each of the questions when it comes to it.

Sub-genres of a Thriller

Action Adventure thriller - this is usually quite an uncommon thriller. However it brings back childhood fantasies of being the adventurer.


Disaster Thriller - This is where there is some sort of disaster such as a dam bursting, tornado, ship sinking where the protagonists are having to try and survive.


Historical Thriller - These are thrillers that are set in the past, these thrillers are usually quite uncommon


Medical Thriller - where modern medical technology that is supposed to help people is morphed into something deadly.


Religious Thriller - These uses the rich and long history of religion to build stories of high stakes and deadly politics.


Serial Killer Thriller - usually a serial killer terrorizing a group of people with horrific violence. The detectives goal is to stop the killer before he takes the next victim.


Techno Thriller - here technology drives the plot, whether its new military technology for a submarine or forensics.


Conspiracy Thriller - This is where the hero or heroine is usually trapped in a powerful organisation, these often play with the secrecy of governments and major organisations in history.


Crime Thriller - They mainly focus on the criminals and their activities in leading up to the crime or the end of the film leading back to how it all started. Usually include serial killers and murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double crosses.


Mystery Thriller - Focuses mostly on the efforts of the detective in order to solve the mystery. It looks at the circumstances of the mystery or crime itself to try and figure out what the clues are, audiences usually take part in trying to uncover the crime.


Psychological Thrillers - These play with the audiences minds and produces suspense in film because it reflects the main characters conflict being mental and emotionally hindered.


Supernatural Thriller - brings an otherworldly element that shows something out of the ordinary happening to a protagonist that has to overcome this powerful factor. Protagonist or villains usually have a supernatural gift that helps them get to the source of the problem.


I think this research will help me figure out what subgenre my group want to do if we decide to do one. This is because we briefly know about which sub genres are around and which we have a choice to do. Things are easier to do if we have this research because we can find out about which genres have been used before, but also helped us find out the most unusual. From doing this research, we found that we wanted to look more into Psychological thriller and Supernatural Thrillers and we need to do this in the next few lessons.

BBFC 18 Rating

The BBFC has put together a plan for films rating themselves an 18. If a film is rated 18, this means that nobody under this age will be able to neither see nor buy the film. For a film to be rated an 18 it must abide by some rules.

In line with the consistent findings of the BBFC's public consultations and The Human Rights Act 1998, at '18' the BBFC's guideline concerns will not normally override the principle that adults should be free to choose their own entertainment. Expectations are most likely in the following areas:

• ·         Where the material is in breach of the criminal law, or has been created through the commission of a criminal offence.
• ·         Where material or treatment appears to BBFC to risk or harm individuals or, through their behaviour, to society - for example, any detailed portrayal of violent or dangerous acts, or of illegal drug use, which may cause harm to public health or morals. This could also include portrayals of sexual or sexualised violence which might, for example eroticise or endorse sexual assault. Where there are more explicit images of sexual activity which cannot be justified by context.

Sex education '18': Sex material genuinely seeks to inform and educate in matters such as human sexuality, health and safe sex, explicit images of sexual activity may be permitted.

Sex works '18': Sex works are works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation. Sex works containing only materials which may be stimulated are generally passed as '18'. Sex works containing clear images of real sex, strong fetish material, sexually explicit animated images, or other very strong sexual images will be confirmed to the 'R18' category. Material which is unacceptable in a sex work at 'R18' is also unacceptable in a sex work at '18'

This information provided by the BBFC has helped me understand more about the classifications of 18 films and how they're different to rated 15's. In 18's, most things will be allowed rather than a 15 where you need to be careful and less obvious with sexual activity and other discriminating videos, such as violence and drug taking. I think our group will be able to understand from the information which one we would rather, and we will therefore have to go back and discuss which we choose to do. 

Audience Survey Number One

 Avey, Alice, Rhiannon and I decided we needed more research before we went into more detail on each genre, and also before we decided on what genre we wanted to do. We wanted to know if the research would help us combine our thriller with a sub-genre or a hybrid and so we created a survey for our audience to hopefully get some positive feedback that would help us get more ideas. We also wanted to see what audiences would go watch in the cinema and whether we should make a film to target our age group or a different age group. These are the questions we decided to ask in our survey and we also filmed these, which I will put up as soon as I can.

1. Would you watch a thriller?

2. What would you expect to see in a thriller?

3. If you could combine another genre with a thriller what would it be?

4. in a thriller there tends to be a heroine or a hero, which one would you prefer to watch in a thriller? why?

5. What would be your favourite location for a thriller film?

6. Do you think music in a genre film creates ambience?

This is survey number one. This wasn't helpful at all because Becca and Jodie didn't watch Thriller films and so we didn't find out any of the information we needed to to help us in our research. We then had to ask other people so that we could have another point of view from someone else.

This is survey 2. This is more helpful because it was easier to get the right information from Tim because he watches thriller films. We didn't really find out much information because it wasn't anything new that we heard and by this time we realised that maybe we were asking to brief questions, or questions that required a specific answer rather than something that could be left open minded and a long answer, giving us some new information that would help us in our thriller opening. 

We then went on to do another survey using the same questions. Ben was useful because he watched thriller films, however we didn't get as good answers as we thought we would and so this didn't really help us. Although we were getting answers from different people, we found that most people replied the same to each question and so after doing one thing we weren't getting many replies on each question, developing our ideas and therefore keeping our knowledge the same. These are Ben's ideas on each question.

This is our last survey of asking these questions and we decided to ask Sophie, Lydia, Caitlin and Kirsten. Although they were all sitting together, this is the group we got the most answers from therefore making this video the most useful to our group and our research. The answers from this table were more developed, and they were a useful group because they watched thrillers rather than when we asked people who didn't watch them. This is our last survey.

We then decided that it was perhaps to brief to get our research from as the answers were mostly the same, such as all the boys saying they would prefer a heroine instead of a hero purely because they were female, and the same going for females choosing a hero again, purely because they were male. Our group also found that we asked too specific questions within the survey, meaning that we weren't going to get a wide variety of answers and that we weren't going to find out any new information that we didn't know before. We found that we needed to change the questions, find people that were interested in thriller films, or perhaps ask questions about favorite films, then research if any of those were thrillers and then find out more about it. Avey, Alice, Rhiannon and I have decided that our questions were to targeting and brief, and we are going to follow this up with another survey which will try and help up out with our genre even more.

Action Genre

Action films have traditionally been aimed at male audiences from the early teens to the mid-30s. The "Action film" genre began to develop in the 1970s and many action filmmakers from the 1990s and 2000s added female heroines in response to the expanding conceptions of gender, trying to get their audiences to be wider and more people interested in the certain film. 

This major genre type includes films that have impact, continuous high energy, many physical stunts, races, rescues, battles, martial arts, destructive disasters(floods, explosions, natural disasters, and fires), fights, escapes, non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous heroes.

Action film is a genre where one or more heroes are thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats such as extended fights and frantic chases. They occasionally have a resourceful character struggling against incredible odds such as, life-threatening situations, an evil villain, and/or being chased in several ways of transportation such as car, bus or truck with victory achieved at the end after difficult physical efforts and violence.

 The main action centres on a male action hero, normally portrayed by these most prominent actors: Bruce Lee, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Claude Van Damme. Women in action-films usually play the roles of accomplices or romantic interests of the hero.

Story and character development are generally secondary to explosions, fist fights, gunplay and car chases. They almost always have a resourceful hero – or heroine - struggling against incredible odds, life-threatening circumstances or an evil villain and are normally stuck in a form of transportation such as bus, ships, trains, planes, on horseback and on foot, and are sometimes starting a chase. The hero – or heroine - ends in victory or the problem is resolved through fighting.

Hollywood has generally been making more action films now than ever, because the advancement in technology have made things cheaper and easier to create which would have used to of required professional stunt crews and dangerous staging.

The action genre is closely linked with the thriller and adventure film genres. Action films and adventure films have tremendous cross-over potential as film genres. Both types of films come in a variety of forms or genre-hybrids: sci-fi or space, thrillers, crime-drama, war, horror, westerns, etc. Oftentimes, action films are great box-office hits, but lack critical appeal because of their two-dimensional heroes or villains.

This research has helped me because I now know what people watching the Action genre will be expecting. This makes things easier because we can now see if we want to look more into this genre, or whether we want to do another. The research I’ve done has shown me what kind of fighting is expected, and also which kind of characters we need. I would also check to see if this work could fit in with the thriller genre, which it says it normally is closely linked with. I know people are expecting violence within this genre, and that it is mostly men being aimed at rather than woman.

BBFC rated 15

The BBFC has put together a plan for films rating themselves 15 and 18. If a film is rated 15, this means that nobody under this age will be able to neither see nor buy the film. For a film to be rated a 15 it must abide by some rules.

First of all it must not include discriminating language or behaviour. There is allowed to be frequent use of strong language but the strongest words can only be used if it is justified by the context, and repeated use of the strongest language is not acceptable. They may have a few swearing words that aren’t considered ‘too hurtful’ inside the movie, but as soon as words that may be offensive to anyone they are no longer allowed to class themselves as a 15.

If drug taking is being shown, it must not encourage drug misuse. This is because they feel that people who are 15 or younger they might try and follow these guidelines. If drugs are used within the film, it must be discrete and cannot be too obvious. If there are elements of dangerous substances being misused then it is unlikely to be acceptable.

15 rated films can be horror however only light horror such as a strong threat or menace, if anything sadistic or sexualised is shown it cannot be classed as a 15. Also things such as hanging, suicide and self harming can be shown but should not be shown in detail again, if they are used they must be done discretely, so that the actions are not copied by the audience and can therefore still be used within the movie.

Nudity is also allowed but without strong detail, this means the director will have to think of a way to cover up and make sure that it is not too obvious. There are no constraints of nudity in a non sexual or educational context. Sexual activity can be shown but again, not in strong detail. Strong verbal references to sexual behaviour can be used but the strongest references would not be allowed. Films whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Violence in 15 rated films can be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images and strong sadistic or sexualised violence are probably unlikely to be accepted. Detailed verbal references to sexual violence can be used but any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet and have a strong contextual justification.
This research has helped me understand more about the classification of 15 films. I know that if we make a horror, we have to make sure that it’s not as bad as it could be in an 18 and we will also need to be careful about the things we show on screen. If we do choose to show something like this, we will need to use our camera skills well, and be able to hide things that aren’t supposed to be shown such as varying the angle that’s shown and changing from close ups and long shots. Another thing we would have to think about is lighting, because we could make some of the scene dark so things aren’t as obvious and we need to make sure that we can fit into the 15 genre if that’s what we are planning to do.