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.