(3) Dark Knight - Thriller Analysis

Batman Dark Knight Opening 2 minutes Analysis

Kieran Standen

Media Studies AS

In the opening scene the camera shows an establishing shot/extreme wide shit to denote the environment and setting, showing that something is going to occur, that the buildings in the scene will be relative to what is going to happen next, where something is going to take place. The slow paced music at the start of the zoom shows that action is going to be taking place as it zooms into the building, creating suspense and anxiety. The Diegetic sound of the glass breaking shows that what we are seeing as the audience is real and that we are about to see why, it goes will with the non-diegetic music at equal volumes. Straight away from the breaking of the glass and the MCU (medium close up) of the person with the mask on we can tell we are looking from the perspective of the attacker or the bad guy. We know he is a bad guy already as he is hiding his identity and has just vandalized a building. We are looking from his POV and then we see another clown mask in the bottom right gibing the audience a small idea there is more than one bad person. A cut then goes to a slow focus zoom of a man standing at the road with a mask in his hand, and the camera slowly zooms into his mask for approximately 9 seconds. The posture and position of the man is a symbolize posture which is enabling people who have watched the film before to identify him as the joker in earlier versions, as the hunched posture is a trademark of the joker. At first the audience don’t realise much that he is on his own, until the next scene when when the other clowns are together in the car, this shows that he is different to the others. When we then see the others in the car it is an over the shoulder shot to show that the POV and others are in the car, showing the number of clowns involved in this scene. The close up on one of the clown’s face to possible show facial expressions of the mask before he gets killed by his friend. Note how the music is slowly getting faster and faster as the clowns progress, when the bad guys are getting to work outside we have a little idea that they are prepare g for something bad to happen. The camera follows the first clown and at that moment we see that they are going to rob a bank, we are not 100% but they have gave us all the clues because they have firearms and a huge bag for the money. The loud bang and following of distressing screaming shows that they are there to do bad things and harming people, people are afraid of them. Acting aggressively. The camera tracks them as one by one they break off to show this is planned and all have specific roles to play in this robbery. The extreme close up on the grenade being strapped to the civilian showing us on that we should know who the character is as he is one of the characters who would do that- (joker) – even though we cannot see behind the mask.