The Dark Knight Analysis

The opening sequence to Dark Knight uses many different generic conventions, such as an introduction to one of the main character, as we see a lot of different clowns, but we don’t know which one the ‘joker’ is until he removes his mask. In the Opening Sequence of this we do not see the title of the film in till 8:15 and I only watched a two minute clip so I did not see this come up. Also there were no characters names in the Opening Sequence so this was a complete different Opening than other films. The only thing that came up was the distribution company ‘Warner brothers’ and the production company  ‘Legendary pictures’, this came up right at the beginning just before the beginning of the film started.

The opening sequence also uses specific sub genre conventions in terms of the four micro areas.

Mise en scene: The lighting of the opening sequence is very dark. This links in well with the action/crime thriller sub genre as it leads the audience feeling slightly anxious to watch, and lets the film be more of a mystery to the audience as it does not give much away about the narrative just that the ‘clowns’ are antagonists. This is good as it makes the audience threat on what is going to happen next.

Camerawork: The camera work in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight is very fast, suggesting that something big is going to happen straight away. There is the crane shot where it starts really high up and slowly then becomes closer to a window that the smashes. This is when you see the first ‘Clowns’ breaking in to another building. This gets the audience on the edge of there seats as they are not sure what is going to happen. You then get a close up of one of the ‘clowns’ faces, which then gets a clear clarification that these people are the antagonists.

Editing: there are many cuts during the Opening Scene, it cuts to different clowns and them all doing there different roles to break in to the Bank. This make the audience wonder why they are doing this and how they are going to pull it off. This also shows that this is action/crime thriller by only watching one minute of it. So the audience no something bad is going to happen during this sequence.

Sound: There is a non diagetic soundtrack played in the opening sequence this is an up beat soundtrack that goes with what is going on the Sequence. As there is a lot of running around and stunts that are involved. The music is parallel in what is going on in the opening Sequence. There is also diagetic sounds with the ‘clowns’ taking in the car and once they reach the bank there is talking involved there as well.