Inspiration For Our Final Piece - Thriller Opening.

In our final piece we debated heavily on the planning process and what aspects to incorporate within our piece.

Donnie Darko (2001 - Richard Kelly)       
Donnie Darko has many impressive factors, and as my whole group are fans of the film, we all genuinely wanted to include multiple determinants to create an impressive, visually pleasing piece. For example, Kelly's panning and tracking shots are not only effective as a whole, but are also exciting to watch. This is one of my favourite scenes in the movie, simply because of the wonderful cinematography employed, and the skills needed to pull off a complex shot in which so much happens. This time consuming and complicated technique is an incredible way of introducing characters, developing already known characters and presenting the environment in which the scene is set.





Sadly we were unable to film an intensive tracking shot as the set we were filming at was not suited for our tripod and tracking our protagonist would not be smooth, and probably become detrimental to the film and effect the audiences ability to submerge themselves in to the plot and gain a relationship with the character, due to the fact we would be constantly reminded of the camera on un-even rough surfaces.

However, a different aspect we wanted to incorporate was a party scene, and 'Donnie Darko' has one instance that we wanted to try and replicate, it features a busy halloween party with many different students conversing and having a good time, however 'Donnie' stands out somewhat by being subtly dressed in his iconic costume (a basic t-shirt with skeleton print) and hoodie, somehow isolates him from the other people. This is one factor we chose to employ in our final piece, having Jake act the 'lonely boy' role. I believe that he has a wonderful likeness to 'Donnie' and we were able to successfully integrate this aspect in to our thriller.


            
                          


The Dark Knight - (2008, Christopher Nolan)
Heath Ledger's character; The Joker in 'The Dark Knight' has gained global acclaim as this inspiringly insane, world renown antagonist. We have seen this character develop from the conception of the character in the early batman comics produced by DC comics, to the newest portrayal in 'The Dark  Knight'. We all agreed that we wanted to avoid the overused cliche killer that is often used in the action genre, the usual balaclava clad thug, killing for the sake of killing. Therefore, we thought it appropriate that we develop the characters personality, background and mental state, much like that of 'The Joker'

             

From the character we took, and adapted the face make-up, by adding lipstick to the antagonist, and shaping it in to a frown. We also darkened the killers eyes, by use of a make-up pencil creating a very dark and twisted looking individual. Another aspect of the joker we tried to incorporate was his backstory. A backstory is not evident in our piece, however it is open to audience interpretation, or even development later in film (If filming were to carry on).