Section 2: Donnie Darko Analysis

 Narrative structure:

• The opening scene is of the character "Donnie", and he has woken up in the middle of nowhere and he then rides home looking really confused ad to how he got there

Codes and conventions:

• Music that creates mystery to the audience
• Transformed city - set in suburbia but it has a twist to it
• Partial vision because the character does not know or the audience does not know how he got there

Camerawork:

• Establishing shot of the woods in opening scene and this shows the audience where the action or the narrative is going to take place
• Tracking left in establishing shot of the middle of nowhere to show the audience that the character is surrounded by absolutely no civilization where he is
• First person perspective shot when Donnie is riding home to create awareness of what the characters is seeing to the audience

Mise en scene:

• Setting- woods or the countryside, small suburban town
• lighting- dim to show audience that it is early morning
• mid shot of characters to show his reactions and emotions to his whereabouts
• costume is messy dirty night clothes and this is so the audience can make the connection with  the early morning setting and the narrative so far

Sound:

• Diegetic- birds, bike tyres
• Non-diegetic- slow ominous music at start of scene which is used to draw the audiences attention, then it goes into a soft piano tune which links well with the early morning setting because its relaxing. Then there is some soft singing voices when Donnie is riding home and these get louder until there is an anticlimax at the end this is to create suspense and tension within the audiences emotions and reactions to the scene 

Editing:

• Fade in at start of scene  from black opening credits to opening shot
• superimpose when the film title gets posted into the shot
• fade out  when the shot  goes to a blank white screen
• elliptical editing when Donnie's on his bike riding home and this is to make his journey seem to go quicker to the audience
• continuity editing is used lots of times when Donnie is riding home because each time he is back on screen he is in a different place and this creates a story that he is getting closer to home

Graphics:

• White writing in opening credits against a black background( this is used in alot of thrillers and it could be considered a code and convention)