Dark
Knight Analysis
The film extract I have chosen is the part in which the joker has rigged two boats with bombs, one boat full of prisoners, one boat full of civilians. Both boats have each others detonator and are told through the on board speakers that if one does not detonate the other by midnight they will both be detonated. This causes a sense of panic and vulnerability. Batman enters the building trying to reach the hostages and henchmen before the police end up killing the wrong people (hostages dressed as henchmen with clown masks). He successfully saves the hostages however is faced with an entire team of SWAT. He quickly comprises a cunning move in which results with the team dangling by their feet off the side of the building. The then rappels up the half constructed building to the floor the joker is on and this is where my analysis begins.
This is a wide/establishing shot of the joker and allows the audience to get a sense of where this character is. The audience is clued in by the cement mixer on the right hand side of the frame and the lack of interior shows it is a place of construction. The audience also gets a s sense of power and security surrounding the joker due to the three dogs who are positioned to look towards the camera (thus to intimidate you)
Following the shot above the joker turns around and the camera cuts to batman walking towards the camera. They then proceed to a shot reverse shot between the two characters. Note that in this frame you cannot see batmans eyes to create the impression he has no emotion towards the joker. This is due to the lighting behind him which will cause shadow on his front side but creates a clear silhouette around the character revealing size and strength..
Following the shot reverse shot the camera pushes in from a medium shot to a medium close up to allow the audience to see the characters emotions more clearly. Following the very short conversation between the two characters there is a foley sound of a knife as the joker sets the dogs on batman.
Half way through the fight scene between batman and joker the camera cuts to the hostages on the two boats, one full of convicts, one full of civilians. The convict (top picture) stands up and the camera shows an OTSS between him and the man with the detonator. The convict makes statements that lead the audience to believe that he is going to detonate the other boats bomb. In this frame everything is in focus which could show that it would be expected of a convict to stand up and sacrifice others’ lives so there is no need to emphasise focus on him. However in the civilian boat (bottom picture) the camera focus is on the man who stood up and offered to detonate the convicts boat. This could be because he is an “average joe” who would not be expected to be willing to take hundreds of lives. There is also a contrast in characters where the convict is looking down upon the man with the detonator which shows his power and authority as he actually convinces him to hand him the detonator. Whereas the civilian is looking up to the captain who holds the detonator and has to take it from the box himself.
The camera pushes in as the civilian takes the detonator out of the box and shows the worried/anxious expression on his face. as his hand reaches the key on the detonator there is a screechy type of music playing. This creates large amounts of tension on the audience as it shows a close up on the detonator. (picture below)
