The usual conventions of a film opening are; company name, a piece of music, credits, title of the film, setting, the genre being shown and main character being introduced. The opening of Dark Knight includes some of these conventions, however is does not include all of them as they did not go with the scene and help with the impact that the opening gives.
The company names, The Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures and DC logos have been stylised to portray the films style, which is dark and action filled. They are all black and dark blue to link with the fact that it is a Batman film and those are the colours that are associated with the character. Also, the sound played before the first logo appears is quite mysterious with sudden drum beats to build the tension from the off set.
Dark Knights is unusual in that it doesn't have music during the opening as a soundtrack could take the audience's attention away from what the characters are saying and important details shown, for example the mask that is shown at the beginning is what the antagonist is wearing throughout the first five minutes of the film.
It is quite unconventional that the opening scene of the film doesn't have any credits or the title of the film appear, this is because it starts quite fast pace showing action straight away so credits wouldn't really fit with that and could take away from the atmosphere and some key points that the action is highlighting. There is also no point where the film title could appear without breaking up the scene and ruining what is being achieved by going straight into action and the main story line.
The opening is set in Gotham City where the previous Batman films are set as it is a sequel so viewers would recognise it from the previous films.
The audience meets The Joker, who is the villain so one of the main characters, in the opening sequence. The Joker is one of the robbers in the clown masks but the audience don't know it's him until the end of the opening. They are still made to realise his character is significant though by the camera zooming in on his mask before the action started and the other bank robbers keep mentioning things about The Joker throughout the scene so the audience got an idea of what he is like and it is a surprise when it is revealed that he had been in the scene the whole time to add to the tension and draw the audience in.
The genre of Dark Knight is action and the tone of the genre is established in a few ways. The film begins straight away with action by having the bank robbery so indicates that it is an action film. Also, the use of props such as guns and grenades, are associated with violence and action, being the conventional sort of things that would appear in an action film.
The soundtrack plays throughout the whole of the opening sequence and fits very well with what is happening in the scene as it is quite tense how the music builds up getting slightly louder as the scene progresses and helps gives a tense fill to the scene, matching with the action, building suspence. There is also a lot of pleonastic sound used to add to key bits of action making the scene a bit jumpy and more exciting to watch. Examples of when pleonastic sound is used in the scene are; when windows are smashed, the sound of the zip wire as the robbers go down it, the gun shots and when the grenades are pulled.
Throughout the opening scene, continuity editing is used as the audiences' attention should be on the action taking place in the scene so they shouldn't be noticing the editing between each shot.
Cinematography has been used very effectively in this opening scene. A lot of close ups were used of the bank robbers masks to highlight the fact that they work for the Joker, and the close of the the Jokers mask before he gets in the car indicates that his could have a bit more significance than the others, which it does as he is the antagonist of the film. There is also an aerial shot at the beginning of the two robbers that went across the zip wire from another building, which could portray how extravagant the whole plan for the robbery is and that the person in charge who planned it all is high up and overseeing it all by having the shot looking at them from above, so even though they're high up on the building, those characters don't have all the control.
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