Film Analysis on Batman: The Dark Knight

Kellen Stargell

Krane

Film 1010

5/4/15

Film Analysis on Batman: The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight contains many parts of mise-en-scene that helps create another world that shows you an out of the ordinary type of action movie. By using different techniques in things such as camera angles and the sound, they were able to take the movie to another level.

The settings in the movie are a very dark and cold setting. Places from the hospital to the bank. It gives off a very grimy, dingy, grimy and depressing vibe to the film. Though by having these dull settings, Nolan wants the audience to focus only on the actors and what is going on in the scenes. The color texture for the movie gives off a very harsh type of feel. This harsh texture shows you the very dark environment that they live in. The colors also give you a set idea by sticking to neutral colors like black, grey and white.

The lighting in the movie allows a connection between the audience and the action going down on screen. The lighting is electrical but is lighting that we don’t have control of like streetlights that set the movie. A good example of how lighting was a big part of the movie was when Harvey Dent was scolded by the chemicals which turned him into Two-Face. The lighting gave the importance in the movie that would give the audience a turn in what we saw in the rest of the film. The full lighting also helped the audience figure out who to focus on in the film by having other people in the scene dimmed out by the lighting of the film. Giving the focus on the actor of the moment and the action taking place.

Nolan used a non-diegetic sound to heighten the action of what’s going on in the film and the changes being made within the actors. For example, Nolan uses music to show when a scene’s action will get more serious or thrilling. This non-diegetic music usually would starts out soft in the beginning of the scene, but the music picks up the more the action in the scene picks up. Also, they use voices as a non-diegetic sound by using it as a memory of something that someone had said to the character. The shot composition plays a very important place in this film. The opening frames of each scene of the film set up a journey for the audience to see. Allows the characters to move in and out as they wish, all except the Joker, who seems to be the highest influence of the space. This creates a very uncomfortable surrounding for the audience as they are not able to figure out who is in control of the situations that take place in the film.

The camera distance helps the audience to connect the relationships going on between characters with what is going on during the scene. Long shots were used to set the scene like when The Joker was in the interrogation room and the long shot of the hospital before it blew up. Medium close-ups were used to get the reactions of the characters in the scenes. A good example of medium close-up is when the full lights were turned on showing the Joker surprised at the change of lighting and seeing Batman right behind him. This allowed the audience to predict what was going to happen next. There are also some pan shots around the different actions that help the audience get the full experience of what is going on in the scenes. Tracking shots follow the action side by side. This gives the audience the feeling like they are apart of the action going on in the film. With all these uses of camera distance, this becomes the bridge between the audience and the action-taking place, which helps to engage the audience into the film even more.