Travelling and arriving blog task

Travelling and Arriving blog task

Travelling and arriving is a key characteristic of many teen movies. It establishes a characters position  within the film, often following the lead protagonist/s and introducing these key characters to the audience. 

The film opening we watched that effectively shows the 'arrival' element of this technique was Donnie Darko. We chose to focus on 3 main catagories from this opening: Locations and Mise-En-Scene, Editing and Camera, as well as the Characters.

Editing and Camera:

The scene begins with a mid-shot of the the back of school bus, establishing it is a school we are about to enter. The camera angle is originally at a 90degree angle, this creates a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere that is sustained throughout. 

As we enter the school and are introduced to different characters, slow motion is used. This editing technique allows the audience enough time to register what is being seen and notice the key charcters whilst also adding to the surreal nature. Fast forwarding is also used to speed through the lesser important parts and hold the interest. There are a minimal amount of cuts used in the clip, instead there are long continuous shots using tracking and panning to follow the different characters. This, as well as the eye level camera angle, creates the sense of a POV shot, making the audience feel as though they are part of the scene in the high school. 

One of the few times a transition is used is when the setting changes from the inside, where it is dominated by students and chaotic, to the outside where there are more teachers and there is more order. This change is brought through a fade to white and is also used to fade into the classroom at the end of the opening, another change of setting.

Locations and Mise-en scene:

In total, there are four locations in choronological order are the front of the school, hallway, the playground and the classroom.

At the front of the school there is a school bus that drops off the students. The three bad boys that get off the bus do not have a backpack, with their top button underdone and the main bad boy in the middle wears a white t-shirt underneath his shirt. However, the other bad boy that walks passed has his shirt underdone too but he doesn't wear a t-shirt underneath suggest he is more rebellious then the other three. When he walks passed the teacher, he doesn't show respect and she gives him a disgusted look.

In the hallway, there are lockers and there is a girl with her hair down who is looking at herself through mirror that is placed in her locker. The more rebellious bad boy is now at his friends locker sniffing some cocaine. The we appear at the playground and there is a fat girl sitting by a statue and she is reading a book; her hair is up and she is wearing the full school uniform.

Still in the playground, the teachers are having a conversation and are dressed in dull but smart clothes. But the other teacher Karen, although she dresses the same her hair is down establishing her youth because compared to the younger girls in the playground also have their hair down. 

The final scene is Karen walking into the classroom.

Characters:

From the sequence we can see 9 characters that are represented in different ways. First of all, we see the 'Main' character "Donnie" who is first seen on the screen. He comes in with a bunch of friends wearing the school uniform. Then this group of friends is disrupted with the first sign of trouble which seems to be this 'bad guy' and they also seem to have intense eye contact. This could foreshadow problems between them. We can see this guy is the 'bad guy' from his body language, the way he walks and the way he looks around as if he holds authority. We can also see that he will be trouble as he openly takes drugs near the school lockers with other students. He could also be seen as a bad influence because he is with other students.

Then we see Donny give a sarcastic look to a very strict female teacher who gives a look as if she is insulted by the disrespect from a student. This teacher has a higher status compared to the other students as she has more screen time overall on her own. The teacher walks around with other figures of authority. We could say she is seen as the second most powerful person in the school. In the rest of the film, we imagine to be giving out detentions, shouting at students and sending students to her office etc.

The headmaster is seen as the person with the most authority as we see the student open the door for him. We also see a dominant side to him as he uses the 'head role' to an advantage.  We then see the lonely girl sitting on her own reading a book. From this we can see that she doesn't associate herself with the other students and could also be portrayed as a 'geek'. Like any other teen film the 'geek' is always  ends up with either the popular students or is given the freedom to get into her comfort zone and build confidence in herself.  

We then go on to see a group of girls dancing and being the main attraction. The younger girl in the middle is the main girl out of the group. Her role could be the 'annoying first year' girl who tries to be the main attention and tries to be like the other older girls; popular, beautiful and fashionable.

Finally we then see the 'calmer' and 'polite' teacher on the screen. We see this from her bodily language, she is always smiling and happy. Her polite self attitude could foreshadow that she'll do something good later on. For example, take the people out of detention and make them better individuals for a higher quality of education.