The Cards Final Film

preliminary exercise

First fifteen minutes analysis of Donnie Darko

I decided to analysis the 2001 science fiction drama film, Donnie Darko. Even though it isn't classed as being a psychological thriller film, it does have a lot of psychological elements in it, which can be important for understanding how people work, especially with mental health issues.

The first scene starts of with setting the location of the film, by using a panned long shot of mountain area, and early morning sky.

 Beginning long shot, setting the location.

 The camera then starts to zoom in on Donnie, who is laying in the middle of a road.

 We get a shot, where we are able to clearly see Donnie's face, and facial expressions.

 We are then shown a Point of View shot, of the view which Donnie is seen from behind looking at it, in the next shot.

 The title sequence then rolls, and we are shown the neighbourhood that Donnie lives in, including shots of the different kinds of people that live there. When Donnie is cycling through the neighbourhood to get to his house, there is high key lighting to make the neighbourhood look bright and colourful.

In the second scene, Donnie is persuaded by a ghostly voice to "Come closer.", to which he follows the voice. When Donnie is following the voice, the camera is dollying into the door.

The ghostly voice leads him outside, and here, there is a shallow focus, which emphaizes Donnie, because everything in the background cannot be seen, and only Donnie is in focus, which shows the importance of this character.

There is then a dissolve, which shows Donnie looking at what the ghostly voice turns out to be, and an image of the ghostly voice in the same shot.

Finally, we have an eyeline match, to show what Donnie had been looking at, which is a strange rabbit.

Research into title sequences

The genre of our film is psychological thriller, so it is important to find title sequences from a similar genre.
Se7en Title sequence

These images show very psychological images, such as the blade in someone's fingers, which can typically be associated with self harm and mental health illnesses.

American Horror Story: Asylum

Although America Horror Story is a television show, the title sequence is still a good example to use, because their title sequences generally give hints about what is going to happen in the show, such as with the screenshots here, where it shows scenes of torture, mental health issues, and religion, which is all involved within America Horror Story: Asylum. The title sequence is also quite 'jumpy', with images flashing on and off the screen within a few seconds, which raises the tension of what's going to happen in the show.

The Victim Character Profile (original)

Name: Martine Roberts
Age: 20
Profession: Care worker

Background: In the film, Martine grew up in a big family, consisting of a few brothers and sisters, and had to help look after her siblings with her mother. Because she had always looked after her siblings, she decided that she wanted to work with children as a job. She decided to go into social care, looking after children, who have suffered from trauma during their life.

Appearance: In the film, she has just come back from work, so she is wearing a white shirt, a black skirt, a cardigan and an NHS staff badge. She is still wearing her uniform when she is poisoned by the killer.

Personality: Martine has quite a shy personality, however can be bubbly around people that she knows well. She always attempts to use humour to try and make less fortunate children feel better. Martine is always seen smiling around work, because she loves her job.

Her role in the film: Martine is the character who will be killed, by poisoning. She is at home when the killing is about to take place. She goes into the kitchen to make a drink, adds the coffee in the cup, and then leaves the room to go upstairs while the kettle is boiling. During this time, the killer enters the kitchen, via the back door, which is unlocked, and adds poison in with the coffee mixture. Martine then comes back downstairs when the kettle has finished boiling and adds hot water to the coffee mixture. She takes a sip, and then hears a knock on the front door, the detective, and walks to answer. It is at this moment that she drops on the floor, unconsious.

Question 7; Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

From making the preliminary task, to making a full two minute start to a film, I feel that I have learnt more things, during this period of time. I think the biggest thing I have been able to learn more about from the prelininary task to the full product, is the use of Final Cut Express. Before the preliminary task, I had not used Final Cut Express before. Being a first time user of the editing software, it can be quite difficult to use, because you need to learn what various symbols mean, how to cut clips and how to join bits of clip together, in order to make a full product. In our preliminary task, our editing skills may have not been the best, due to have not used the program before. Due to not using the program before, it also took us longer to be able to edit the clips together, whereas, when we edited the full product, it was completed more quickly and smoothly, because we were comfortable using the editing software.

However, I think in the final product, it was easier to make sure all the clips joined up together nicely, and to use different tools on the editing software, such as making a shot bigger to fill the screen more, or creating sound bridges,  which were things we might not have known how to do when we made our preliminary short clip.


From making the preliminary clip to the full product, we were able to use the preliminary clip to see where we may have gone wrong with editing, and to be able to make sure that this didn't happen in our full product. In the preliminary clip, we only had basic shots, such as shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, two shot, and a long shot. However, in our full product, we included more "advanced" shots, such as close up shots, and slight cantered angles, to distort and show that something bad may be about to happen.

 Close up shot of a phone.

Cantered angle, when the killer is about to enter the victim's home, to poison their drink.

 Examples of basic shots, two shot and shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, used in the preliminary task.

Question 5; How did you address your audience?

The target audience for our media product was male and females, aged fifteen and up, with particular emphaise on young adults. I think our film would be able to reach our target audience, because the plot is interesting and also quite suspensful, as you don't know what is going to happen when the killer is deciding who and how to murder. I think our film is especially interesting, through the use of tarot cards, and even not being able to fully see the killer's identity, because this could make the audience wish to keep watching, in order to hopefully find out who the killer really is. When planning our production, we thought that using the tarot cards would make the film interesting, because it could appeal to many audiences, especially audiences who are interested in witchcraft, or supernatural type films. I think that our storyline is also quite unique, by using tarot cards, in the sense of a game, in order to kill people. This is also good for being able to attract the right audience, because many young adults may like the idea of being able to see a new film, with a different approach towards psychological thriller, that isn't merely the same kind of plot that you may see in real psychological thriller films.

From audience feedback, we found our a variety of things that were good about our film, and also things that we could improve on to make our film better. From the feedback, it seemed that most people who we asked thought that the plot was a good film idea, and that if it were to be released, they would go to see the film. Some people did also like the use of tarot cards, because this is quite original. However, I think, from audience feedback, our age range would be too high, being aged 15, to 50 years, because older, middle aged people that we asked said they probably wouldn't enjoy watching this type of film, and would prefer to watch one more suited to their taste. Therefore, it would be suitable to generally focus our film to young people, who are most likely to enjoy our film.