Donnie Darko: shot and sound inspiration

Donnie Darko (2001) is one of the weirdest, yet most captivating movies I've ever seen. Here is the rather bizarre opening, it is sort of split into two parts - a bit like on our storyboard:

This close up of Donnie's pupils dilating is one of my favourites because it is super trippy, and Mac 5 really like the emphasis on eyes - when we were searching for our actress, one of the main deciding factors was the colour of her eyes and our actress, Hannah C, has fantastic blue eyes which fit the role perfectly!




Donnie is also seeing a therapist, who prescribes him pills (that end up being placebo's). Donnie's behaviour is strange nonetheless, and the possibility of him having a mental illness isn't lost in the many alternative explanations of the movie.





Here are a few more cool stills which I could find:

This scene, in which the mirror ripples, is pretty peculiar (though important when explaining the film). It is also very inspiring in terms of sound - Frank sounds almost like a microwave, and the low bass drone in the background makes the viewer feel as if they are inside a television which is really effective in emphasizing the idea of Frank influencing the thoughts inside Donnie's head.



Though our character doesn't cross over and enter a tangent universe, she does have controlling thoughts which we would like to emphasize in our opening, and we would like Frank's tone and the mood these sounds create to have a similar effect in our opening.

Here are two more scenes which I really like: