Donnie Darko influence

While we were 'mind-mapping' ideas for our thriller, there was a joint realization that we wanted to pay homage to 'Donnie Darko'. The reason for this was that we wanted to do a more psychological thriller and Richard Kelly's 'Donnie Darko' is a perfect fit considering the age of the characters in the film, and the age of the characters in our piece. Donnie himself is a massive influence on my idea for our lead character, a complicated teenager, even if it is cliché, I consider it the perfect protagonist for a psychological thriller, so the hoodie as seen on Donnie here, is included in our thriller to add further reference.

Our narrative isn't similar to the film, despite being the same genre, I just felt like ours should be less supernatural, as ours is an amateur performance. It was suggested in the group that we use the track from 'Donnie Darko' called 'The Killing Moon' by Echo and the Bunnymen. I felt that the track gave a retro vibe to our film as well as referencing our inspiration, it's dark tone really adds to the feeling I wanted audiences to have while viewing our intro.

As well as the track, the final element of 'Donnie Darko' we aim to take ourselves was the tracking shot at the beginning showing all the different groups in the school. My first ideas for this Thriller piece was to have a tracking shot through a party. The school tracking shot that establishes the period of the 'Donnie Darko' diegesis is a perfect use of it, in a similar style we wanted to establish to our audience the same sort of setting, just more modern day.