Donnie Darko - Max

In the first shot of the film, we see a body lying in the middle of the road. This instantly raises questions in the audiences mind: What is it? What's happened? Was this intentional? Is the body still alive? This creates a huge amount of suspense so early on in the film, which makes the audience wonder if there is worse to come.

There is a very tense, and really quite ominous soundtrack playing (which is non-diegetic), but there are also diegetic sounds of birds singing, which seem almost echoey, which gives the impression that this could be a dream or flashback.

There is very low key lighting used, to give a natural, outdoors effect.

As the camera zooms in on the body, you see that he/she rolls over. This gives a small amount of reassurance to the audience, in the sense that, they now know he/she is alive, but are still not sure if they are hurt or not.

The person then sits up, which suggests that they may not be hurt at all, but which then raises the question of: Why were they on the floor if they were not hurt?

We can then see that there is a bike that seems to have fallen over, which suggests that the person has fallen off their bike, which then makes the audience wonder if the person is hurt. This constant change of questions being asked keeps the audience feeling very tense.

As the person sits up, piano music starts playing very loudly (again this is non-diegetic), but as this is louder than the other non-diegetic sound, and is louder than the diegetic sounds, the audience focuses on the music, which adds an eerieness to the soundtrack.

As the person stands up and turns to face the camera, the audience learns that this person is a male, and is quite young.

As they stand a chorus of women or choir boys joins the soundtrack, which just adds to the already ominous soundtrack.

The dim lighting and background suggests that this is either early in the morning, or that it is going dark, this makes the audience wonder why a boy is out cycling in what appears to be pyjamas, in either of the times. Although due to the pyjamas, it seems more likely that this is set early in the morning.

The boy then laughs and smiles, all the while the soundtrack is playing and the birds are still singing; although the bird song seems to be crisper, which may suggest that the boy could have just been sleeping, and now that he has woken up, the bird song has become much clearer as a metaphor.

You can see by the background that the boy is in the middle of what seems to be very mountainous and lush forest.

The boy smiling and laughing seems very odd, as the audience suspects he has just fallen off of his bike, this may suggest that he may have fallen off of his bike for an unknown reason, or that something about him falling off his bike is funny to him.

So far this shot has been a very lengthy shot, which slows the pace of the scene down very much, creating a slow atmosphere. Also before this shot, the whole rest of the opening has also been only one shot, which has created an almost lazy atmosphere to the scene, which could be a metaphor for the boy sleeping, or having just woken up.

Although this is a very short opening scene, by using only two cuts in the entire scene it establishes a slow, lazy, dreamy atmosphere for the scene. It also uses de-saturation of sound to suggest that the boy could have been asleep, although it is not clear if he was or not, but by making the audience ask many questions, it has created tension and suspense, and has made the audience want to continue watching the film.