The first pub­lic unveil­ing of any actual footage from The Dark Knight took place yes­ter­day evening at the Wiz­ard World con­ven­tion. The folks that brought us the news about the TDK event are back once again with all the juicy details. From Wiz­ard Uni­verse, a descrip­tion of the video:

The footage started with a sil­hou­ette of a dark fig­ure in front of one of Batman’s armored vehi­cles before quickly cut­ting to Bruce Wayne and Alfred deliv­er­ing the brief lines heard in the “Dark Knight” teaser trailer.

“Some peo­ple just want to watch the world burn,” advises Alfred before the cam­era jumps to Bat­man in action on the Bat­pod, the new iter­a­tion of his motorcycle.

The action built up as the Joker was seen in full for the first time with a mess of white face, smeared red lip­stick and sweaty, strag­gly green hair. Appar­ently, the clown prince of crime gets arrested at one point in the film, as the mon­tage pre­sented Jim Gor­don (com­plete in SWAT gear) at the Joker’s book­ing, say­ing, “no prints, no ID, cus­tom clothes, no tags.” The clown smiles with what appears to be blood over his face from the inside of an inter­ro­ga­tion room.

Check­ing back in with Bruce Wayne, the bil­lion­aire play­boy has a brief scene with Eckhart’s Har­vey Dent where he says “Rachel’s told me every­thing about you.”

“I truly hope not,” responds Wayne.

And points to note from the action mon­tage at the end:

• The new bat­suit ris­ing up from a trap door in the ground and held in a chain metal case.
• Rachel Dawes (played by Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal) close to an uniden­ti­fied man either kiss­ing him or being threat­ened by him as the cam­era rotates around them.
• The Joker and Bat­man bat­tling in close quar­ters (pos­si­bly a hos­pi­tal room). Bat­man throws Joker over a table and crash­ing into the ground while the clown smiles at him. It should be noted that the Joker was done up in his sig­na­ture pur­ple suit.
• Plenty of big, bold Bat­mo­bile action includ­ing a shot where the tank-like car dri­ves through a wall of flame. In fact, flames were pretty much every­where in the footage as it appears Joker does actu­ally make the world burn.
• There is also a shot of a some­what grim-faced Joker walk­ing across a city street mer­ci­lessly fir­ing a machine gun as well as a tele­vi­sion close-up of the Joker laugh­ing hysterically.
• Two major addi­tions to the spec­u­la­tion that Two Face will appear in the film came in the form of a sin­gle shot of a spin­ning 50 cent piece and the final image: after the action mon­tage has slowed down, the cam­era cuts to a bar­tender look­ing at Har­vey Dent, whose only onscreen pres­ence is his left shoul­der and a bit of a reddish-purple scarred neck. “Dent! I thought you were dead!” the man gasps, to which Har­vey replies, “Half.”

IGN also have some details about the “siz­zler” trailer whilst claim­ing that The Dark Knight film­ing is now 50% complete,

The Clown Prince of Crime was seen in a prison cell, dra­mat­i­cally speak­ing at the cam­era as if schem­ing some sort of dia­bol­i­cal plot. There were also sev­eral shots of Bat­man and The Joker fight­ing in what appeared to be an inter­ro­ga­tion room — in fact, the Dark Knight can be scene using “bad cop” inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques, throw­ing The Joker across a table. There is a scene of The Joker danc­ing with Rachel Dawes (played by Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal), rem­i­nis­cent of the way Jack Nicholson’s Joker danced with Vicki Vale (played by Kim Basinger) in 1989’s Bat­man. Finally, there are a num­ber of shots show­ing a war-torn Gotham City — a machine gun-toting Joker fir­ing toward the camera.

While Eck­hart has already gone on the record with word that Har­vey Dent would be mak­ing the change into the dreaded Two-Face in this film, the footage served to con­firm this. A shot of Dent from behind has some­one com­ing up to the Dis­trict Attor­ney say­ing, “I thought you were dead?” Dent’s reply: “Half.” Mas­sive scar­ring can then be glimpse on the left side of his face. A dra­matic shot of a quar­ter spin­ning on a table also served to “wow” the audi­ence. In his non-scarred form, there is a shot of Dent first meet­ing Bruce Wayne. “Rachel’s told me a lot about you,” Dent says. To which Wayne replies, “I hope not.”

(Thanks for the heads up Eric)