Children of men opening scene analysis

Children of Men Opening Scene Analysis

Use of Camera: The beginning of the film starts with a black screen showing nothing, this is good as it allows the audience to try and imagine the setting and the story behind the film. This scene has a medium shot of the crowd, in this we see a man coming through the crowd; he automatically makes us as the audience feel like he is going to be the main character. The data on screen show us that this is currently in the future (2027). The main character then walks out of the café, this give us an establishing shot of the city, here we can see it has improved by having lots of TV’s on the side of buildings. We then get a 180 degree turn around the actor this is so that we will be able to see the explosion go off.

Use of sound: At the beginning it starts off with us hearing a new report, within this news report we hear about them removing illegal immigrants from the country. At this point all we can hear is the crowd reacting to what is being said on the news. The loud sound of cars moving show us that people are in a rush and that it is very busy. The sound of an explosion makes it seem like there may have been a terrorist attack, therefore this may be why they have been trying to shut off all the borders to the country.

Use of titles:

Mise en Scene: There is a police man wearing an iconic English policeman helmet as well as a red London bus driving past in the background, this tells us straight away (without seeing much of the setting) we can tell this is going to be based in London. They have also put rickshaws in this as they are also iconic for London. He pulls out a small bottle of what looks like alcohol; this is so he can try to escape his daily miseries form the miserable dirty city.

Editing:

What we find out about the story: The opening two minutes of this film show us that the film is going to be based in the main city of London. We also find out that this film is going to take place in the future, we can tell this from the date 2027. We find out that in this story there has been a stop to having children, I can tell this from the fact that the news report says about there being the youngest person on the planet. He was 18 years old. However this may not have been from someone stopping them having babies but it may have been caused by disease killing people or murders to the point where people are unable to have children. I think this film may be about how people are trying to survive against an apocalypse as the city looks slightly destroyed and everyone looks worried. They may be trying to fight against a terrorist attack due to there being an explosion.