Analysing Film Openings - Mystic River

Scene Summaries- Mystic River First 2 Minutes

There are only five credits showing the production companies of the film on fairly plain screens. This may have been done so as to not take away anything from the film and get straight in.

 

There is also no colour on the logos. This maybe coincides with the genre; the credits are dark and so maybe the film is dark or has dark themes, and brighter credits would have been a distraction or set the wrong tone.

The actual film starts with an establishing long shot of the location which happens to be an inner-city block of flats next to a river. This could be the river named in the title. The shot starts as a high angle shot looking down on two men sitting on a balcony. Using this shot makes the men look small and insignificant maybe hinting the same as their role in the film or how we should view them in terms of their importance.
 

 

It cuts to a low shot of a boy looking up at the men. Next we get a P.O.V from the boy looking at the men through railings on the balcony this breaks up the two men’s faces so the audience doesn’t get a good look at them and therefore don’t create a relationship with them. We see in this shot that the two men who are listening to diegetic music in the form of a radio and  are idly drinking beer during the day. This tells us that the boys most likely live in a poor area with social problems. Next shot shows a second boy run in; most likely both boys are friends.

Next scene shows the two boys playing hockey with a third boy, the lighting used is grey and dull representing the film is dark and serious and that the situations will be serious ones. We see the new boy him the ball towards the gutter. There is a use of crosscutting of the boys feet running and the ball rolling away, this creates a quickened pace. The red haired boy is likely to be the main character and leader of the group. This is because he gets more screen time and was the first character we were introduced to.
 

Next we find out the names of the boys. This is done by the boys scraping their names into wet cement, an economical way of letting the audience know this important information.

 

Behind them a black car rolls up without making any sound. This creates a sinister feeling and that they may be something wrong here, out of the car steps a man wearing a big black jacket and handcuffs, his hand cuffs jingle making a sound so to highlight them. The handcuffs could suggest that he is an authoritative figure but something about his demeanour says otherwise.

 

All of the elements of the film so far, the dull lighting ,the quiet almost eerie location, suggest that there may be something sinister in the film and it may have something to do with the suspicious man.

As we want to set a tense atmosphere, this is another important piece of research. The use of sound is important - just the jingling of the handcuffs is sinister, so this is something we can use. Also having a quiet location will work well for us as we want it to look as if our heroine has been abandoned.