american beauty - oooft

Analysis of use of camera angles, sound and mise en scene in opening sequence of ‘American Beauty’

The use of camera angles in ‘American Beauty’ is often very simple, yet very effective.  The opening scene is a P.O.V. shot of Jane. It straight away is involving the audience and making them feel part of the action. It then goes onto a mid shot of her, showing her facial expression and also showing us a bit of the setting, a dark room suggesting possibly something bad will happen/is happening.

The use of sound is significant, the opening sequence uses both non-diegetic and diegetic sounds. The first thing we hear is the sound of the recorded beginning to record, this instantly makes the audience aware that it is not a professional film, and that it is being recorded on a personal device. We then hear Jane talk about her father in an abrupt tone with Ricky entering with ‘do you want me to kill him?’ there is then a brief pause and then the girl, this time more slightly quieter says ‘yes’. The silence, and then almost whisper of ‘yes’ helps create suspense and tension for the audience. The film then goes on to have a fairly upbeat soundtrack playing in the background, [diegetic], it is very repetitive and could be suggesting to the audience that the man’s life who it shows in the picture when playing the soundtrack is very much the same in the sense of it’s repetitive.

When we see the bedroom, we see Jane in fairly intimate clothing, suggesting whoever she’s with and herself have a           close relationship, furthermore her dull clothing really shows off her body shape, and also that she is very pale skinned. The titles of the film also come up in red writing the colour red obviously having the connotations of passion, danger and as we’ve already watched it we know that it has a link to the roses later on in the film.

Overall I think they are all used well in the opening sequence to set up the film, without making it too obvious what exactly will be happening throughout the film.