Analysis of 'Harry Brown' Opening Sequence

Harry Brown (2009) 

Director: Daniel Barber

Writer: Gary Young 

Sound: 

There is no non-diegetic sound in the opening of this film. What can be heard is the voices of the characters which appears to be quite muffled due to the fact that it is shown being recorded through a mobile phone. This emphasises the youth of today and how they use technology to communicate with one another and are always using them. At the beginning of the opening scene you can hear the voices of the characters whilst the black screen with credits is still being shown, this gives more of a tension towards the film as you then don’t actually know what is going on but can hear the gang shouting causing you to feel un-easy.

Mise-en-scene: 

The locations of which the opening sequence is filmed appears to be in a darkened tunnel. Its shown to be quite a grim area with lots of graffiti, which resembles the idea that the youth of today are troublesome and quite a bad environment to hang around. The scene goes on to showing two youths on a moped riding through an estate which is graphitised and shown to be a deprived area. 

The type of language they use in the opening scene is full of slang and ‘swear words’ towards one another emphasising once again their youth. The clothes that we see some of the characters wear are thick coats, ‘hoodies’ and hats covering their heads and scarves to cover their faces. They are all quite dark colours which is showing the menacing side towards this group of youths, and how they aren’t approachable and like to be hidden from society and not blend in. 

A prop that has been used is a bottle which they all then get one of the characters to then smoke out of, from this we can see it is something that shouldn’t be done and we immediately feel anxious to how they act. Another prop that has been used is the gun. The gun is used when two of the youths are on the mopeds and result in shooting an innocent woman in front of her child. By having this part involved in the opening sequence we can see that this film is going to show how society is corrupt and how people are not safe.

Camera: 

The camera angles are all hand-held shots which appear to be taken upon a video camera or mobile device. The shots are all shaky emphasising the shakiness within a teenagers life and the changes. From the camera angles, they change a lot and have different shots from close ups, to extreme close ups, to long shots and medium shots. 

Editing: 

Due to that most all of the footage of the scene is record on a mobile, there is little editing that is visible. There are jump cuts that are seen quite often from one video recording to the other and from where they appear to change the camera. From this we can see a lot of jump cuts, but the length of the shots are quite long as they are all suppose to be from one source of video. 

Titles: 

The titles that are shown are really with a really small and just a  plain font in white against a black background. This idea of having barely anything there gives a more dramatic effect towards the film and as the scene goes on the same style of the titles the same size appears still against the same background.