Children of men

Children of Men

Just as the opening sequence starts of Children Of Men it strangely starts with no sound and just the image of the Universal sign, this gives the opening scene a really effective way of grabbing the audience’s attention as this is unusual to start off with so the audience will think something is wrong however it is done to just draw their attention. Shortly after the universal sign disappears a voice over(VO) bridges into the film however there is no image whatsoever on the screen it is just a black screen, this is also used to draw attention to the audience as they will be paying more attention to what the voice over is saying. The VO at this point has not been distracted by any visuals therefore they are talking about a key message which is talking about all the dystopia which has been happening. After this there is now a scene in a London cafe where everyone is watching the news on the TV, there is also a TV behind them which shows the viewers a clear image of what news they are looking at. All of the tones in this scene are tones of grey/ green which are very dull and represent darkness and negativity; this could be implying that something bad is going to happen later on in the film. After a few seconds of looking at them in the cafe a man begins to work through the crowd oblivious to the news, he then is in centre frame of the shot which could indicate that he is important and this creates enigma as the audience will be thinking who is this actor and what importance is he going to have to the film. The man orders a drink and then walks out, whilst he walks out the camera follows behind him swiftly as if the camera is someone following him. This also gives a feeling that this man has a high importance to the film for someone to actually follow them.  There’s then a pan shot of the city so that the audience can see the area and then begins to follow the man down the road again. The man begins to then drink which could indicate that there’s nothing better to as there’s so much tragedy going on at the moment and it may  be helping him deal with the  circumstances. The camera then goes round the man to face the other side of the street suddenly at this point a large explosion happens coming out of a shop the man jumps back but the camera then moves in but juddering, this is  done to give the audience a better look to see what has happened. A woman comes running out screaming with a high pitch and holding one of her arms in the other hand, the screaming leaves a ring in your ear and this is done on purpose to then give the audience an idea of how you would feel to be in the actual scene yourself.