The opening scene to the butterfly effect starts off with a man in a patient outfit which people wear who are admitted into a hospital. The audience can see the character coming into an office and he seems to be looking for something. Then when he comes across a book, he starts writing in it and the audience can only see that he is writing something that says to save her. The opening scene to the butterfly effect has a continuous camera shot. In the beginning of the opening scene it is seen that the director has used track in the beginning of the opening, so that audience can follow the character around and to know that he is the one we should be keeping an eye on, which means that he could be the main person for this film. The camera tracks from inside the room, with a figure that the audience cannot yet see and this keeps the audience waiting until what will happen next. This is a mid-shot of the character the reason this may have been put into this opening scene because it gives the audience an idea on how the character of feeling and shows the facial expression of how the character is feeling and this can suggest that he is in a panic and is quite nervous and in a rush. This makes the audience feel like they would like to know what happens with this character. Also this mid-shot I can tell that the character is feeling quite panicky and looks like he is in quite a rush.
This high angle shot can show the vulnerability side of the character and this can make the character feel small and has a lot of pressure. The audience will feel like he just wants to hide even more like how he is hiding under the desk. The way the character is trying to make him-self as more as possible, this empathised by the camera angle which as a high angle shot and this makes him seem more vulnerable than he already his. In the opening scene there are two different type of sounds non-diegetic and diegetic, non-diegetic sounds is sound which is added after a film has been made and diegetic is natural sounds such as the sound of knocking on a the door. The sound made in the opening scene is both non-diegetic and diegetic. The non-diegetic sound is the background noise which is imputed as the opening scene is rolling. The type of non-diegetic sounds played in the background is really slow like something is coming and it is quite foreboding, which is quite slow and something is happening at that present time. The audience will be able to sense that something big is going to happening or at the current stage something has happened. The diegetic sounds, is a dialogue, this is when the actor is talking and this informs the audience on what is happen, this occurred when the character is writing in the book he starts to mutter about what he is writing about and this gives the audience an idea about what is going on and this suggests that this story is about this character is trying to save somebody. There is no specific edits in this opening scene, however, it is quite slow and steady and this is a huge contrast to what the character is feeling and this could suggest that everything is moving too fast to slow for the character to handle. The mise en scene is everything the audiences see. In the opening scene I can see a couch and an office table which suggests that this scene was situated inside an office. Also the low key lighting is quite dark which suggest that this is taken place in a dark location but this effect also creates a mystery as there are no doctors or patients around, which also gives the opening scene a sense of adrenaline as the character is doing something which he shouldn't be doing.
The costume that the main character is wearing looks to be wearing a hospital gown as it is blue and long, so this suggests that he is a patient at a hospital. However as he seems fine but looks quite uncomfortable and desperate to find a way out like he has been forced to be be hospitalised, suggesting he could be a mental patient. The camera then zooms in to the last two words which he writes on a piece of paper while he’s reading it out, suggesting that the person who wants to ‘save’ is very important and worth dying for, the paper then gets torn then into the theme of the butterfly effect as the torn paper then turns to butterflies then into a single butterfly which covers/matches the scan image of a brain, suggesting that the genre of this film is a psychological thriller. The score music also begins to play as the name of the film appears showing that the film has started.
A very wide establishing shot sets out the scene as houses appear but also two children on their bikes riding down the hill, the camera gets tilted down as the children get closer to the camera. The camera movement then pans around and stops when it reaches to a house with another child playing with a dog, the child seems quite young and for it to be playing aggressively with a bull dog seems quite dangerous, non diagetic sound is used to represent the dog barking angry. The camera then zooms into the child and the dog still in a wide shot to show the setting more clearly.Then the camera pans around the child as a woman (presumably his mother as her voice of address sounds very motherly) calls him and he runs up. The mise en scene shows that the woman is wearing a mechanic costume which is counter stereotyping what she shouldn't be doing, what a man should be doing instead, which makes the audience think its either her job or its because she is a single mother who is independent and can do what both genders can do. She then goes back and the camera takes a long shot of her taking her mechanic suit of and the revealing her normal daily job dress underneath showing that she's a working parent and then Kevin (the young boy) asks about his father coming to visit him which then his mother replies back uncomfortably showing that she is a single parent. Then she replies back again saying, 'its too dangerous for him' but not actually saying why its dangerous for him to visit his child, making the audience think about the probabilities. Shot reverse shot then takes place while both characters are discussing about the school gallery.
In the next scene the camera is at a wide shot as it focuses on the car driving into the car park of a primary school, ambient sound of the car suggests that Kevin is late for school. As Kevin walks out and rushes into the building, unexpectedly a lady knocks on the window of the car, the heavy sound coming from Kevin's mums perspective gives an impression that the lady knocking on the window wants to talk about something important. The lady knocking on the window looks quite posh and formal suggesting she's either a teacher or the headteacher. The camera then takes angle over the left shoulder as Kevin's mum opens the window and talks to the teacher about Kevin's behaviour and situation in school.
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