The opening sequence of this movie is simple but effective as it shows what could be seen as a Point of view shot (POV) as the car is driving on a bridge and under a tunnel with raw handheld filming, followed by a dark shot of a young adolescent writing a letter in his room – during the shot there is a narration of what he is thinking.
The genre for this film is Drama, Romance featuring ‘the coming of age’. The conventions of a drama usually include having a realistic characters with typical characteristics of people their age, in this instance, the young teenage boy seems very typical of most teenage boys, which reveals that this drama falls under ‘coming of age’ as the boy is around 16/17. Another drama convention is the use of diegetic sound at the very beginning of the opening sequence, which also creates the idea of real life situations – as the sounds are instantaneously recognisable. In this example, the opening sequence contained sounds of a type writer as the names of the actors were being shown – followed by the opening scene of the teenage boy writing on a typewriter. From this, the audience can gather that the drama within the film is going to centre around a boy who isn’t completely regular as he is still into vintage techniques rather than the new age digital technologies – making it an alternative coming of age film. Further on, another convention is the use of dull, gritty lighting quite low saturation throughout unlike action movies. In ‘The perks of being a wallflower’ the opening scene is lowly lit, with partial lighting and low saturation.
The use of diegetic sounds at the beginning conveys to the audience that the film is in the genre of Drama. Throughout the opening sequence there is diegetic sound of a type writer being used. This sets a tone and atmosphere of the film for the audience - being an ‘alternative’ style film which can be seen as gritty and quite raw.
The use of a teenage average looking boy as a major character follows the conventions of all coming of age films. The main character “Charlie” is made to look young, somewhat vulnerable and relatable, due to the way he acts, is dressed – however the typewriter portrays suggestions of him being an outcast. This consequently allows the target audience of alternative teenagers that may be classed as outcasts to be able to fully relate to the character of Charlie as even from the opening scene there are suggestions on what type of person he is portraying.
The mise-en-scene allows the audience to predict the type of film that they are viewing. For example, throughout the opening scene the colour, lighting and camera language complement each other as the colour is desaturated, the lighting is low (night time) quite underexposed, and the camera is hand held and tilted following the movements of the moving car. All of those factors contribute into making the opening scene seem gritty, raw and quite vulnerable – unsteady which can be seen as reflecting on the way that the major characters within the film are as people through their adolescence in this coming of age film.
The editing used contained quite slow pace cuts throughout the opening scene. These slow cuts were successfully used when filming under the bridge with the handheld camera as the pace of the filming was quick due to the camera being handheld therefore if fast pace cuts were used it would have overwork the scene. These cuts transferred the shot from being a long shot into a mid-shot of areas such as the bridge ceiling.
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