Relationships between characters and audience

The opening few minutes of a film are important in building relationships between the audience and characters. We looked at the beginning of American beauty to see what we could discover about the main character, Lester Burnham in the first few minutes.

• He never says anything positive about himself. He has a negative attitude- a pessimist.
• Doesn't speak with much emotion which tells us he's perhaps a boring kind of person, he's tired and deflated.
• He's distanced from his family. He doesn't really seem to fit in.
• His wife is the dominant character in the house. we can see this because; Lester sits in the back of the car, doesn't drive, obeys her orders etc. Which is unusual as the man is conventionally in charge.
• He lives in a typical neighbourhood where every house looks the same, all the roads look the same and all the trees look the same. This highlights how boring his life is.
• Lester is never in natural light. He's always in the shadows. For example in the scene where he's in bed, he's on the side drowned in shadows, he sits in the corner of the room in the dark and wears dark, plain colours. This highlights how he blends into the background and isn't really noticed by people- they don't really care about him. Whereas his wife is always in the light, making her the centre of attention, she's bubbly and happy.

You can learn all of this about 1 character in the first few minutes of a film because of the mise-en-scene. The lighting, colours, positioning and body language all tell you so much about a character.