Witness Opening Scene

Director: Peter Weir. Year Made: 1985

In this clip we join an Amish boy and his Amish mother arriving in Philadelphia Station. The Amish are very simple living people. So to a little Amish boy the Philadelphia Station is a world apart from his village.

From 0:01 - 0:08 seconds there is a low angle shot of a biblical related statue (the Angel of Mercy). This shot suggests power. From 0:08 - 0:12 there is a slightly low angle medium close up of the boys face. The hat on his head connotes to a halo, by showing this he looks innocent. Over all of this there is the non-diegetic sound of a soundtrack. The music is a peaceful sustained note. It allows the boy to look even more fascinated by this statue. At 0:17 there is an extremely high angle over the shoulder shot from the statue. This makes the little boy seem very insignificant. The reason i say this is because everyone else in the shot is walking past the magnificent statue not taking a glimpse of notice and this little boy is staring in awe. This shows just how appreciative he is to be witnessing this statue in all its glory. At 0:33 you see the mother and child sitting in the station. There are all by themselves making them both isolated figures. Slightly in the right of the frame there is a vanishing point which in this case is the door to the public toilets. This is a brilliant example of the rule of thirds which Peter Weir uses here. The vanishing point takes up roughly one third to the right of the screen and the other two thirds to the left of the screen are the bleak and seemingly abandoned station.

At 1:12 there is a man in the toilets washing his face. It could be argued that he is cleaning himself from some of the dirty work he has got up to and that he is involved in the grimy underworld of crime. Weir uses the ambient grim lighting of the public toilets. The colours in these facilities are very bleak. Lots of creams and browns and very plain and gives the whole room a rather 'grubby' look and feel.

At 1:25 Wier begins to use a shot which is repeated throughout this scene. This is the use of a point of view shot through a crack of the cubicle door. The reason why this is so brilliant is because of its sheer simplicity. At 1:52 there is another example of the use of thirds. We see the man on the left's face however we do not see the man on the right's face. This means that the man can remain enigmatic and becomes another piece of this puzzle for the audience to try to work out. The victim is in the middle of these two men and this connotes that there is no escape from what is about to happen. This incident happens at 1:58. Notice that the jacket used to smother the man is blood red. This is almost trying to subliminally make this murder more violent.