Mise-en-scene in the opening of Romeo and Juliet

In the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet, the 'Montague boys' are driving down a busy road mocking the public in a rather abnormal manner. They drive their bright yellow childish car up to a 'gas' station where they disperse from their vehicle. While some of them are standing around or off shot, one begins to mock a nun and at this point, the 'Capulet boys' arrive. The nun's vehicle drives off and the two families are left staring at one another. The fight scene then begins after a little dialogue and after the fight ends, one Montague is shot by a Capulet and the gas station explodes from petrol everywhere and a match.

I think that the props used in the scene are very well chosen. Firstly, the guns. Each member of each family has one gun with them except Tybalt (a Montague) who has two under his jacket. As well as this, the guns also have a badge on the end of each of them (with the family name on). This is useful as it shows the audience who is in which family to prevent confusion. The guns themselves are also called 'swords' and are silver in colour which gives the suggestion to uneducated audiences that the play was originally done with swords and has just been modernised.

Another prop that is used to show the difference in the families is the vehicles. The childish 'Montague boys' drive a big bright yellow car that looks like a child's play toy. This contrasts to the large dark blue expensive vehicle that the 'Capulet boys' drive. This idea of the Capulets being more mature is also shown through their costumes and the way that the behave.
Other props used include the barrels, bag, and lighter.

As well as props in the mise-en-scene, there is also the setting. There are only two settings used in this opening scene. The first is the road that the Montague boys are driving down at the start of the clip where the are mocking the public with silly faces. The second is where a majority of the opening is filmed, the gas station. I think that the settings are chosen very well because there are so many different possibilities of things that can be done because of the location. By this I mean that there can be so many new characters added or props added.

The final part of mise-en-scene that we have been looking at is the costume. In any film, this can be one of or the most important part of the mise-en-scene. This is because you could have the best script or best actors but without good costumes, it will not be brought together properly. You can't have a western for example with people wearing hoodies and sweaters. The Montague boys have a very varied style of clothing with flowered shirts and tank tops with shorts. This is very immature compared to the Capulet boys' all similar blue suits that match their posh car. An important part of Tybalt's costume is his cowboy style shoes. This is because it also goes well with the showdown style gun fight between the two families to give the opening a more modern western theme.

I really like the opening scene because there is so much going on and it all fits really well together.