The opening sequence establishes the happy family life of Nick and his sons Brendan and Luke through a montage of home videos. Brendan is shown to be closer to his father and more athletic, winning an MVP award for hockey. On the drive home, their car breaks down at a remote gas station where Brendan is suddenly killed during a gang initiation, shocking the audience. The sequence uses camera work and sound to build suspense and highlight the contrast between the family's life and the dangerous criminal world.

1. DEATH SENTENCE ANALYSIS
BY MARIYAH
THE CONCEPT OF A FILM OPENING IS TO LURE THE AUDIENCE INTO
WATCHING THE WHOLE DURATION OF THE FILM, THERE ARE MANY
DIFFERENT CONVENTIONS PRESENTED IN THIS MOVIE TO ASSURE THIS.

2. PRE-TITLE DISTRIBUTION
Pre-title distribution (20th Century Fox) and production (Hyde entertainment) logos. These logos create
high expectation / establish it as a mainstream movie / expect high production values

3. EDITING
• Opening scene is a montage of flashbacks of Nick Humes (Kevin Bacon) and his family enjoying a
number of Christmas’s and his second son Luke’s birthday. Flashback establishes importance of memory
as a theme

4. ESTABLISHING NARRATIVE
Audience learn difference between his eldest son Brendan (sporty) vs. Luke (artistic) through the props
attached to each character.

5. ESTABLISHING NARRATIVE
• Brendan’s proximity to father within the frame establishes that he is closer to him and is the
stereotypical perfect son. This builds suspense and creates the potential conflict within narrative for the
movie.

6. TITLES / CREDITS
• the actors and producer’s names alternate on the bottom left and right hand of the screen with the
more dominant and audience appealing actors appearing first such as Kevin Bacon. This appears first as
the audience are more likely to watch a movie judged on the actors acting in the movie especially when
they are so well known.

7. SOUND
• Throughout the whole flashback the diegetic sound used is the voices of the characters, Luke riding a
bike and the sound of the hockey stick striking the puck into a window. This reinforces the difference
between the characters. This makes the scene very realistic and accurate and portrays that of a drama
within a Thriller.

8. CAMERA
• The whole scene is handheld as it has all been recorded by the family on there camera, they have made
it into a short film so they can always look back and remember special moments they had together.
From this video recording we can see they live in quite a big house with a big garden, they had also
gotten a decent amount of Christmas presents so we can assume they have good jobs and are quite
wealthy, they are likely to live in the Suburbs of America

9. MISE-EN-SCENE/ WORK SETTING
• The scene quickly sets into Nicks personal Office which is very spacious and luxurious, he has a picture
of his family framed on his desk which is also an indicator to show us how much he loves them. Nick is a
risk assessment executive and is having a conversation with an employee and states that deaths in
families and speeding is bad and later says he is “glad all that junk is still true” this is a hint that this is
later to come in the narrative.

10. CAMERA
• We focus on Nicks face the whole way through the mid shot we see his face glow when the employee
says Nicks kids are perfect. Later on at dinner we see Brendan and Luke both being quite immature and
having brotherly arguments with each other and quite often we hear them joking about them killing
each other and not being a part of this family before Nick comes in and tries to stop them from both
nagging at each other and exclaims they stop before he kills someone. From this scene we learn that
they are speaking a lot about killing and so this could be foreshadowing what’s about to happen. The
boys are all sitting at the table casually dressed whilst the mother is cooking and cleaning we can hear
diegetic sound from the TV. We can see the love and closeness between Luke and Brendan as they
interact with one another, they are constantly winding each other up purposefully to get attention from
one another. The focus is mainly on the two brothers so there is a lot of two shots at different angles
and close ups to show their relationship. We see at the end of the scene Brendan getting Luke into an
arm lock before taking him into another room for a wrestle.

11. SOUND
• This is when when we start to hear a slow paced, melancholy type of music which goes straight into the
next scene when Brendan wins MVP in his hockey match, this signifies what happiness is to him, his
family as well as winning MVP. Brendan is currently having the best time of his li

12. CAMERA ANGLES
We see an establishing shot of the hockey pitch and a tracking shot and a low angle shot of Brenden
scoring on his skates. This suggests the importance of him being recognised and emphasises that there is
going to be a dramatic change. We also see a focused mid shot on Nick as he stands up cheering for his son
as he has just scored. Brendan is wearing a full hockey uniform which suggests has has great passion for
the sport and desires to become professional. In the car when Nick and Brenden are heading home we see
a variety of close ups and over the shoulder shots, there is also a lot of lighting on Brendan’s face and at
times Nicks too. This highlights the fact something very major is about to happen in addition adding to the
suspense we are in a car at night time in quite an empty isolated, dark area which looks to be quite
dangerous.

13. MISE EN SCENE AND EDITING
• We also see the “speeding” of two gang striped looking cars flash by twice the camera tracks them for
awhile before they turn off. Nick later stops at a gas station in the middle of know where as he’s run out
of fuel, Brendan offers to pay as he wants a slush. While Nick decides to phone his wife and tell her that
they will never see their son again as he wants to go to a hockey collage in Canada the striped cars pull
up. Just before this everything goes silent and the camera focuses on an old tramp like man wearing
some sort of cloth around his head pushing a trolley of junk. This is shown as a wide shot. The masked
men all loaded with weapons and wearing leather jackets stampede into the gas station this is shown as
a hand held shot as the camera is quite unstable this shows suggests aggression and unmoral manner.
They are all loaded with weapons waiting for the new gang member to complete the initiation.

14. SOUND
• In this scene we can hear a lot of shouting and swearing and loadings of guns and bullets falling to the
floor. Brendan has his ands up and is petrified, the main target was supposed to be the shop clerk but
the new gang member didn’t get a chance to kill him so instead he took out his machetti and slit
Brendan’s throat. In this scene we saw a lot of panning back and forth to the gang members then to
Brendan this created immaculate suspense as we didn’t want to see Brendan hurt. This was the first fast
paced action scene that will make the audience carry on watching as now they probably have been
emotionally touched. This also gives another aspect to the Genre which is action with a lot of gang
related content.

15. OPENING SEQUENCE
• The opening sequence to this movie is based on quite long scenes which all tie together very smoothly,
they transition to different locations quite effectively by ending the scene in one place. The use of
camera angles really complimented the narrative and the characters, it showed their love and
relationship. The use of sound especially the diegetic sound and even just silence created a sense of
melancholy and hinted that something bad was about to take place. The mise en scene added to this as
demonstrated the difference in culture ie gangs vs a normal family and the dangerous poorer parts of
the city compared to the richer more safer areas.