I have decided to do an analysis of the opening scenes of my favorite movie – The Dark Knight– and my favorite TV show – Mr. Robot– to get the idea of how to keep audiences hooked to the screen with only watching the first few minutes of it. Since my project is based on doing the opening of a film, I think this would help me a great deal.
The show starts off with a dark screen and the main character talking to the audience as if they are friends. By having the establishing shot be a dark screen already has a sense of enigma to it. It also connotes to the darkness and loneliness that Elliot – the protagonist – is feeling.
Because he is so lonely, he continues saying that it is lame to be talking to an imaginary person that he has created, but he has a plan that he needs to let somebody know, but since he has nobody to talk to, he decides to create a friend, in this case that imaginary friend is the audience. So that alone already has people curious as to why he feels this way, as well as it builds a connection between character and audience, which contributes to audiences engagement in the show.
Then the camera starts to pan out of the darkness revealing an office of executives conversing as he says the line “there is a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world”, which connotes to them, they are the powerful group of people. By being one of the high floors of a building also signifies a hierarchy of how the rich are on top of the world and the poor are at the bottom of the food chain.
At first the camera is blurry on the men talking and focuses on a building in construction, this could connote to the plan Elliot is building in his head, the one that is top secret. Then the camera focuses on the executives as he says “I’m talking about the guys, no one knows the guys that are invisible”. He is putting the attention on them to signify they are bad, these are the guys we as a society should be fearing. It leaves audiences with that enigma, what have this people done to infuriate Elliot so much? To the point that he starts formulating to take them down. Further, the sense of mystery continues as Elliot states”now I think they’re following me”. Why does he think that? It makes audiences continue being engaged by making them question this guys decisions. Why is he so paranoid?
After he finishes his speech, it turns black back again until the sound of a train stopping comes as Elliot is with his hood up looking at two guys suits. He seems nervous and sort of out of place, like he doesn’t want to be there. The camera shots in the show are unconventional, they don’t follow the normal “rules” of camera shots. As shown in the image above, Elliot is in the corner of the frame instead of being front and center. This is the first time Elliot is shown, this is the first look the audience sees of him. The camera placement connotes to his shyness and discomfort of being in a public place to the audience.
He says that he should’ve gone to his friend’s – Angela – birthday party, put instead he went somewhere else, a coffee shop as it appears in the mise-en-scene. He doesn’t say where, but instead it is shown by a shot of him waiting of a man to sit down, so he can go and talk to him, for unknown reasons at the moment. The silence along the diegetic sounds of the shop, builds an uncomfortable feeling as he walks towards him nervously; the audience still wonders why is he there, and who is the man he is approaching.
Elliot suddenly starts saying to him all this personal stuff about his life, such as how he is the owner of the shop, how he changed his name to Ron, how the internet in his shop is so good that it “scratched that part on his mind that doesn’t allow good to exist without condition”. So he decides to hack him. Here he gives demonstrates a lot about his personality, he is paranoid, nervous, and calculating. It keeps the audience interested in him and in Ron. What did he do that made Elliot so invested in him?
He reveals how he is control in the situation due to him having all the evidence of Ron’s illegal website. A robotic sort of sounds starts going as the conversation becomes more interesting, it helps build the tense and mysterious atmosphere of the scene. Then he reveals he is -despite what he knows about Ron- he is still empathetic; he says that he understands what is like to be different because he is very different, too. And then the scene cuts. This leaves audiences with so many questions about who is Elliot, why was he still so anxious to talk to someone if he was the one in control of the situation. The show is sort of establishing an anti-hero rather than a hero, a more relatable character that audiences would appreciate more, which also lead viewers engaged in the show.
By building an enigma around a character, camera placing, and voice-overs, Mr. Robot successfully keeps the audience engaged all throughout is opening. One is hooked since the first 3 seconds of the episode.
AS Media Studies 