Film Analysis: The Perks of Being A Wallflower

     The very first scene of the film begins with a teenage boy sat at a desk in a moderately dark room. There is a desk and a lamp and he is writing a letter. This could suggest that he is in school and so has this stuff to do his school work and so it helps to set the scene for the audience. The furniture looks homely and the boy looks relaxed in the room, suggesting that it is his bedroom and so the viewer already knows where it is set.

     The lighting remains quite dark and warm and homely, adding to the bedroom like effect and the camera angles are not very direct, so that the character is in the centre of the shot, however, they are being looked at at an angle. This suggests that the person on the screen is the main character. The camera zooms out from the character, slowly revealing more and more of the room, which suggests the character is more important than the setting as the boy comes foremost, then his bedroom. However, because we are shown it near the start, it implies it is quite an important setting in the rest of the movie.

     The opening scene doesn't really consist of many different shots, however, when it does change from one to the next, it does so fairly smoothly to keep the relaxed, homely tone to the film. The only point it changes from being in the bedroom is when it quickly switches to another scene and then back again, to give the audience a little more insight.

     The set, costumes and lighting are all quite realistic, which shows that the film will probably not be fantasy of any kind and will be set in a normal place.
   
  The film follows quite a simple narrative structure as it starts with it being fairly calm and then there is an issue and then the issue is resolved, as with most films of any genre. However, there are some flashbacks, which help to give the audience more information about the characters background and past and can help to further explain current happenings in the film, such as when it goes back to explain about his present and his aunt in the car crash.

     There is quite a bit of dialogue in the film, however because it is done in quite a diary like style, as the main character is often writing letters, there is also often a lot of the character talking to himself and giving a narration of sorts about his life and reselling things after they have happened, which gives the film quite a personal feel as a diary and letters to someone are quite personal things and so the viewer feels as if they know quite important details, which draws them in and causes them to like the main character.

     There is a lot of diegetic sound such as the characters talking to one another and music being played as a lot of the film revolves around music and there is music playing at their school dance thing as well as when they are in one of the characters car.

     As well as this, there is some non diegetic sound, such as music that the characters aren't aware of and also the fact we can hear the characters thoughts out loud is not something we'd normally be able to hear, and so is obviously edited in as sometimes we can hear the character saying things, but can't actually see his mouth moving.