Essex Boys Opening Scene

In the beginning scene of Essex Boys, we’re inside a garage with a car in a low, dark atmosphere. There is a dark light in the garage, which gives the scene a sinister aspect to it. The camera shifts slowly forward to make the audience feel that we’re in some abandoned place. A man comes onto the screen and gets in the car about to go about his daily business.

A mysterious man then appears in front of the car and we have a long shot from inside the garage to the man standing outside. He’s wearing a classic east end costume especially picking out the bold shirt and the long leather jacket. The light behind him being positioned so the light shines on him makes out that he’s a dominant figure here.

Here, we have an extreme long shot of the tunnel; this makes the tunnel a more claustrophobic and tight space. The music at this point is quite strange, which then makes this scene, darker.

At this point, the mysterious stranger is in the car with the boy, and is driving him somewhere. Quite a good point here is the lighting. As they drive through the tunnel, the flicker of the lights, flash on the car. This shows that the lights are like prison bars as what he’s about to do is a bad act, and it could result him in going to prison.

As they drive out of the tunnel, the weather is quite miserable and bleak which makes the place that they’re at, a dirty and gritty place. Similar to one of the earlier scenes, the camera has a long shot of the car coming out of the tunnel, which makes the audience think, ‘where are they going?’

This is quite a dramatic scene, as the man comes out of a white van and walks through a warehouse until he finds a suited person and attacks him, and throws him to the floor. The location of the warehouse shows that it’s quite a dirty place and it gives that dark feeling to it.  In his dialogue, there’s a lot of swearing which makes the events edgier, and destructive. Also with his accent, it makes him a “hard” and not to be messed with figure.

The mysterious east end man, throws acid at the suited person, and stings him in the eyes, the rest of the workers are strangely liking what’s taking place and you can hear chants and cheers. He throws the suited man into the white van. You can see the facial expressions of the man who’s driving the van, the young boy, is quote mesmerised at what he’s seen, and realizes what he’s got himself into. You see 2 close shots of the man beating him up from both sides. The white van gives us the impression of distrust, as people think that white vans are miserable and horrible. They then drive off.

In this last scene, the suited man is crying for relief after having acid thrown in his face. They pull up at an abandoned dock and he lets him out. The man who’s has acid thrown his face goes to the water to stop the pain, but the east end man, comes after him and kicks him in the gut. The abandoned dock gives us another sinister, dark impression as there’s now wear to go and it’s all by itself. There’s an extreme long shot at this points as the boy and the east end man, get back in the car and drive off, leaving the suited person left in the dirty, muddy, abandoned docks, and we can see in the distance of them driving off and leaving him for dead. The lighting here is very grey and grim along with the bad weather. This matches the plot as they both have both left a half destroyed man in the dirt.