How does mise-en-scene make meaning to the audience in Romeo & Julietin the opening scene?

Mise-en-scene makes meaning for the audience in many ways. I will be exploring how they do this in the opening Sven of Romeo and Juliet. The ways I will be exploring are, lighting, props, costume, setting, and sound effects and music.

Lighting

The lighting in this scene is all natural light (maybe excluding a slight part of unnatural to uncover some unwanted dark patches). because the scene is all shot outside. This gives the sense of realism and authenticity because by using natural lighting the audience the feeling that they can relate to the scene as they, like most of us have been outside in natural lighting. The director chose to use the lighting in this way because they wanted us the audience to believe that there actually is a shoot up in fair Verona with modern weapons.

Props

The props on this scene make meaning for the audience by showing to them that this film is a modern twist on a old story. The best example for this are the guns. The guns when shown say the names of the house the come from. And the dialog saying bare your sword also suggests that the guns are supposed to represent swords. Also the cars are important to show that this is clearly an old story that is set in modern times because they are both contrasting each other with colour and they symbolise the house that they come from.

Costume

The costume is a very useful recourse in this part of the film because this opening scene is trying to get you to "be on the yellow cars side" this is archived by not only the actions and dialogue but the costume play a large part in it too. The ridiculous open Hawaiian shirts of the yellow car people compared to the black suits of the blue car people suggest that they are more relaxed and less stressed than the other gang. This attitude is what gives them a personality that is very easy to like. So by the time it gets to the fight scene you are already rooting for one side even though you do t know any of their background story.

Setting

The setting in this scene consists of 3 parts. The open road at the start, the petrol station and the busy traffic jam. These 3 settings play an important part in this scene as they all have a reason why they are set like that. The sunny open road at the start of the scene suggests happiness and careless lifestyles as the have allot of freedom on the road. This straight away gives us an insight to the yellow car gangs personality. The petrol station sets the mood of the scene to make the audience feel like they are in a western type film. This is achieved by the colours, the fact the two gangs meet unexpectedly there and finally the fact that it is all rusty and old looking also makes the setting feel like a place with little care and were little protection is given. Finally the busy traffic jam shows to the audience that there is little escape and that hostiles are being involved in the shooting. 

Sound effects and music

There are  sound effects in this scene that are diabetic and non-diagetic. At the start of the scene there is non-diagetic music playing while they are in the car. The song says "the boys, the boys" and this gives us another insight to their personality because the words of the song suggest that they are the boys and have allot of freedom and are a bit of a trouble maker. As the scene goes on and the blue car gang step out of the car a slow western non diagetic song plays and this shows more seriousness with this gang and is another way that the scene feels like a western. Finally some of the shooting sound effects help show to the audience that they are actually shooting real guns and it try's to take the fake aspect away from the shooting.

And when you put all of these methods together then you get a scene that is believable and tells part of the story already.

Also sorry for calling the gangs blue and yellow. I know they are montages and capsules but I just don't know what way round so I did that to stop any confusion.