8 Mile opening analysis

Research: 8 Mile Opening Sequence Analysis

8 Mile is an American rap film released in 2002, starring Eminem who plays the character Jimmy "B-Rabbit". It is about a young white-rapper living in a trailer park in Detroit trying to launch a rap career.
It took almost $243 million at the box office.
The opening starts with the ident of Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment and then the title, with the non-diagetic sound of a rap song. From the black screen, the camera zooms out to an over-the-shoulder shot of Eminem looking into a mirror and jogging. The name of the actor (Eminem) comes up on screen. He then starts rapping to himself in
the mirror; there are a lot of close-ups of him. The first diagetic sound is a bang on the door to which Jimmy tells them to 'hold on a minute'.
He then throws up in the toilets and walk out of the bathrooms.

Character Analysis

Jimmy is dressed in a hoodie and baggie clothes, stereo-typically this is what a 'chav' would wear and is conventional iconography of this sub-genre of film. The first place we see him is in some grotty old toilets with the mise en scene of the cracked mirror, which are conventional features of this type of film., which suggests he is poor and a bit of a 'low-life'. We can guess that he has a big passion for rap music because of the way he is rapping to himself in the mirror and the non-diagetic music. They have put a greyish green filter on the camera to make it look dirtier and less appealing.

Setting analysis

The only setting we see in the opening is the grotty old toilets of what appears to be some kind of club as it has lots of graffiti on the walls. It is most likely in a city somewhere. The mise-en-scene includes a smashed mirror suggesting that the town or city we are in is a rough area- this assumption is made as we can tell so far what genre of film it is by the iconography and non-diagetic soundtrack and a conventional setting for this genre would be a rough area.