Rear Window Opening

Camerawork

• The opening shot is framed by a window, and then the camera moves forward to look outside the window. We can see a courtyard surrounded by apartments, and windows looking through into each one.
• The next shot looks down on a neighbourhood cat, and then tilts up to look at the blocks of apartments. The camera moves very slowly and tilts and pans over and across the apartments, and finally pans so the camera goes back through a window to close-up up on a man lying back, with sweat dripping down his forehead. This long wide shot establishes the setting of the story, of what is seemingly a very normal area. 
• It cuts to a close-up of a thermometer to show the temperature, and then pans across and changes focus to see a man getting shaving in his apartment in the distance. The fact that we can see through completely into his apartment shows how easily neighbours must be able to as well. 
  
• We then see a couple waking up on the balcony of their apartment, again another long shot. When we see the neighbours we never see a close-up, we only look at them from a distance, but when we see the man sweating in the chair we see a close-up, so he must be important. 
• In the same shot, the camera tilts and pans to another building, an a young woman is getting changed by the window. As the camera pans away, it takes the same route as before- panning across the buildings and then into the apartment of the man in the chair, but this time the route taken by the camera is closer in. 
• In the same shot, the camera tilts down the man in the apartment, so we can see that he has broken his leg, and then pans to a broken camera, and then to a photo of a racing car on his wall. Much like how a montage would work, this long shot looks around the room as you would if you had just walked into it, and leaves the audience to piece together the evidence, you could say. We later discover he is a photographer who broke his leg in a racetrack accident.

Editing

• The editing is very simplistic, Hitchcock uses straight cuts, but low-speed editing so the audience can fully take in the setting.

Lighting and Colour

• The lighting is also very simple and natural. It is high key, with lots of light filling the court outside the rear window, so we can fully see into each apartment. Again, his simplicity makes highlights the seemingly normal set up. 
• The colour is all uniform throughout the opening, so there is nothing out of the ordinary or dramatic that particularly draws our attention.

Sound

• At the beginning, to me the music is contrapuntal because it is so orchestral, brassy, with lots of percussion, which seem too exaggerated for slow-paced sequence. However, as this soundtrack continues, there is more of a sense of mystery to the music. 
• When we see the man shaving in the window, the music stops and then a radio advert is heard from his apartment. He changes the channels to some music that plays underneath the rest of the opening. This music is sounds a bit more cheeky and inquisitive, which reflects the fact that we are literally spying on the neighbours. 
• The alarm clock from the neighbours sleeping on their balcony is very loud, which mirrors the idea that the each person's business has the capability of being everyone's business.

Mise-en-scene

• From this opening we get a clear sense that everyone can see into what your are up to, so there is very little privacy, and yet the neighbours don't seem to notice this, one woman is even getting into her bra in front of the window. 
• The man in the wheelchair is clearly a main character, who must be quite a daredevil if he has broken a camera in such a drastic way. Confined to the wheelchair, the view out of his rear window must be something to keep him occupied during the day. 
• Hitchcock was great at creating a very normal scene for an opening. Even though it's a bit strange that you can easily look into each other windows, the scene looks like an everyday situation on a hot summer's day. Using this as an opening, Hitchcock could use a slow-build of intensity, and gradually introduce odd or intriguing elements into the storyline.