The beginning of the sequence opens with an establishing shot of a house that we as an audience presume has some significance to the events which will take place, or a particular character. This quickly moves on to a wide angle shot involving a girl (Juno) and a chair, for those few moments we are mystified to why the girl is focusing her attention whilst drinking towards this chair, and why this indoor chair is outside on her front lawn. We are then directed into a close up shot of the girls ‘wandering’ expression, when a narrative speaks, “It started with a chair,” in this instance asynchronous music begins, with its almost romantic tone it sets the mood for the following scene as this will begin to tell us her story and the significance of the chair.
At first glance the mise-en-scene has a continuous colour palette of browns, until we come to a mid-shot of Juno which introduces he use of red, on her t-shirt, in her lips, and in the blushing areas of her face. In my opinion this could symbolise love, and passion which flows very nicely with the fact that they are about to make love. Although we are quite well associated with Juno as a character now, the director has made an effort to keep the boy mysterious and unknown, I think this is to keep the emphasis on Juno, as this is her side of the story. After their short dialogue, the boy says the word “Wizard,” which is obviously slang as being used for its proper definition, it wouldn’t fit into this context, the use of slang goes onto familiarise us with this character and actually makes him feel a little less distant to us. The synchronous sound of a dog barking interrupts the deep emotions of Juno’s flashback, and brings us very quickly back to her reality. Seemingly quite annoyed at the dog she goes onto drinking her drink again, which we as an audience feel must have some significance but cannot identify it at such an early stage. The song by Barry Louis Polisar - All I Want is You begins to play which is a very light-hearted song which makes us feel comfortable but somewhat confused, we also see Juno walking and yet again carrying the same drink we’d seen before in two scenes. Whilst she is walking, a group of athletes run past wearing the same colours as Juno is, they have red and yellow/gold outfits on whilst Juno is wearing a red hoodie, and carrying the distinctive yellow Sunny D, with no warning the opening credits begin to run, and all of a sudden everything is placed under a cartoon effect. 
In the opening credits, we carry on seeing Juno drinking Sunny D which strangely seems as though its never ending, the objects we see around her in basic line form include a guitar, and a t.v both laying on the street, this gives us a feel for her neigbourhood, and those images mixed with the distinctive harmonica music makes me imagine a friendly laid back small american town, ones that are stereotyped on tv. The font is quite child-like, and looks almost handwritten which also runs well with the light hearted theme, as it’s not a formal look and seems quite laid back. Camera shots used in the credits; wide angle (used with tracking), mid shot, close up, long shot, low angle, high angle. I feel that the director chooses to simplify the environment by animating it, as it bares no significance to her story, it’s just normal and is not extremely important, and this keeps our attention on Juno, as well as the background being cartoony, the colours are also not as vibrant as they are on Juno. Also, although she is a little animated, Juno still has aspects about her that are realistic, whereas the background is completely cartoonized. As the credits draw to a close, the song fades and Juno tosses the Sunny D bottle into the bin, which is strange for us as we thought it bared a large significance but this movement makes us think otherwise. I notice after seeing the shops mise-en-scene, that there is a lot of red and yellow that stands out, which relates back to the runners, and Juno’s hoodie and drink. Also the mood of this scene contrasts with the child-like manner of the credits as it is quite a serious matter - teenage pregnancy, although the shopkeeper and in fact Juno don’t seem to feel just how serious this is - yet. On entering the bathroom mellow background music plays to make the mood a little more serious, to make us understand the importance of what she is doing, and again we see a lot of red and yellow. After Juno returns to the main shop she picks up some childish strawberry lace sweets, which we see again when she leaves the shop, it is a mid-shot that starts at her hands, holding a pregnancy test in one hand, and childish sweets in the other, I feel that this signifies the end of her childhood in one hand (positive pregnancy test) and trying to hold onto her childhood and innocence in the other hand (sweets).
The following scene is angled from behind, where Juno is wearing her hood up and the lighting is darker, this shows a slight mood of depression. Again we see the runners, which include the red and yellow theme into this scene. I find the same situation and contrast in the last scene, in this scene (losing childhood on one side, trying to keep it on the other,) this is where she uses the strawberry lace sweet to create a noose, and pretend to hang herself, this shows that she is having dark thoughts but the fact she is using a sweet shows it could also be light hearted, and when she bites through it, it ends the deep mood.
On the introduction to her bedroom we see various close up shots of many objects, quite untidily arranged which implies she’s not a ‘girly - girl,’ a particular object that stands out to me is the poster of a sperm like cartoon about to cross through a heart shaped hole in a girl, this is ironic as she has just found out she is pregnant and symbolises that it is going to be a ‘heart-wrenching’ decision on what to do about the pregnancy, e.g termination of pregnancy.
Also the fact that she has naked baby dolls in her room is quite ironic. We then see a complete contrast in character when Juno rings her friend, as the other girl is a stereotypical blonde american girl, wearing little shorts, holding a cute bunny, pretty room and using ditzy phrases like; “Honest to blog?” rather than Honest to God, which is strange for the audience because I personally would never imagine the two of them to be close friends as they are completely different characters. The main use of contrasting is between the posters, at one point in the clip we have almost the same angle used on both characters where their posters are in the background, and whilst Juno’s are all musical, the other girls are all typically of famous, half naked men. Also the fact that the girl on the other end of the phone says that she’s helped someone out with a termination before suggests that actually teenage pregnancy isn’t that unheard of, which is quite a concern for more developed countries e.g England.This scene leads onto another short scene involving the significant chair, which Juno is removing from her front lawn, so we as an audience hope that this will help us understand why it was there in the first place. After the short flashback explaining how the pregnancy came about, and the planning of it. We have a short shot of the two girls, and the girl who is with Juno is camouflaged into the background, in contrast with Juno’s vibrant hoodie, keeping her in the audiences attention, this suggests that the other girl isn’t that important and is keeping the story angled towards Juno rather than allowing any distractions.
The next scene is a proper introduction to ‘Bleeker’ Juno’s partner, it opens with again a red and yellow colour palette, and a very bold image saying ‘Paulie,’ which we expect to be his first name, the director is still keeping him mysterious though as we still do not witness his face, as not to give away his identity. The background music is a song called ‘A well respected man’ by Kinks, and the lyrics seem to fit his regime, but bring humour to it as well e.g the lyrics; ‘and he’s oh so healthy,’ are used when he’s shoving a fast food pasty into a microwave, this keeps the scene lighthearted and funny. As soon as he leaves his house his face is unmasked to show his expression when finding Juno on his lawn, this gives the audience the link between Juno and Bleeker, and we can begin to understand their relationship. I think that they have a ‘role-reversed’ relationship as Juno seems a lot more in control, whilst Bleeker seems quite fragile and waits to be spoken to, and also seems quite shy as he stutters his words. When we see the athletes run past in the background we suddenly find the link with them, as Bleeker is wearing the same outfit as them.
An over-the-shoulder angle makes the conversation run smoothly for the audience and keeps our focus on what is being said, and this means we can see expressions clearly. Although the relationship seems to be ‘the other way round’ when Juno comes to tell Bleeker about the pregnancy we see her softer side, that is quite like Bleeker's. For a moment they both seem quite expressionless as though waiting for an answer from each other, but when Juno says nothing Bleeker becomes the more dominant one in wanting to work out an answer rather than getting hung up on the problem that they have. When we have a close up on Juno, she seems to get her confidence back by making her own decision about terminating it, even though at such a close angle we can see in her expression that she is wanting approval, and support, and doesn’t actually know what to do she is just trying to be the stronger person. When Bleeker completely agrees with Juno and says “Do whatever you think you should do,” we see he cares for Juno, and although he’s shy he can be supportive but ultimately just wants her to be happy. In conclusion the two main characters we have been introduced to are Juno and Bleeker. Juno comes across as a head strong tomboy, but is definitely caught short when she find she is pregnant, we can see how head strong she is when she adamantly takes 4 pregnancy test as she believes she isn’t pregnant and makes up excuses like she thinks the ‘last one was defective.’ I think that because she tries to come across like a very strong person, the pregnancy could ultimately make her a softer person because it seems as though she hasen’t ever been put in such an important mature situation.
Bleeker, seems like a harmless boy, in some respects a little ‘geeky’ although Juno doesn’t come across like this at all. He seems quite sheltered as when Juno came to tell him he had no idea what to do, as he’d obviously not been in that position before, also as his mum is still doing his washing, “My mum uses colour safe bleach.” I think that they make a strange couple as she is such a tomboy and he doesn’t really resemble anything more ‘boy-like’ than Juno, but that could work well for them.
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