1. Silence
of the
Lambs
Analysis
Emma Tonkinson

2. The beginning of the film is a shot of a forest- a lake surrounded by trees, dark grey
colours are used to make the forest look lifeless, dull and creepy despite being around
nature which should be portrayed as bright and cheerful. It could be pathetic fallacy
foreshadowing an event in the storyline. The opening credits appear out of nowhere in
the centre of the shot, they are black bold words so they are clear and make you focus
on them, this gives the impression that the film might be jumpy because things are going
to appear out of nowhere and startle the audience. The non-diegetic sound which is
used during the opening titles gives the location an eerie vibe and slowly builds up the
tension so that the audience are aware that the film is going to be creepy.

3. We are introduced to a character from a high angle shot which belittles the character
and makes the person appear weak, as the character gets closer to the shop we notice
that it is a woman, this makes the audience see her as vulnerable because of the
negative stereotype that is associated with females. She appears to be heavily breathing
which makes it clear that she has been pushing herself so that she can improve her
fitness, her clothing made it clear that she was part of the FBI and in the shot we can see
that she is running into fog which gives off the impression that it is bad weather
conditions and is most probably cold but she is training to achieve a goal. All of these
things create an idea of what the character is like and what role she will play in the
storyline, so we feel like we know a lot about the character already just from seeing her
in the opening sequence.

4. Later on in the clip we see words pinned onto a tree that said ‘hurt’ ‘agony’ and ‘pain’.
This suggests to the audience that whoever goes through the training will have to
endure all of these things, it also says ‘love it’ at the end which makes it seem like the
only way to get through the training is to accept that you will go through a lot to reach it
but you need to learn to love it otherwise you won’t be able to manage, this makes the
audience respect the female character for going through the training just to reach her
goal. Once she reaches her destination she goes inside the building and we see men
dealing with guns in a workshop so it immediately gives the impression that they’re all
skilful and dangerous because they are dealing with lethal weapons.