Silence of the Lambs Opening Scene Analysis
The first shot (a long shot) takes us to see the landscape from atop of a raised area, with the trees in the fog in the foreground being the main focus. The trees and fog give an eerie, depressing feeling which also exposes ideas about the season of the time of filming. As the trees are shown with no leaves, this would indicate winter or late autumn. Having the grey clouds in the background would add to the idea of winter and also add to the depressive, eerie mood.
Furthermore, to add to this atmosphere of depressive, eeriness the music plays an interesting role as it can gives clues to the film genre. The music has a creepy feel as its deep orchestral instruments give an almost miserable sense to the film already. Miserable like the surroundings, the music can relate to the weather and setting of the scene, in a forest during winter.
As well as the non-diegetic sound, diegetic sounds are also heard in this case it’s the croaking of the crickets and insects that live in the forest. The natural sounds being heard fit in with the scene perfectly as they create an intense feel of this scene. As the camera pans down slowly to show the female character (Jodie Frost), the title of the film is shown first in block capital letters. The same long shot shows the character climbing the steep hill using rope while breathing heavily. This may indicate she is exercising or training for something, so at this point, her character and motif is unknown. This brings the audience to question, ‘Why is she working out?’ and ‘If she’s training, what she is training for?’
The name of the actors show on the screen, the order of the names may be due to order of appearance, or order of importance (within the film). As the character comes closer to the camera, a mid shot is shown focusing on the characters. The audience can no see that she is sweating from the work out, and that she is in fact working out due to the clothes she is wearing (sweatshirt). As she continues to run, the camera follows her before cutting to a mid to close up of the character after fading into the haze. The camera then tracks the character running through the forest, next the camera tracks her feet while she runs. A profile close up is shown of the character while she’s running; this allows the audience to see the expression on her face while she runs. The camera cuts back to a mid shot of her running from behind, and in this shot she is seen to be running towards a rope wall which is shown in near distance. As she climbs up and then down the rope wall, the camera shows this doing an approximately 270° pan at a low angle.
As she finishes climbing she continues to run, where the camera pans to the right following her running and jumping over laid logs. At this point a male’s voices is heard calling, “Sterling! Sterling!” After he calls her the second time, he is shown running onto set where the camera follows him running towards Sterling. He tells her that Crawford wants to see her in his office, raising the question to the audience, ‘Why?’ She runs back towards where she came from, leaving the man watching her go. The audience are then able to identify this man as being involved in the F.B.I. as it says so on his cap. This brings us in a little into her job occupation.
The next shot shows the camera tilted up, and then tilting down showing a tree with signs nailed down it. The signs each have a word on them relating to the same thing; pain. The audiences see the words, ‘hurt, ‘agony’ and ‘pain’ and finally, ‘love-it’. As Sterling is shown running in to the scene, the camera follows her panning to the left. This shot turns into a long shot as she runs down hill into a training base, answering the questions raised before. The audience now knows this is a training base as it shows, people climbing up a rope on one side, and a group of people running in unison on the other. As she was running down the hill towards the training base, the sunlight shone through the trees which at this point the music had changed into being slightly dignified, optimistic and less depressive, signifying the end of the opening scene.
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