Jordan's Silence of the Lambs Textual Analysis

Silence of the lambs has a lot of Thriller film convection that are shown in many ways, for example, Editing in the film, Sound, Mise en Scene and Camera.

Mise en Scene
 Mise en Scene is used to portray the feel of a thriller film, because we can see in the background of the whole beginning scene where she is running through the woods there is a thick fog in the forest which gives off an enigma of the unknown because we cant see whats in the fog leaving us uncomfortable. Also in the scene where she is outside running, she is running in a dark forest with low key lighting which could portray danger to the audience. Finally the protagonist's outfit is FBI workout gear*, and i see this as there being the powerful character with high status and a good job so this is almost showing that she has a good job and is powerful, almost setting up for things to go wrong for her later on, this makes the audience feel tense because they're almost expecting something to go wrong. 
 

Costume*

Editing
The editing in the opening for Silence of The Lambs, is slow paced and a lot of the shots last long and aren't fast paced cuts, however they do slightly build up as it comes to the end of the scene. The slow paced cuts do create a long dragging effect and we could be waiting for something to happen, and it lets us relate to the protagonist because she is exercising and worn out so the long cuts could help us understand how hard it is for her. Throughout the opening the names of cast and crew appear on screen*, and the use of credits while she is running could show that what she is doing is a montage and that she has been running for a lot longer then it actually shows. 
 

Credits over protagonists*

Sound 
The sound in the opening portrays convection's of a thriller film because in the background you can hear the non diegetic sound of a violin playing which slowly builds up toward the end of the scene and creating crescendo suspense as the violin gets louder and faster, leading us to think something bad is about to happen. then there is the diegetic sound of crows and other wildlife in the forest that the opening is in, the use of the sound of crows could portray feelings of solitude or even death, as audiences would think of. Also we can hear the woman in this opening breathing heavily as she is out of breath from exercising, this is probably used to show vulnerability and weakness. 

Camera  
The Camera techniques used within the opening are used well to show that this film is a thriller and to create suspense. For example there is a shot of her feet while shes running and it is shot in a way as if she is running away from something as we can only see her feet moving at a fast pace, also the close up of her feet limits our view of whats around her and that she is the focus of that shot, creating the feel of solitude. There is a shot at the end of the opening where we see an establishing shot* of where she has just gone and this shot could show that shes safe now because it slowly pans down as apposed to the faster camera pans earlier on to show that every things calmed down now. 

Establishing shot of Bureau*