Thriller opening analysis - Hannibal

The opening starts with a non diegetic soundtrack. This soundtrack is very echoy and and gloomy. After while the soundtrack is still playing, a male voice is speaking over it. This gives a slight indication that perhaps that this particular scene could be a flashback of something that happened prior to the actual storyline, the visual at this time is just a black screen, this shows that this could be a serious moment and the director/producer wants us not to focus on the visual but draw our attension to the audio of this scene.The soundtrack now is a slow piano, this sounds very calm and relaxing in contrast to the opening soundtrack.

The camera then zooms slowly into a shot of what seems to be a semi lit posh like room with shiny glass tables and desinger lamps. When we observe the lighing here in this scene, we see the man sitting on the seat to the right has little light shining on him and if we look to the left, we see two men, one disabled in a wheel chair and a man standing up dressing in a suit. The light shining on the two men on the left is considerably more than the man on the right. This provides the hint to me that the character on the right maybe a protagonist or someone that the audience should keep a watchfull eye on.

Then while the two men are having a conversation, the camera shows a close up of the face of the man in the wheelchair. This portrail of him is that of something you would also see in a horror movie, this imediately has an impact on the audience as they get a slight shock and feel slightly scared just by this image. The audience's predictions have now changed as now this character with a deformed face now maybe be the actual protagonist. This can be supported by the very dark background of the image, only little light is showing his face, also his scars and deformation of his face clearly conveys that he might be the protagonist.

Overall, the camera work, soundtrack and most significantly the lighting has given a excellant insight to this film and has conveyed its point effectively. This opening has left the audience in deep thought as they are thinking, what happened to this man?, what/who caused the deformation of his face? The director/producer have engaged the audience and left them in thought