Analysis of Silence Of The Lambs Trailer

The trailer starts by showing you who the movie was made by, this is then interupted by a clashing sound and a flash of a close up shot of a flash we later discover is Hannibal Lector. To the audience at first this evokes curiosity because Hannibal has not yet been introduced. You can however tell by the sharp sound of the bang that this character may be bad.
You are then introduced to the female lead 'Starling'. The clash sound can then be identified as it is the sound of the closing gate in the prison. This sound has been related to Hannibal which could suggest imprisonment of his character, being trapped and not being able to escape.

Starling is then shown on the other side of the bars with the camera looking through, this is showing she is now on the same level as Hannibal Lector suggesting these two characters are working together.

A voice is then introduced which is that of someone telling Starling about the killer 'Bill', the audience are only shown a newspaper article at this point saying 'bill skins fifth' this tells the audience the nature of the serial killer, this also creates a separation between Lector and Bill making sure the audience is aware they are two different people. A further series of bangs are then played to accompany shots of what looks like a women, the shots are of lips, a necklace, and eye and a hand with the tattoo 'Love' on it. This makes the viewer confused because these clashes are previously associated with a killer but this appears to be a women? or is it... The mystery is then uncovered if you watch carefully on a shot later on it is the killler cutting open the shirt of a dead women, on his hand you can see the tattoo saying love, this seems quite ironic really.



At this point we are sure this is a man due to the hands looking quite masculine, this makes the viewer wonder what the shots of the lips and eyes with make up on could be about, perhaps a victim? This adds mystery to the storyline cause all is not clear in the trailer.

There is then a non diagetic sound, a voiceover that says she is going to have to match wits. After this is said there is a screaming sound also non diagetic and red smoke surrounding a flashing image of Clarices face followed by Hannibals. This could be a visual representation of the two of them 'matching wits'.

The view must not however underestimate Hannibal, the voice then calls him the darkest of minds, this is followed by shots of him in his prison cell looking creepy, these are intended to scare the audience and also make them curious why he is in the cell.

The viewer is then told he is a pyschopath, and a newspaper article reads that he is a killer. After this point the pace of editing picks up and some creepy suspenseful music comes on, the audience are then told that Lector is missing and arms, there is a series of shots of victims of Lectors giving us a glimpse of his escape.
We then see Clarice with a gun, we are unsure whether this is to attack Lector or Bill. There is another shot which us as a viewer can see that Clarice is unaware of, it is of a hand coming towards us. This builds suspense as we do not know if Clarice survives or not.

The final shots show Clarice with a gun about to shoot but then it is cut to a shot of lector saying 'Thank you' to Clarice. This makes the audience wonder what he is thanking her for? This opens up a lot of unanswered questions that can only be answered by watching the film.

Creepy music is played over the ending titles where the film name 'Silence of the lambs' appears, silence is in red which could signify that there is an emphasis on the silence, this could be an underlying theme of the movie perhaps? The actors names are then shown with a clash on each of them showing there importance. The names of the actors are shown because they are quite renowned actors. At the very end of the trailer there is a scream, but not a victims scream more of a evil growl, but whos?