Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis on a thriller Silent Witness

How does the thriller programme Silent Witness show similarities and differences between our 2 minute thriller The Legacy of Edward Wolfe/Deranged, through the use of Cinematography, Sound, Mise-en-scène, and Editing?

This Textual Analysis is about the thriller programme Silent Witness, and how it is compared with our film, The Legacy of Edward Wolfe/Deranged. It will show the similarities and differences between the two, talk about the Cinematography, (the camera shots, angles and movements), the Mise-en-scène, the Sound, and the Editing that's involved. Each point will be explained throughout this analysis.

Firstly, at the beginning of the episode 'Run', there is a scene with a 23 year old woman, Ruth Gardner. At first she is acting all mad, crying and stressing, pulling photos off the wall and chucking them on the floor in anger. She then picks up a tape and starts pulling that apart then chucking it on the floor, in a block of flats, on a rainy night. This explains that she is kind of deranged. There is also a cut to a man with a cigarette, walking and listening to music, outside on the concrete; who became shocked when this woman crashes on the concrete, dead. At the beginning of our opening 2 minutes, there is also a death, but this was done by butcher's knife, which is different to the beginning of Silent Witness. After this death, 2 characters run out of the room that it occurred in, shocked, and a chase occurs after the murderer comes out of the room. The chase is different to what happened to the 23 year old woman before she was murdered.

The cinematography shown at the beginning of Silent Witness, series 13, Run, part 1; includes a hand-held camera shot, at the point when Ruth is trying to find who it is she heard. The director would've decided that this cinematography is to be here, to make his target audience feel tension, and wanting to watch more. However, in our 2 minute thriller, there isn't a hand-held camera shot present, to try and get the audiences attention.
Also, there is a mixture of tracking and panning in the opening sequence of the programme, which the director would have also used to grab his audience's attention, and also to show the tension of his idea. There is also a high angle shot on Ruth Gardner, when she sits on her bed, reading her bible. This shows that something is going to happen to her, and that she is quite a weak character, which would have been carefully decided by the director, to help keep the narrative flowing. However, in our 2 minute opening, there is a tracking shot when Carla and Toby are running away from a deranged student. There is also a low angle shot on the deranged student, when Carla trips up. This low angle shot is seen through Carla's eyes, which shows the tension between the two characters.

Secondly, within 'Run' and our 2 minute thriller, there is the element of Mise-en-scène. There is the use of costume in each, but they both show something totally different. In 'Run', the opening of the episode, Ruth Gardner is seen wearing old clothing, a blue t-shirt, and a dull-green pair of trousers. This connotes her being poor, as she's squatting in a flat, and quite vulnerable to what's about to happen to her. However, in our 2 minute thriller, Alex is wearing casual clothing before he murders someone, as he has blood-stained clothing after the murder. This shows that he's like a psycho wanting revenge, but the characters he's after, are wearing their own casual clothes, connoting to the audience that they're teenagers and quite vulnerable to death. The make-up differs in each piece as well, where Ruth isn't wearing any make-up, just a dusty face, and where the teens in our 2 minute thriller are wearing either make-up or gel on their hair. This clearly shows the difference in how rich or poor these characters are.
Another difference is the location, where Ruth is set in a flat, but the teens are set in a college computer room. You can clearly see that the teens are working class, as they are using computers to do their work, but you can't see clearly what class Ruth is in, because she's not doing anything that can be used to disembowel the answer.