Deconstruction of 'Hannibal'

Deconstruction of the opening 2 minutes.


Release date: 2001

Director: Ridley Scott
Budget: $87,000,000
Opening weekend,
USA: $58,003,121
UK: £6,402,540





It begins with a black screen and a voice over. There is non-diegetic music of a piano playing. The voice over is a conversation between two men. The voices connote that one man is middle aged and the other quite old.
Titles then appear on the blank black screen. The titles are in capital letters, a sans serif font and red. Apart from the font type, this description adheres to the conventional appearance of horror titles. Serif font is the orthodox choice usually for horror films.


The picture/scene that matches the voices begins as a small box in the corner and it progressively enlarges to fill the whole screen. This gives the audience a feeling of mystery or uncertainty. The shot shows an apartment or house with expensive looking interiors in a gothic style. The colour scheme of the interior is black and red signifying the owner may be a dark character. There are 3 men in the scene. It is an establishing shot and it is not easy to see the characters clearly, it is a view from the side. One is a helper/side kick looking archetype dressed in uniform. One is sat comfortably in an armchair wearing casual attire facing another man. This man is very old, sat in an arch in a wheelchair and is dressed in a formal suit.


The 3rd shop is a close up which shows a ghastly looking face of the old man. It comes across to be a surgically reformed face. He has a glass eye, fake lips and multiple scars. This image was intended to shock the audience. This is a typical archetype of a villain.


The 4th shot is a close up of the relaxed dress man being questioned by the old man. He doesn't come across as disturbed by the old man. We see this through his indifferent tone of voice yet his face is expressive as he engages in conversation in a casual manner.

After deconstructing this film we decided we wouldn't specifically relate it to our media coursework idea but we wanted to show a variety of the genre we're studying, to widen our knowledge of the genre.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212985/