Don't Breathe textual analysis

1. TITLE & OPENING SEQUENCE
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
By Dana Mills-Tonga

2. The film I chose to analyse is 'Don't Breathe' as it is the film my group and I spent most time looking at
and drawing inspiration from. The opening scene from this film isn’t similar to ours as we plan to have a
number of flashbacks and more suspense building cuts, because of this I would say that there is a
number of other films that have either a similar plot to our opening sequence or features technical
elements that our opening sequence will include.

3. TECHNICAL ELEMENTS
LIGHTING:
THE WHOLE OPENING SEQUENCE FEATURES HIGH KEY
LIGHTING. THE OBVIOUS REASON FOR THIS IS BECAUSE IT
TAKES PLACE DURING THE DAY TIME IN A SUNNY TOWN OR
CITY. HOWEVER I THINK THAT THE BRIGHT LIGHTING IS
SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE THINGS GOING WELL FOR THE
CHARACTERS IN THE FILM E.G. THE SUCCESSFUL BURGLARY
AT THE START. THIS CONTRASTS TO LATER ON IN THE FILM
WHEN THE CHARACTERS ARE TRAPPED INSIDE A HOUSE IN
THE DARKNESS WHILE THE OWNER IS TRYING TO FIND KILL
THEM.

4. Costume and props:
All of the character are wearing casual clothing, not the typical burglar clothing
you would expect to see e.g hard wearing clothes with masks to cover their faces.
This reminds the audience that they are just ordinary young adults and definitely
not professionals, it's details like this that indicate something will go wrong for
them in the future.
The characters also carry large heavy objects with them to help them with
breaking into the houses and picking locks, as well as large bags that could hold
both the items they steal and the weapons or equipment they take with them.

5. Setting:
The very first shots of the film take place in a modern looking house /
apartment that the main characters are stealing from. Once they leave that
location, the camera pans out to a town, which I guess is the local area of
the main characters or the main are they target when they burgle.

6. Camerawork:
The scene mainly consists of long shots, mid close ups and close ups of the
characters and objects apart from the last section which is an extreme long
shot that pans out. If there was a lot of cuts between shots and what we see
on the screen I think it would become really repetitive to watch in such a
short amount of time.

7. OTHER FILMS THAT RELATE TO THE OPENING SEQUENCE MY
GROUP AND I ARE DOING
The bling ring:
The actual break in part of the opening sequence is something my group and I hope to create in our opening
sequence, the costumes used in that sequence are more similar to what we will be wearing as the characters.
Saw:
As our film has a psychological element to it I think it relates to the type of games and mental strain the victims in
saw are put through. Although we cannot go into as much depth as saw we hope we can use camera angles,
dialogue and lighting to build up the same atmosphere.
Spring Breakers:
The reason I chose this film was because of the main characters. This film features female main characters as will
ours. Also, all of the characters in spring breakers have distinct personalities which the characters in our opening
will have as well.
4321
This films starts with 4 different characters and when they separate you see a split screen which shows what each
of them are doing at the same time. We hope to have something like this I our opening and we will use editing to
achieve this and help us show what the flashbacks are and what the present happenings are.