Analysis of the Opening to Silence of the Lambs

Camera

• We open with a close-up of a woman's face. We know that this is an important character, as we open with her and we are so close in to her that we must be meant to sympathise.
• We then cut to a mid shot where it is shown that she is in a forest, and we see that she is wearing exercise gear for cold weather. We are told a great deal about her and her surroundings here. This shot carries on tracking her throughout much of the first half. We track around her when she is on the climbing frame, to see the exertion she puts into this, and then she moves in front of us again so that the FBI man's arrival is a surprise. We only see him a second before she does, so we are definitely on her side.
• We then cut to a panning shot of the motivational slogans nailed to a tree, and the camera pans round to follow her and we see that she is in a compound of some sort, and we are strongly lead to believe that this is an FBI compound; we see others training, whereas she is alone in the forest.
• We cut to a wide shot of the building she enters, overlaid by more graphics. This shot zooms in to see her running across a walkway.
• Once inside the building, we have many more shots; there is much exposition of what is going on inside. This helps to show her surroundings more, giving the audience helpful information as to where she is.

Lighting

• The lighting in this scene is very high key; everything in this scene is very transparent and clear, and we should take everything at face value. It is quite a 'nice' scene, in that there is no clear evil here. The lighting helps to express this.
• The colour in the first half is all very warm (for a winter's day). This helps to reinforce the 'nice' image mentioned above.
• When she moves inside, we see a visual change from warm to cool lighting. When coming down the stairs, the top of the stairs remain warm whilst the cold fluorescent lighting highlights the sweat on her face inside.

Sound

• The diegetic sound whilst running is very quiet, and the music is comparatively loud. The orchestral sound is dramatic and somewhat contrapuntal - this is not a particularly dramatic moment!
• When she goes inside, the music stops and there is only diegetic sound.

Editing 

• The editing starts off extremely low speed - indeed, the first shot takes up nearly 44 whole seconds of screen time! This is incredibly long. The camera does most of the work in this part of the opening. I think this shows that this is her normal daily routine and that there is no need to interrupt it.
• The editing picks up the pace when she enters the compound, and while still low-speed, this shows that she is not entirely free to be herself anymore, but is constrained by the people surrounding her.

Mise-en-Scene

• The titles are overlaid on the footage, breaking it up a little and making the long running shot seem less long.
• A man in an FBI cap finds the woman and tells her that someone wants to see her in an office. The FBI cap is very conspicuous, and the fact that she is not shocked by the sudden appearance of this man or the fact that he is clearly from the FBI shows that she is used to working with these people - perhaps she is an agent herself, and this is why she needs to keep so fit?
• Once inside the building, the surroundings show that this is definitely an FBI facility; nowhere else would you have so many people cleaning guns in offices.  
• She gets into a lift with 9 men, showing that she is in the minority in her workplace; almost everyone else there is a man. This has the audience rooting for her as the underdog a little more.