Cinematography:
- Film opens with protagonist Greenwood in a flat angle medium close up shot staring vacantly ahead as he frustratingly attempts to talk to a customer service line, the audience immediately sees his perspective
- Extreme close up focusing on his mouth struggling to get his words out, emphasising his speech impediment
- Establishing long shot of his entire flat building, with the London night skyline in the background - he's small and insignificant in retrospective, contrast to close domestic shots of him in his home
- Alternating shots between medium close up of Greenwood staring intently while typing and close ups focused on his laptop screen - signify his investment in an online relationship, another life outside his reality
- High angle, overhead shots of his computer
- Extreme close ups of him writing words, focusing on words he cant say
- Establishing shot of his father's house door, before we see him in the house: reinforces the sense that he is domestic and shut out from the rest of society because he cant communicate
- Unstable, jerky handheld when he is public train observing and mentally analysing people
- Overhead shot of counters when he is playing board game with his father
- Shallow depth of field, close ups of him writing words, emphasising that he can write and type what he wants to say but not verbalise it
- Flat profile shot as he is staring directly at camera, emulating his mirror - he is looking into the mirror describing himself while he is getting ready to go out with Ellie - vulnerability
- POV shot as he sees Ellie across the road waiting for him
Mise-en-scene:
- Domestic setting - in his flat, in his father's home
- Casual, everyday clothing - conventional citizen of society but he is internally secretly struggling
- Counters board game - symbolic of what he wants to say
- Books and academic material on his desk about sign language and cognitive motifs - dedication to communicate without speaking
- "Whts wrng wth vwls?" board - emphasising his inability to verbally communicate, stuttering gets worse when you try to pronounce or enunciate vowels in words
- Laptop - symbolic of his online life
- High key lighting as he is getting ready in his house - natural light from the bathroom, sunlight outside when he is walking to get a present for her, artificial lights in bus on his way. Gradually lighting gets darker as he begins to doubt himself, day turns into night
- Greenwood worries throughout the film about having to speak out loud, but at the end there is no need for words as he and Ellie communicate through eye contact and hand gestures
Sound:
- Begins with diegetic sound, formal voice on phone - customer service- impersonal and not the voice of main character
- Foley sounds- dial tone of landline phone and sound of typing and message alert sounds
- Stuttering interrupted by condescending voice on phone- emphatic
- Greenwood interrupted by diegetic, disturbingly loud dial tone - hung up on
- Non-diegetic voiceover - repressed feelings and thoughts- does not speak out loud as much as he does in voiceover
- Mentally analyses idiosyncrasies and characteristics of those around him in his internalised monologue
- Non-diegetic voiceover practices and deliberates over a sentence he intends to say to his dad - repetition of words "pleasure","music" and "counting" - signifies the lengths he has to go to just to say one sentence
- Later, as he is saying the sentence out loud, he is stuttering and there are gaps of silence ad he dad waits for him to speak - emphasises his hardship
- As he is going to meet Ellie, as well as the lighting changing, his voiceover 'thoughts' also change. At first he speaks calm and steady as he practices what to say to Ellie, however his voiceover becomes jumbled and frantic, all of the sentences he speaks merge over each other creating impossible cacophony, stops when he sees Ellie at the end.
- Sharp jump cuts alternating between him and the laptop as he is messaging Ellie online
- After he gets punched by the abusive stranger on the street, there is a quick fade to black and then the camera returns to his damaged face - omitting his attack
- Shots with longer duration often in scenes where his attempting to speak out loud to someone (phone call and his father) - signifies the amount of time he needs to speak
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