The Prestige analysis, Christopher Nolan, 2006


Camera frame, movement and angle
The film opens with a shot panning across something that to the audience seems completely random. This creates a curious atmosphere. Next the shot cuts to black before a close up of birds in a cage and a character explaining a magic trick. Film cuts between this trick with a bird and another trip with a human. A similar trick on a different scale.

Sound
A voice is heard, of a magician explaining a scenario. This is shown in parallel with an equivalent/similar act of a different scale. Tense music is apparent in the background. The electrical flashes and the tense music suggest almost certainly that something is to go wrong. Voices are not kept separate to faces (unknown). Therefore the film is relying on the confusion created by the immediate situation.

Lighting
A dark stage adds to the uncertainty of the act shown simultaneously with the trick with the bird. This shows that one trick has a sinister side, and the other does not, adding suspense.

Editing
The camera cuts to black after the first shot. And then directly cuts between the two tricks.

Representation
The film is set in the Victorian times when magic was of great importance because it bought wealth to those who mastered it. Innocence of a child is juxtaposed by the idea of a more sinister concept of a certain magic trick.

Mise-en-scene
The mise-en-scene is of foggy woodland with top hats strewn across the ground. Confusing to the viewer. Next, cutting to black and then the simultaneous magic tricks. One trick on a dark stage and enormous electrical equipment which in those days would be out of this world. Below stage a sinister scene of what appears as the death of the magician. However it is all unclear. The scene fades out.

Narrative structure
The narrative structure is of a man who is explaining the composition of a magic trick and its difficulties.