Some techniques used were: point-of-view shot & perspective from Nash, music, noir lighting for dramatic effect, high and low angle shots, panning shots, also look at the scene where Marcy runs around the pigeons - they don't fly away from her - the director drops small hints that Nash has delusions you could argue this as being his way of challenging the audience - to take them on an intellectual imaginative journey.
Charles Herman, the first hallucination, is first seen from
Nash’s point of view, announcing that “the prodigal roommate has arrived”. This is to indicate that Charlie is a hallucination since he shows up in a shot filmed in Nash’s perspective after an empty shot of Nash’s dormitory door.
After a scene transition, they are chatting on a university building roof and getting to know each other better. In this scene, Nash and Charles are the only people filmed on camera. This scene is trying to subtly hint at Charles being a hallucination because of how the scene is focused on
Nash and Charles. Nash describes himself as a man who does not “like people much” . Charlie quips that Nash has
“wit and charm” and bad-mouths mathematics.!
By highlighting angles and using lighting even artificial lights can be a great tool to advocate for speech where it wouldn’t prove necessary to the meaning behind a scene. As the director of the movie, Howard knew how arrange the movie to convey a certain message. To make it seem like we were in
Nash’s mind, he used shots that looked like they were shown through Nash’s point of view. To make Parcher, Marcy and
Charles