How To Terrify The Audience

If you want to find an example of a truly terrifying villain you need look no further than Hannibal Lecter in the "Silence of the Lambs" The director does a wonderful job of making this character terrifying And he does it in a very interesting way He introduces the character before he first appears on the screen. Now this might sound counter-intuitive but he achieves this in two ways; one of which is in dialogue before we first meet him, such as this line when the Asylum warden is talking about the kind of man he is. "Oh, he's a monster.

Pure psychopath. So rare to capture one alive. From a research point of view, Lecter is our most prized asset" Now, despite this lines bluntness in its purpose, it does a wonderful job at building the viewers' expectations.

It tells us straight up that Hannibal is the most depraved and psychotic man in the asylum Now there are many lines in these opening scenes that serve a similar purpose. The purpose of building up an image of Hannibal in the viewers' minds, and all of this buildup pays off in the next scene: Now right here the director does something very interesting As Clarice is walking along the corridor up to Hannibal cell he uses the camera to reinforce the information We had learned previously. As she walked along the corridor There are three inmates she sees before Hannibal.

The first is a little creepy Where he smiles at her and says hello. The next inmate seems even more dysfunctional as he just sits there and stares blankly Barely reacting to her presence. The third is by far the most insane He is jittery and leaping around his cell, almost like an ape.

This is brilliant because it establishes that as the cells go along the inmates are growing more and more insane. We know that the man in the end cell he is not just bad He's not just insane He is the paragon of insanity, the absolute worst human being you could ever hope to possibly imagine. And judging by the prior inmates where he is ape like and whispers how he can smell a not so family-friendly area of the protagonist body we expect Hannibal to be some kind of Feral beast ready to pounce.

Now all of these expectations set in mind Here is the next shot "Morning. " He is standing straight in a welded cell and compared to the prior inmates, he shows no obvious symptoms of insanity. This is terrifying because it totally shatters the viewers' expectations We have been told he is a most depraved Individual, yet he looks so civil and like anyone you might see on the streets except there's something just a little bit off about him.

What follows from this point on between the two characters is not so much a conversation it's more a battle for power over the other, and I think this line right here marks the very start of that battle "Closer please. Closer. " In this line of dialogue, Hannibal makes a demand that she brings her ID badge closer and she abides.

Even though this is a token action that on the surface seems like something quite harmless, it helps to lure us as an audience Into a feeling of insecurity as we feel right from the start that Hannibal is successfully manipulating the protagonists: He makes a demand, she follows it. Hannibal has an amount of power over her and it makes us uneasy When you look at a great example of dialogue in fiction there is almost always a conflict between the two characters where one has a different opinion to the other or one wants something that the other doesn't want This is a pretty basic concept But part of the reason why this scene in Silence of the Lambs is so gripping and has such compelling dialogue is because it is full of that conflict Clarice wants Hannibal to help her with an investigation Hannibal doesn't want to, and I think to the untrained eye It might be a little confusing as to why Hannibal is so terrifying in this scene because he is behind a thick glass And he cannot physically hurt her so he shouldn't be terrifying because he has no power So the reason he is scary must be because of something else Right? The problem is that is a surface level observation and the more we look at it the more we realize that actually the truth is the exact opposite.

Now this might sound a little nonsensical seeing as he is in a cage But Clarice came to him wanting one thing: For his help in catching a murderer in this respect she is quite vulnerable because she could very easily fail and not achieve her goals. It would require almost no effort from Hannibal's part to totally shatter her ambitions. The outcome of this scene whether she gets help or not is entirely in his hands.

This right here the powerlessness of the protagonist is why Hannibal Lecter is such a terrifying villain. The cinematography also does a wonderful job at helping to reinforce the two characters' power. Near the start of the conversation she sits down and he is stood up this makes her physically lower than him which helps to convey how non literally he is above her in a sense of power.

You can see this in the shots where he looks down at the camera while she looks up instead and in a later scene where he finally surrenders his power and agrees to help her she goes from sitting down on the floor to standing up so they are both seeing eye-to-eye. Levels are a fairly basic dramatic technique, but when used properly they can be quite provocative Also when you look at the framing of the characters there are something quite interesting going on. Hannibal's face takes up the whole screen While with her, her face takes up only half.

This helps make Clarice feel small and again with no power. The negative space around the characters is directly proportional to the amount of power that character has "Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims" "I didn't" "No" "No. You ate yours" As you can see once she makes this statement, that catches him off-guard And her face in the shot when she does it is in the center and is much larger than in the prior which indicates how she has reclaimed some of her lost power.

Also, when she delivers the line, he breaks off his eye contact with her that he had maintained constantly throughout the entire scene in his response to his loss of power So how could we use this example to address how you can terrify your audience? Well, it's all to do with power. It is no coincidence that in horror films the protagonist is often someone with low competence, for example how in "It" the characters at risk are a group of children or how in "Alien" the characters are a bunch of pilots and mechanics who can barely defend themselves.

Now "Aliens" was a great film, however it was less horrifying than "Alien" And I think understanding the reason why can help you to learn an important lesson in how to terrify your audience because "Aliens" follows a group of Marines who when it comes down to defending themselves are much more competent than the cast of "Alien". The characters in "Aliens" have the ability to kill the monsters. The characters in "Alien", don't.

So what does this mean if you want your audience to feel terrified? It is all to do with which character has the power. Thanks for watching today's video essay.

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