^ On the one hand, there's the performance values that might be shared between dungeon mastering and being a fancy cannibal that the FBI needs to help them solve crimes. On the other hand, there's how these great actors responded to the challenge of playing a fancy cannibal that's been played by other great actors.
In the video the Mads Mikkelsen Hannibal isn't very good. And I think that has to do with a kind of dread that is accessed through pervasiveness.
.
.
Truth in Advertising
The Hannibal show was a show when Peak TV was supposedly a thing. Peak TV was a buzzword meant to describe both
1) a period when TV was as good as TV could be and
2) a period when there was so much TV that there was about to be more of it than anyone could ever want no matter how good it was.
The period when the TV was good mostly describes when shows could achieve finally a level of realism that was associated with movies. They were famously able to do that because of the relaxed censorship restrictions on cable networks (like HBO) and that the writers got better. The period when there's too much TV is the enduring one, coinciding with the boom of original content on streaming websites.
What's unique about HANNIBAL is that it did not premiere on a cable network or streaming service, but on regular network TV -- NBC -- the same channel as SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. NBC wanted a Smart Sexy Cable show so they did the Smart Sexy Cable show things: they let writers that had had writerly success push the envelope in terms of sex and violence. Which presented a creative challenge: you couldn't show nudity on NBC and as for murders there were perhaps a dozen police procedural network television shows then airing new mutilation innuendo each week. But the show was good -- and it was under appreciated -- for this same reason: that the movie-like quality it would finally achieve in order to meet this challenge had nothing to do with realism.
There's a lot of reasons why a TV show doesn't have the presentation a movie like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has. A big one is that a TV show - particularly a network show ten years ago - expects to have its audience's attention regularly divided. In the compilation, Mads Mikkelsen seems clumsy because of how his scene has been re-edited. In the show the encounter plays out over multiple scenes. If it seems to end twice and start twice - it does. The performance was meant to be divided by an ad break.
.
.
Touch with Your Eyes
As it is, so there must be: A Horrible Thing Out There Some Place. In the case of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I know what that thing is and where it is. Hannibal the Cannibal, in a cell. Sooo: nothing to be afraid of?
Then why is my boss looking at me like that.
And the warden like that.
And this orderly like that.
I know what the Horrible Thing is and Where it is and even what it is capable of -- it's right there in the name -- and yet... something, which -- considering how small of an adjustment it would be for it to not exist at all, fractions of an inch, between the pupil of an eye in a face facing forward that seems to be looking at a person in front of it, and the pupil of an eye in a face facing forward that seems to be looking at a camera that's in front of it -- something that is that small of a difference -- but which should make a reality-breaking difference -- is telling me BEWARE.
So many people have talked about these shots in the movie because crossing the line is easy to identify once you know to look for the line. However what's more important for making the sequence dreadful are probably the shots that walk right up to the line before crossing it.
.
.
He Doesn't Blink
Clarice meeting Hannibal is a great scene but especially because of how it is the culmination of an entire sequence of scenes. The sequence goes:
I. Clarice getting the mission debrief from Jack Crawford at Quantico.
II. Clarice at the asylum learning about Hannibal from the warden Frederic Chilton.
III. Clarice journeying into the dungeon-ass floor where Hannibal stays.
IV. Clarice meeting Hannibal and it's fucked.
.
.
I. Educator Helps Eager Student Achieve Success: Jack Crawford
1. shot that pans across a bunch of creepy stuff pinned to a wall
2. super close up shot of a girl from the side and at an angle where we can tell there's someone else watching her - but we don't know who they are - cuz they are out of focus - but they know the girls name and when they say it she turns to look - and the focus changes as she turns - which helps to camouflage that there was a change in focus at all - and after the focus changes we can make the guy out - and as the guy moves the shot pans around the back of the girls head tracking him
3. shot of the girl - close but not as super close as before
4. medium shot of the guy as he sits down - from the girl's shoulder
5. medium shot of the girl as she sits down - from the guy's shoulder
6. close up shot of the guy - he's looking directly into the camera...
.
.
II. The Doctor Will Check Your Vitals Now: Frederic Chilton
1. establishing shot of a dreary asylum - somebody is talking -
2. close up on the guy who's talking - he's glancing down - its just a regular close up - oh wait no what the heck - when he glanced back up he was looking directly into the camera...
3. wide shot of the girl that he's talking to.
4. close up of the guy still looking into the camera - he's trying to flirt...
5. close up of the girl curving him
6. wide shot of the guy - not looking into the camera anymore - he's behind a big desk
.
.
III. Totally Regular Guy No Agenda: An Orderly
1. medium shot over the shoulder of a girl: a guy letting the girl into a room
2. close up of the girl looking at something in the room sideways
3. wide shot - a slooooooow pan of the room - which is dungeon-y and shows us other rooms - we don't know where they are - on security camera footage - but which makes the prison feel suddenly vast in spite of having only seen several nearly identical hallways and now this one room of it - and in this room there's prison bars and a prison orderly who is maybe looking into the camera for a moment it's hard to tell- and another guy - a guard - who isn't looking at the camera - and then another guy - its the guy who let the girl in - except he's close - we pan into a close up of him - and he's definitely looking into the camera - and he says hey
4. medium shot over the shoulder of the guy: the girl introducing herself to the guy
.
.
IV. Hannibal: The First Part
1. wide shot handheld that pushes in while panning - its a wide shot of a man in a cell
2. a wide shot over the shoulder of the guy - its a wide shot of the girl - but the shot is mostly the guy's blurry shoulder
3. a wide shot over the shoulder of the girl - a wide shot of the guy - and it's also mostly her blurry shoulder
4, 5, 6: shot-reverse-shot as they talk
7. a wide shot of the girl - she takes out her badge - she holds it up. - then she holds it out - bringing it closer...
8. close up of the guy - telling her to bring it closer...
9. close up of the girl bringing it closer - a shadow passes over her face - helping to convey movement
10. close up of the guy as he moves closer into the most extremely-close close up yet - also passing under some messed up shadows that briefly make his eye looks like the dark hollow sockets of a skull - and now he's looking directly into the camera...
11. extremely close close up of the girl being like what the what.
.
.
IV. Hannibal: The Money Shot
1. close up of the guy - he's all the way off to one side of the frame - the right side - he's leaning against something all casual like
2. close up of the girl - note that she's also off to the side of the frame - the same side of the frame as the guy - the right
3. close up of the guy
4. close up of the girl - buuuut with a slight push in and a slight sideways movement so that the girl looks like she starts to leave the side of the frame and is getting moved towards the middle of the frame instead
5. close up of guy but there's a dramatic push in with an ever so slight pan - until the guy is in the extreme close up
6. close up of the girl - the shot pushing in and going sideways still - so that the composition keeps changing around the girl - and she goes from the center all the way now to the opposite side of the frame from where she started - all the way to the left side
7. super close up of the guy
8. close up of the girl - moved all the way to the left side of the frame
9. medium shot of the guy putting the dossier he was reading into the chute thing - SLAM
10. close up of the girl - a regular one - like she's in the middle of the frame not off to one side - jumping nervously as he slams the chute thing
11. a close up of the guy - he's looking into the camera - he's saying something terrible - and then - he makes a super weird tthththththth noise and jerks forward - like he was gonna tththththt all over us - we can just barely see the tip of his nose flattening for a second where it presses up against the glass wall of the camera - errrr - the glass wall of his cell.
.
.
Not Just in Your Head
Working up to the cross is a careful game, but coming away from it is sudden. Whatever the watchers want from Clarice they are going to keep on wanting it from her, regardless of what they look like from her point-of-view. Clarice's head is then like an angle for seeing how even in a cell the Horror can get to her.
Though crucially the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS doesn't go so far as to take place in someone's head (like the filmmakers who steal from it often do), it does dramatize how Clarice may be sentenced to a feeling of dread, one which we in the audience may also feel, albeit in a different parallel way, being directly addressed by characters in a movie who were, for all intents and purposes, inhabiting a very realistic, very grounded, the-stuff-in-the-room-is-in-the-room -type movie just one second and one millimeter ago. The sequence makes pervasiveness dreadful by dividing attention with extremely fine repetitive details.
.
.
Here's a Monster That Does That
The Insinuator is a psychic abomination who tortures people with color. Once he was a man, now he is legion.
R 1
A 3
T 4
P 5
A 0
C 2
K 7
Special Abilities
CURSE
Each time a player says the name of the Insinuator's favorite color they are effectively targeted by him -- and he gets an extra throw for an attack he might make against them now or later. As these cards accumulate, at any point the Insinuator may expend them for a Surprise Round versus the target's Max Calm. It does Standard Damage and the player has to throw on the Curse table. Each curse continues to affect the victim until the Insinuator voluntarily puts an end to it or is slain.
1 - 2:
There's an awful taste in your mouth. Your spit is now the Insinuator's favorite color and you can't stop drooling and gagging on it and also your breath smells disgusting. Disadvantage on Appeal checks, probably.
3 - 4:
You have a searing migraine. Your eyes are now the Insinuator's favorite color -- that's cool -- but if you look at anything that is that color you will have to make a Calm check against a 4 or else be rooted to the spot with fascination -- that's bad.
5 - 6:
You go deaf in one ear. A song that references the Insinuator's favorite color is now playing in the other incessantly. Lose a point of calm each day and have disadvantage on most checks requiring thinking straight.
7 - 8:
You have an insatiable thirst and hunger for things that are the Insinuator's favorite color - Calm Check versus a 3 to not immediately eat or drink whatever it is when you see one.
9 - 10:
Anything held to your skin that isn't the Insinuator's favorite color will soon catch fire.
EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS
If unwitnessed (which he often is, as he’s invisible to most creatures), the Insinuator may step into any shadow cast by something that is his favorite color and reappear through any other alike shadow within the same city.
INVISIBILITY
The Insinuator is unseen by all except those who observe him against a background of his favorite color.
INVULNERABILITY
The Insinuator cannot be touched or directly harmed by anything that is his favorite color and only then by those able to see him.
SIXTH SENSE
The Insinuator is supersensitive to danger, hostile emotions, and signs of past trauma or the supernatural.
Weaknesses
The Insinuator is magically bound to honor people’s requests for space, and will move out of the way if politely asked to do so. Those who are already subject to his curses, unfortunately, lack the ability to make this request.
The Insinuator has a vast appetite. He may be distracted fairly easily by copious amounts of quality, home-cooked food.
The players are doing their thing and they keep coming across stuff that's the same color. Say: red. Eventually someone says, another thing that's red? Pull a card -- don't turn it over. They'll be like what the... Someone else might eventually offer, well dooooo you think its because you noticed it's red? Pull a card for them, too. They'll probably get wise and stop saying the word red. Which should make figuring out and exploiting the Insinuator's weaknesses a fun challenge. Adding the Insinuator as a sub-boss to a bigger conspiracy should make any conspiracy a lot weirder too. If you have a Thoth deck, when someone asks wait what color is this thing you can throw and go off of whatever color the card is.
.
.
.
