A Lesson From Lecter

 

    Since I've never been the best at drawing consistent eyes, I've always used other subtile touches to establish things like power struggles in my off-time drawings, so this article was a hit and a miss for me.
    My general opinion aside,  Silence of the Lambs does an amazing job convey the "fight" for power between Starling and Lecter using only the intensity of the eye contact.  It's interesting how well things like tension and struggle are conveyed through only simple touches like eyeline and point of view.  While a lower camera angle is used to show a character has power, and a high angle takes said power away.  The scene in question not only switches between that principle, it also has the characters speaking and looking directly into the camera, adding to the intensity.  To palpable examples of the power struggle are Starling sitting down vs. Lecter standing up, and Starling in a medium shot while Lecter is close up.  Finally it conveys all of this without using lengthy dialog.