Introducing Characters: How the Briefest Moments Can Make an Indelible Impact

TRIGGER WARNING: this piece discusses the film, The Silence of the Lambs, and as such, contains references to serial killers, real and fictional.

Let’s talk character introductions.

Whether you’re a filmmaker, a scriptwriter, a game designer or a combination of the three, you're afforded a limited time to indelibly imprint a character in the audience’s mind.

In considering great character introductions, I can’t help coming back to one of my all-time favourites, 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, directed by Jonathan Demme, with Ted Tally’s screenplay based on the bestseller by Thomas Harris.

Only I’m not thinking Clarice Starling or Hannibal Lecter (although check out their introductory shots; both do incredible work in communicating character!) I’m talking about Catherine Martin, depicted in the movie by Brooke Smith.

First glimpses of our lead characters. See how much these moments are able to communicate?

As the unfortunate victim whom our protagonist, FBI trainee Clarice Starling, is tasked with saving, Catherine Martin is a pivotal character. If we, the audience, don’t understand and more importantly identify with her, then Starling’s mission throughout the film won’t seem so vital. Yeah, there’ll be stakes, but we won’t be that invested in them.

So what do we need to know about Catherine? The same as we do for every character with whom the filmmakers want us to emotionally connect. We need to know:

What kind of person is she? What matters to her? How is she like us? In other words: Why should we care about her?

Given the economics of running time, the filmmakers need to get this information across as quickly as possible. If you want to look at it this way, the mission of the whole film hinges on a minute or so of screen time…

🎶 Sound & vision: We meet Catherine in her beat-up car, radio on blast playing Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s ‘American Girl’, a song about a devil-may-care small town girl, longing for something more in life.

The way she sings along, we know that Catherine feels this song. The lyrics reflect something inside of her. Petty also identified with the song’s character, as he told City Limits in 2001: “the small-town kid who knows there’s something more out there, but gets f*cked up trying to find it. I always felt sympathetic with her.”

Bona fide American Girl, Catherine Martin.

And that’s how we feel too. Through the song we get a sense of the character’s aspirations, her frustrations – even as we identify with her carefree singing. (She sings like nobody’s watching; in a film so obsessed by the male gaze, this is all the more potent.)

In just a few seconds of screen time, sound and vision have combined to deliver a lot of essential context.

🐈 What the cat’s saying: We then see Catherine pull into her apartment complex, a prototypical slice of American suburbia for the single, working person. We see her car from the outside, a Volvo (safety-first, bought by her parents?) Only now, Catherine’s being watched by an assailant, serial killer, Buffalo Bill. (That male gaze coming into play.) Of course Catherine is also being watched by us, the audience, as she exits the car, sharing a cute moment with her cat in her apartment window above.

While lots of people own cats – according to Statista, 26% of UK households – there’s something about Catherine’s exchange with her pet that innately tells us: she lives alone. It’s the way she talks to her pet (as in her car, like no-one else is there). But, while her cat meows at her from the window above, aloof, and clearly the boss of the house, we understand that Catherine is a conscientious owner whose pet is a companion. Catherine cares. Filmmaker shorthand is telling us: she’s a ‘good' person.

Cats were synonymous with the underworld in Egyptian mythology. An ominous visual omen.

To recap, we’ve been given a lot of critical information in a totally organic way. Not only is this relevant information to understand the character:

• She’s likeable: singing in her car like no-one’s listening

• She’s a small town girl with dreams: identifying with ‘American Girl’

• She’s vulnerable: the only one waiting at home for her is her cat

• She’s a caring pet owner: a ‘good’ person.

But this information loads the remainder of the scene for what happens next…

🎬 Why it’s essential that we care: Because, of course, the next person to impact the scene is Buffalo Bill. Catherine doesn’t know who he is, but we do – as she sees an older guy cutting a pathetic figure, arm in a sling as he tries to get a couch into his van. (A side note: Buffalo Bill is a composite of several U.S. serial killers, and his trick here to entrap Catherine is taken from Ted Bundy’s playbook. Of course in 1991, Catherine doesn’t have the benefit of Netflix true crime binges, so we can forgive her for not recognising the move.)

Even so, Catherine hesitates – her gut is telling her this is dodgy, but: she is a good person. We know she’s going to go and help, launching a suspenseful and ultimately horrifying moment. Crucially we don’t judge her actions as foolish because they’re validated by her character as we now understand it.

Catherine is captured – and Clarice’s race against time begins. Crucially, Bill’s immediate treatment of Catherine is both brutal and dehumanising, two important pieces of insight into his psyche which come into play later in the film. Having acted so callously against a character we’re identifying with in Catherine, we feel the evil nature of our antagonist all the more. And we’re invested in his downfall.

Two additional points worth noting:

📻 One is that, later on in Bill’s dungeon, when Catherine refuses to surrender to her truly horrific conditions, she’s displaying the underlying steel that resonated with her in the lyrics to ‘American Girl’: “Yeah and if she had to die trying, she had one little promise she was gonna keep.” Catherine’s promise to herself, we discover, is to survive (even if it means having to be cruel to Bill’s dog, Precious). And we root for her, and Starling, all the way.

Catherine and the original Precious (sorry Gollum).

📄 Secondly, it’s interesting to note that the entirety of Catherine's introductory sequence isn’t in the original screenplay, in which Catherine simply exits her car at home and is abducted through Bill’s chilling sympathy ploy. No driving. No 'American Girl'. And no dialogue with her cat. Perhaps Jonathan Demme knew that this wasn’t enough? That we needed to connect with Catherine on a deeper level? That she needed to be more than ‘just’ a victim?

Whatever their motivations, the filmmakers have given us a masterclass in economic yet powerful character introduction. In just over a minute of screen time from meeting Catherine to her abduction (a sequence also containing some drawn-out moments of suspense), we are organically shown:

• Who this character is (their external situation/stakes)

• What motivates them (their internal situation/stakes)

• Why we, as the audience, should care.

In a movie with incredible characters and supremely crafted introductions, the Catherine Martin sequence shows how much can be accomplished in a short period of time, all thanks to some very clever screen-craft.