Suspense With a Camera

by Jeffrey Michael Bays

  TENSION & DRAMA VS. SUSPENSE

  If that script you’re writing or film you’re producing already has a lot of tension and drama, maybe it’s still missing suspense. There are important differences between tension, drama, and suspense. At this point, we need to make sure we delineate the difference between them, because they are often used interchangeably and this can get confusing.

  Let’s pretend you’re on a phone call with a close friend.

  Tension is if there’s static on the line, or there’s something abnormal going on that requires you to work extra hard to focus on the conversation.

  Drama is if your friend is telling you juicy gossip or getting upset with you about something.

  Suspense is when your friend suddenly stops talking in mid-sentence. Did she hang up? Did something happen to her? Will she call back? That’s suspense. It provokes a lot of questions that keep you wondering if and when this will be resolved.

  TENSION

  Tension is smaller and more immediate than suspense. To understand the distinction between the two, imagine a slingshot being pulled back tight, aimed right at your face. Tension is the tightness of the rubber band. Suspense is that nagging question: “Is he really going to let go? Or, when is he going to let go?”

  Another way to look at the difference is with a tightrope walker. Imagine the long rope stretched tight, creating enough tension to keep the walker secured and balanced. As he walks toward the middle and begins to wobble, suspense is that perpetual question: “Is he going to fall?”

  Figure 1.1. Suspense is an overall question about the outcome made up of smaller moments of tension.

  But, again, it’s not that uncertainty that generates suspense. Instead, it’s the fact that we can’t reach in and catch him before he falls. It makes our muscles freeze; our breath stops and we wait with our mouths open to see what happens.

  In a film, tension (fig. 1.1) is the moment-by-moment feeling of intensity created by the audiovisual artifice. Tension is created by the shot selection, the editing rhythm, the music, the sounds, and every other artistic element that goes into a scene to make it feel bold and tactile. Tension is synthesized and imposed onto the narrative through the choice of camera placement/movement and editing. Constricting space and time in the shots and pacing of the edits can increase tension. See chapters 6 and 14 for more about this.

  DRAMA

  Drama is different from suspense and tension because it is an emotion that derives from conflict between characters and environment. You could say drama is a form of tension as well, but we need to easily demarcate it for the purposes of this discussion. Drama is made from dialogue beats, character conflict, and all of those narrative elements that we are used to learning in film school.

  Drama is generated through the narrative. When the actors debate with dialogue, this takes on the drama of the stage, relieved by plot revelation, scene changes, and surprise twists. Dramatic tension is increased when the approach of the desired relief is delayed or complicated by plot points or antagonistic forces.

  Constricting space and time in the environment surrounding the actors—for example, a ticking clock counting down to an explosion—is a narrative device used to increase drama. That’s not automatically suspense, but you can turn that ticking clock into suspense in the way it’s treated. More on that later.

  Tension, drama and suspense are easy to confuse because they are all similar feelings and they do work together. They are all present at different times throughout a good movie. For the most part, in this book we’ll be focusing primarily on suspense and tension. Drama is something for other books to tackle.

  FRAMEWORK OF CREATING SUSPENSE

  Suspense won’t work without audience empathy. Creating empathy for the protagonist (the good guy) is key to feeling suspense, especially when there is an anticipation of danger. We feel a desire to see the hero get to safety because we already have an emotional connection with the hero, or we relate to her dilemma on some basic universal level.

  The first step in engaging this empathy is not simply to throw the protagonist into a scary situation. Instead, it’s about luring the audience with secret information.

  Here are the basic steps for creating suspense in your film:

    1. Plant secrets

    2. Build close calls

    3. Sleight of hand

  Suspense in film is about planting a secret within your story-world, and then building in some close-call moments to tease the audience about that secret getting out. At the end of the suspense sequence, which may be a short scene or span across an entire film, you’ll want to pull a magician’s sleight of hand in a surprise twist.

  That ticking bomb scenario only becomes suspense if someone doesn’t know about it. If everyone in the film knows about the timer and is just racing quickly to beat it—that’s not suspense. The distinction is in whether the bomb itself is a secret that must be discovered before it’s too late.

  STEP 1: START PLANTING SECRETS

  In order to start constructing a framework for suspense in your film, you must first have a hidden secret. Person A is hiding something. This secret is an essential piece of information in your story that you use to manipulate the audience.

  First, reveal the secret to the audience, and then create a moment with another character from whom the secret must be concealed.

  The most basic form of this is: Person A lies to Person B.

  A lie primes the audience. Once the lie is told to another character it immediately piques our attention. We think, “Oh, she just lied to him!” This calls upon our basic human instincts to make judgments about both the person lying and the person being lied to. It sets up an open chasm in your storytelling ride that demands closure.

  Most importantly, the secret knowledge makes the audience feel special, that they have been given access to this secret that no one else knows. This activates that basic human pleasure of receiving gossip.

  In the above example, when the lie is told to Person B, a bond is formed between the audience and Person A.

  And Person A doesn’t have to be the protagonist either. In Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944), for example, the antagonist, a German captain, lies about a lot of things. He lies about having a compass, lies about having extra water, lies about the course they should take. Through special obvious camera moves onto his compass, watching him secretly drinking water, etc., Hitchcock shows us these secrets before the captain lies about them. We also get increased enjoyment through the captain’s poker-faced grin. These are secrets that only we know about, and if they get out could shift the entire plot in another direction.

  As the audience, we suspect that the captain in Lifeboat is planning to lead the protagonists into enemy territory, but we still have some faith that he’ll do the right thing. Each time he lies, it engages the curiosity of the audience.

  STEP 2: CLOSE CALLS

  Once the audience is lured into a secret, it’s time for this secret to get out (fig. 1.2). That is, of course, something that the audience doesn’t want to happen, but simultaneously wishes to happen. There is a kind of special dual enjoyment the audience experiences teetering between sympathy and schadenfreude (enjoyment of others’ pain).

  And it’s the job of the suspense director to build scenarios that tease with missed opportunities and close calls, to dance on the head of that pin of chance. You want your audience to squirm, hoping things will succeed yet wanting to see explosions of drama.

  Close-call moments are the key to suspense and activating our frustrated rescue instinct. As Bordwell said, in the moment of suspense our autonomic nervous system is activated. In a way, we feel a close-call moment as a live event happening in real time.

  In I, Confess (1953) an innocent priest is on trial for murder. He knows who the real killer is and could reveal it at any time to save his own hide. But the priest must protect this secret because it was revealed to him in the confessional box. By the time we get to the trial, Hitchco
ck has built up such momentum around this secret that we desperately want the priest to spill the beans during the trial and save himself. The scene is filled with nervous reaction shots of the killer, anticipating exposure at any moment. It never happens, and the close call is thwarted, for now.

  Figure 1.2. A character with a secret hides the secret from other characters. Suspense is heightened as the secret gets closer and closer to exposure.

  By creating entertaining scenes that set up delicious opportunities for the secret to be exposed, you heighten the suspense.

  Going back to the tightrope analogy, a man is balancing on a high wire and the suspense question is: Will he fall? The next thing you want to do as the storyteller is to begin to answer this question but withhold the answer at the last minute, thus teasing the audience.

  The man begins to wobble and he struggles to keep his balance on the high wire. The question “Will he fall?” is provoked and intensified as the man wobbles further. Within moments, the man recovers his balance. Boy, that was close!

  A “that was close!” moment is essential in increasing suspense. It kept that nagging fear alive, plus it gave the audience the enjoyment of a near-miss.

  In the gambling world, there’s a thing psychologists have discovered where a gambler will become addicted after an almost-win (Reid). When three lemons come up on the slot machine, but not the winning fourth, the player perceives this almost-win as a lucky streak. He continues playing even more intently, believing that he is closer to winning on the next round. This near-miss effect leads to gambling addiction. Neurologists have been able to determine that the reward center of the brain is activated almost as much on an almost-win as with an actual win.

  Translating this psychology into the moviegoing world, when there’s a close call in a suspense situation, it gives the audience the thrill of closure without actually providing closure. The viewer becomes addicted to hanging on to see if the next “that was close!” moment will actually result in real closure.

  In the example earlier, when Person A lies to Person B, this is a close-call moment. There’s a chance that Person B will catch on and discover the secret being withheld. The suspense director will milk this moment for all it’s worth, in an elaborate and playful tease. This keeps the momentum going until the next close call.

  Jonah Lehrer of Wired Magazine gives a fascinating analysis of this teasing effect in relation to our enjoyment of music. He says that good music works because it flirts with our expectations of order, denying its own form and provoking us to anticipate closure. Here’s how Lehrer explains it:

  Before a musical pattern can be desired by the brain, it must play hard to get. Music only excites us when it makes our auditory cortex struggle to uncover its order. If the music is too obvious, if its patterns are always present, it is annoyingly boring. This is why composers introduce the tonic note at the beginning of the song and then studiously avoid it until the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound. (Wired 2010)

  That’s a lot like how good suspense works in the movies, too. The film suggests a pattern of events that play “hard to get,” teasing us with close calls, yet denying closure. The longer we are denied the closure we expect, the greater the release when it finally resolves.

  STEP 3: SLEIGHT OF HAND

  Creating suspense isn’t fun for the viewer unless it’s resolved and real closure is provided. Once the suspense has been maximized in your film, you actually should provide closure to reward the audience for hanging on for so long. Otherwise the suspense will be wasted and they probably won’t want to watch the film again.

  Closure should never turn out the way that’s expected. The surprise twist is the best way to satisfy this closure, just like a magician’s sleight of hand.

  A magician makes you think he has put the coin into his left hand, even though it is still in his right hand. He pays so much attention to the empty left hand that he convinces you that the coin is there. During this distraction, his right hand can do nearly anything unnoticed. Even the most hard-nosed skeptic will be surprised when the magician opens his left hand to reveal it is empty, and then opens his right hand to reveal the coin.

  Magic works because audiences love being fooled. They know this going in. There is an unspoken agreement between audience and magician that he will fool them. The pleasure his audience members gain from this comes through the clever ways the magician will outwit their skepticism. He uses showmanship, red herrings, and fear to manipulate the moment-to-moment expectations of the human mind.

  When it comes right down to it, suspense is a form of trickery. When a magician fools you with sleight of hand, you tend to giggle. Even if you know there’s some trick, you’re still impressed that he was able to pull it off in front of your eyes without you noticing. That feeling of surprise when you find out you’ve been fooled—that’s classic storytelling.

  So in the previous example, the tightrope walker wobbles and begins to fall. It looks like it’s all over for him. At the last minute the camera reveals that this entire time the rope has only been two feet off the ground. He stumbles onto the ground unharmed. We get a simultaneous sigh of relief and a chuckle because we’ve been fooled.

  Just like a magician has to work hard to get his tricks to work flawlessly, a filmmaker can learn the craft of increasing suspense in their creative works and paying it off with a surprising twist.

  WHAT SUSPENSE IS NOT

  Amateurs (and probably a lot of professionals) mistakenly think that suspense is a result of teasing upcoming information—that if you keep information just out of reach of the viewer, like a carrot on a stick, they’ll hang on long enough to find out some juicy plot information that will solve the puzzle.

  There is some merit in this form of storytelling. 2001: A Space Odyssey does it beautifully. The mystery and lack of information in 2001 keeps you intrigued enough to wait patiently for the next clue to appear. But that’s not suspense.

  Suspense, at least the Hitchcockian kind, requires that the audience knows as much information as the characters do, if not more so. When

  the audience knows more than the characters do, it creates an entertaining frustration that they can’t affect the outcome.

  Take these two examples and decide which one is more suspenseful:

  Example 1: A toddler has just learned to walk and his parents have put him on a moving treadmill as a joke. The child gleefully steps along at the right pace to stay on. Then he gets a little too brave and walks backwards. This slows him down and he nearly falls off the bottom edge of the treadmill. Just at the last minute he spins back around and walks quickly to catch up.

  Example 2: A woman creeps up a dark staircase. Her feet softly and elegantly step, her trembling hand steadies herself on the railing. If only she had a flashlight, she could see. A wolf howls in the distance. She continues to climb until she gets to the top of the stairs and slowly peers around the corner.

  Now, I think a lot of people would buy into all the dark imagery of Example 2 and believe that it was the more suspenseful of the two. Most likely, however, the audience is going to be more invested in the toddler in Example 1. Why?

  First of all, we know nothing about the woman. There’s no story, no empathy, and nothing is revealed. She’s walking into a dark unknown. It’s a very flat, meaningless exercise of synthetic tension but does nothing to tell us why we should care.

  The toddler, on the other hand, has an obvious close call. We know his parents have set him up on this treadmill, and that it probably isn’t a good idea. Even though he is successful at walking on the treadmill, there is a “that was close!” moment. He almost falls off, and most likely could have gotten injured. We are relieved when he doesn’t fall, but he could still fall at any moment. His safety is uncertain.

  The woman’s safety is uncertain, too, but we don’t know what the danger is. It’s just a vague mood set by howling wolves, da
rk lighting, and weird noises. Is a ghost going to grab her? Will a serial killer pop out with a knife? Is she delusional? Until we find out more, there’s no real suspense. This is mood setting in place of suspense building.

  Notice that the toddler scene makes no mention of lighting. There are no wolves or shadows. The suspense is there because of the situation, in spite of the mood.

  In order to build real suspense into the staircase scenario, you’d want to show the audience what’s around the corner. Plant the seed of a real threat that is unbeknownst to the woman. Then have the woman nonchalantly walk up the stairs without a care in the world. This now becomes the classic stairway scene from Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). The audience knows the killer is upstairs and Helen doesn’t have a clue he’s even in the house. She walks right toward him!

  Now you have suspense, because the audience knows more than Helen does, and wants to warn her. But we can’t help. We can’t jump through the screen and save her. All we can do is watch with our jaws open, waiting helplessly in anticipation.

  To sum it up: You want to plant a secret within your story-world, and then build in some “that was close!” moments to tease the audience about that secret getting out. After a few of those close calls and heightened suspense, you’ll want to resolve it with a sleight-of-hand—a surprise twist that leaves the audience amused that the expected outcome didn’t occur.

  In the next chapter we’ll explore further ways to plant secrets within your film, to bring out the audience’s feeling of engagement.

  SUGGESTED VIEWING

    Lifeboat (1944)

    I, Confess (1953)

  FURTHER READING

  Auiler, Dan 2001. Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative Mind of Alfred Hitchcock, Harper Collins, New York.

  Bays, Jeffrey 2015. “Filmmakers: Does Story Really Matter?” Medium.com blog.