Suspense With a Camera

by Jeffrey Michael Bays

  Bordwell, David 2007. “This Is Your Brain on Movies, Maybe,” David Bordwell’s Website on Cinema, www.davidbordwell.net.

  Cleland, Jane 2016. Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot, F+W Media, Ohio.

  Lehrer, Jonah 2010. “The Science of Eavesdropping,” Wired (9/10/10).

  Reid, R. L. 1986. “The Psychology of the Near Miss,” Journal of Gambling Behaviour, 2, 32–39. University of Exeter, England.

  Schickel, Richard 1973. The Men Who Made the Movies: Hitchcock, The American Cinematheque TV series.

  Smuts, Aaron, “The Paradox of Suspense,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

  Wulff, Hans J. & Jenzowsky, Stefan 2000. “Suspense/Tension Research of the Film,” Medienwissenschaft: Rezensionen (13, 1, 1996, pp. 12–21).

  SUSPENSE MYTH NO. 1

  I WANT SUSPENSE, SO MY LIGHTING SCHEME SHOULD BE DARK

  False. Hitchcock proved many times over that suspense can be achieved (and even heightened) in bright, sunny atmospheres. Just look at the crop duster scene in North by Northwest, where he staged an attempted murder in an empty farm field in mid-afternoon.

  He was also an advocate of comic openings for drama. By starting your film with playful music and a comic mood, you warm up your audience and win their affection. Once the audience is laughing and bonding with your characters, you start to introduce the drama. This drama has more impact because it contrasts so starkly with the comedy, and your audience is now invested in the characters’ outcome.

  Starting dark and creepy may create a sense of curiosity and mystery, but the on-the-nose obviousness of it all will likely leave your audience yawning.

       CHAPTER 2

      THE TRIAD OF SECRETS

  BY THIS POINT, you may be catching on to the ideas behind creating suspense, but it might still be too intimidating to start diving into your script to make changes.

  First, a reminder of our goal from the previous chapter: 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.

  Planting that secret is what we’ll focus on now. In order to construct a suspense sequence, you first need to have a secret planted within either the protagonist, audience, other characters, or a combination of the three. Let’s call it the Triad of Secrets. The most important part of the triad is the audience.

  Figure 2.1. Triad of Secrets – Determining who knows secrets among the audience, protagonist, and other characters is the key to creating close calls and building suspense.

  Imagine we’re in a classroom and I choose someone from the audience to leave the room for a few minutes. While he’s gone, I reveal an important secret to everyone that he misses out on. I tell everyone that when the man comes back I’m going to give him fifty dollars in cash if he touches his nose, but I’m not going to warn him in advance.

  Then he comes back in the room, and I invite him up on stage. He knows nothing about the nose gag or the fifty dollars, so I tease the audience by trying different ways to coax him into accidentally touching his nose. The audience giggles. I engage him in random conversation, letting him fidget around uncomfortably. The audience intently watches his confused reaction and giggles even more.

  At one point, he randomly scratches his ear and the audience gasps. So close! The poor guy doesn’t know what’s going on.

  In this scenario we’ve created an interesting dynamic where the audience has been lured into taking sides. They become intently invested in my goal of provoking a nose-touch, and the innocent man’s ignorance of what’s happening makes it so much fun.

  This is the very basic concept of creating suspense.

  To build suspense in your screenplay, movie, or short film (any storytelling mode, really), you need to plant secrets within your story-world and then create a nagging question surrounding whether those secrets are going to get out.

  Start by surveying the plot information in your story between three groups of people—the Triad of Secrets (fig. 2.1).

  Here’s what you need to figure out:

    1. What does the protagonist know?

    2. What do the other characters know?

    3. What does the audience know?

  If they all know the same things, you may have a problem. If that guy on stage knew about the fifty dollars, no suspense. If the audience didn’t know about the fifty dollars, still no suspense.

  In the Triad of Secrets, a filmmaker must play a game with plot secrets between the protagonist, the audience, and the other characters. Each of these three parts of the triad are going to hold different access to plot secrets. It is then pitting these levels of access against each other that creates suspense.

  PROTAGONIST’S SECRETS

  If you have a script that you’re working on right now, or a movie in production, think about the plot information that the protagonist knows and when they know it. Do they hide that information from other characters? What will happen to the protagonist if that information gets out?

  Probably the easiest example of this is the 1950s TV series Leave It to Beaver. The young kid, Theodore Cleaver, is always getting himself into trouble. He does something wrong and must hide it from his parents, because he fears his dad will “yell” at him. Much of the fun of this series is watching Beaver—and often his friend Larry—sneaking through the kitchen to avoid getting caught.

  Moments like these, where the secret almost gets out, are ripe for suspense. A fun moment like this can be played for laughs right along with the tension. In fact, you can use the ignorance of the supporting characters for comic effect, and thus raise tension with a comedic close call.

  What kind of secrets can be hidden by the protagonist? Here are some common movie examples of hidden secrets that generate suspense:

    Got fired from job, hiding it

    Hiding a birthday gift and/or planning surprise party

    Sneaking into an unauthorized place

    Did something illegal or plans to in future

    Hidden identity or important aspect of past

    Bought expensive item without permission of spouse/parent

    Engaged or pregnant, hiding it from parents

    Hiding lottery winnings and/or found treasure

    An affair

  Secrets like these call upon our basic emotions, something that we have all experienced, especially in childhood. The fear of getting caught is a universal fear that crosses through all cultures and all ages. It goes back to our ancestral humans on the savanna hiding from that nearby lion getting a whiff of human scent. It’s primal, and that’s why it works so well in movies.

  People always enjoy seeing someone doing something without being discovered, as to whatever form it takes. Even if you have a villain creeping in, the audience for some reason, whether there’s a touch of larceny in everyone or something, I don’t know, will always say “Quick, quick, before you’re found out. Get out, get out.”—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Auiler)

  Calling upon those instinctual fears of getting caught grabs the audience’s empathy and brings them to the side of the character. Regardless of what crime they’ve done, or the severity of the secret being hidden, we tend to side with them for the enjoyment of the narrative. We want to see how it plays out. We want to see the cave man escape the lion.

  It’s a “that was close!” moment.

  For a great contemporary example of this, see the first episode of HBO’s The Night Of (2016). Protagonist Nasir (Riz Ahmed) wakes up in a strange woman’s house and realizes that she has been murdered. Fearing that he would be blamed, he grabs the bloody knife and drives away. When the cops pull him o
ver for reckless driving, they arrest him only for being intoxicated. The cops are then called to the crime scene to investigate, unaware that Nasir is connected. He must sit in the police car as the crime is discovered in front of him, and then sit in the police station hoping no one sees the knife in his coat pocket.

  The episode is full of suspense as we fear that he’ll get caught. It’s an excellent example of using a secret to full advantage.

  AUDIENCE’S SECRETS

  Now what does the audience know? Does the audience know the same information at the same time that the protagonist does? Does the audience know more than the protagonist knows? Less?

  When we see a character lying, we notice it right away. We feel privileged in the secret knowledge that we have within the story’s world. It immediately causes us to internalize the information being lied about.

  In Hitchcockian suspense, the audience should know plot secrets before the characters. This way, the characters’ ignorance make us want to jump onto the screen and help warn them: “Don’t go around that corner!”

  Let the audience play God … If the audience has been told all the secrets that the characters do not know, they’ll work [really hard] for you because they know what fate is facing the poor actors. That is what’s known as “playing God.” That is suspense.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Gottlieb)

  Hitchcock referred to this audience-centric advantage as the Bomb Theory.

  In the Bomb Theory, the viewer is given secret information that the characters don’t know. For example: There’s a bomb under the table. When the clueless characters sit around the table laughing and gossiping about something entirely trivial, we want to warn them about the bomb. But of course, we can’t. That gives us excruciating suspense (Schickel).

  That’s why movies about investigations like director Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015) are not purely suspense. They keep you waiting until the last scene to solve the case. Sure, there is a level of curiosity about solving the crime and following the journalists on their pursuit of evidence and interviews. Naturally, the antagonists know everything and are keeping it secret. They may be elusive, clever, or even threatening, making things dramatically interesting. That’s not enough for suspense, unless the audience is clued in on the secrets before the journalists are. That way you can build suspense around whether the antagonists will be able to maintain the secret.

  Now, an important distinction should be made here. There are varying degrees of knowledge that the audience can have. It’s not always knowledge of one hundred percent of the secret at first, and that secret can grow and change. In Torn Curtain (1966), Hitchcock creates suspense out of a press conference. The opening act surrounds a secret that Michael is keeping from his fiancée, Sarah. The audience knows full well that there is a secret, but we’re just not sure what the secret is. Hitchcock shows us the secret telegram, the secret code within the book, and we know that it’s really important for Michael to hide it from Sarah. We just don’t know what it is until, thirty minutes into the film, he holds a press conference and we find out right along with Sarah in real time. The most suspenseful press conference ever!

  But in Torn Curtain, that press conference didn’t reveal one hundred percent of the secret. In fact, it turned out to be a ruse to hide another, deeper secret, which carries the suspense for yet another thirty minutes.

  Hitchcock believed that giving the audience knowledge of the secrets greatly affects the second viewing of the film, and whether the suspense will be as effective the next time around. Here’s what he said:

  I’m a great believer in making sure that if people see the film a second time they don’t feel cheated. That is a must. You must be honest about it and not merely keep things away from the audience. I’d call that cheating. You should never do that.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Gottlieb)

  Director Paul Greengrass’s opening sequences of Captain Phillips (2013) spend an equal amount of time following both the protagonist and antagonist. As the audience, we know well in advance that these Somali pirates are planning to attack the cargo ship. The closer they get, the more suspense builds. Then, once the protagonist realizes they are attacking, we are partially relieved. The suspense morphs into pure tension during the first attack, which is thwarted. (See my interview with Greengrass in chapter 24.)

  The first close call in Captain Phillips is a great example of the near-miss effect from chapter 1. It teases the audience and makes us anticipate the next attack that much stronger.

  Later, in the climax sequence of Captain Phillips, we are shown the Navy’s secret plans to shoot the pirates and rescue the captain. Neither the captain nor the pirates know about the plan, and are told of an entirely different plan as a ruse. But, because we are given an omnipresent view, we also know things that the Navy doesn’t know, and that if the pirates discover this plan early, they will kill the captain outright. Because we know more than either side, we feel suspense.

  There are times, though, that information should be hidden from the audience. Hidden secrets are revealed to the audience in a surprise twist, like a magician’s sleight of hand. As screenwriter William C. Martell says, “a twist is something that has been there all along and nobody noticed until the right moment.”

  If everything is hidden from the audience, in some attempt to be elusive and clever, suspense probably isn’t likely to last long. You may end up with a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey—an epic film but certainly not suspenseful. An exception may be the scene where HAL begins to murder the crew. It’s filled with suspense because the crew is keeping a secret from HAL—that they’re trying to dismantle him.

  OTHER CHARACTERS’ SECRETS

  Take a look at your script again. Are there secrets on the other side? Do the antagonist or supporting characters know plot information that the protagonist doesn’t know? Do they hide this information from the protagonist? What will happen if the protagonist finds out this secret plot information?

  Letting the audience in on the antagonist’s secrets is a powerful way to generate suspense. The movie Marnie is a great example of suspense generated around both sides keeping secrets from each other. You have a female protagonist, Marnie, who is a pathological liar and thief, and an antagonist who knows this yet sets her up for blackmail so he can control her. This all comes to a head during their lunch conversation at a diner in which they both confront their secrets. During this sequence filled with tension and drama, some of the secrets are let out, but not all. Since the audience knows about the secrets on each side, the suspense is generated through the drama of their mutual suspicions.

  In the Hitchcock TV episode “Banquo’s Chair” (1959), both sides have secrets and the protagonist has set up a confrontation scene to get the antagonist to confess murder. Detectives have invited a suspect to dinner and arranged an actor to pretend to be the ghost of the deceased victim, to see if it will cause the suspect to freak out. At dinner, the ghost actor shows up and everyone pretends she isn’t there. The suspect tries to stay calm. In this scenario, both sides have secrets. It becomes a game of chicken as neither side wants to reveal what they know. This dinner conversation becomes innately trivial as both sides try to hide their secrets behind small talk. The fake ghost appears, they all pretend not to see it, and the suspense rises. The real gag is on us, though, due to a twist ending that I won’t reveal here.

  Since a film like director Doug Liman’s Bourne Identity (2002) is about a protagonist with amnesia, there is an automatic curiosity surrounding the answers to that identity riddle. The antagonists seem to know everything in Bourne, and the director chooses calculated moments to reveal it to us before the protagonist finds out. This prelude creates a feeling of anticipation surrounding the revelation of the secret.

  MULTIPLE LAYERS IN “YOU’VE GOT MAIL”

  Even romantic comedies can thrive on suspense. Case in point is director Nora Ephron’s 1998 classic You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The film is loosely based on the plot of A Shop Around the C
orner (1940) and the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László. These stories feature a pair of bitter business rivals who, though luck of fate, have been writing romantic letters to each other anonymously. Their romantic relationship has the potential of blowing up if their true identities are revealed to each other.

  You’ve Got Mail is a great study of suspense writing. It has multiple layers of secrets that are kept between protagonist, audience and the other characters—the Triad of Secrets. Let’s break it down.

    Audience: The audience is given a secret (Secret 1) that none of the characters know: we know what both of the anonymous emailers look like: Joe (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen (Meg Ryan).

    Audience: When Joe and Kathleen pass each other on the street (close call), they have no idea. And when they serendipitously cross paths again in the coffee shop (close call), they still don’t know. But we know the secret—and that keeps us intrigued.

    Audience: Joe visits Kathleen’s bookstore and they talk, meeting in person for the first time (close call). Joe hides his real-life identity and the fact that he’s building a bargain bookstore down the street (Secret 2). Still, only the audience knows that these two are the anonymous emailers (Secret 1).

    Audience: Later at a business party, they meet again (close call). Kathleen finds out that Joe is her competitor (Secret 2) and they quickly become bitter rivals.

    Audience: It’s when the two online emailers decide to meet in person that the audience is prepared for all to be revealed. We think Joe and Kathleen will soon find out the secret (Secret 1).

    Joe & Audience: At the dinner date, Joe sees Kathleen through the restaurant window and realizes her secret identity (close call half resolved). Now he knows our secret, but he keeps it from her. He shows up as Joe-the-rival, making Kathleen think that her online companion didn’t show up (close call).

    Joe & Audience: From this point on, we are waiting in suspense for Kathleen to finally realize Joe’s secret identity. The two rivals begin to fall in love, but Joe must find the right time to tell her (close calls).