1. 13 Steps to Becoming a Master of suspense -

2.  Content needs to engage the audience and reel them in.  Characters should tease the audience and pull them in.

3.  Eyes show emotion.  Intensity is created by getting close up or far away from the eyes.  Sudden cut from a wide shot to a close up will give the audience sudden suspense.  Strange angles will heighten dramatic meaning.

4.  Give the camera human qualities allowing it to roam around the room looking for suspicious happenings.  This allows the audience to feel involved.  Use panning with close ups of objects that explain plot elements.  Allusion to Hitchcock’s start in silents.

5.  One character should be preoccupied with something during dialogue.  Eyes can be distracted.  Pulls the audience into the character’s secretive world.

6.  Put an idea in the mind of a character without explaining it in dialogue = point of view editing  Subjective camera  Cut back and forth to show reactions  Builds tension – what you want in horror/suspense/thrillers  Have actor walk towards or away from object with tracking…changes perspective

7.  Divide action into series of close ups in succession.  Tell story with these images.  Control of scene and hide things from audience.  Hitchcock said this “transfer[s] the menace from the scene into the mind of the audience.”

8.  Simplistic, linear stories that can be easily followed.  Steamline the script for maximum dramatic impact.

9.  Characters should regularly act against type.  Unexpected personalities.  Have characters make decisions on whims, not what expected from previous build up.

10.  Play a practical joke on the main character.  Ironic situations to deal with.  Things could go wrong…builds humorous tension.  Hitchcock employed comical old women for innocent humor.

11.  Build tension by contrasting situations.  Two unrelated things happening at once.  Focus on momentum of one when interrupted by second.  Second is humorous, meaningless.

12.  Show the audience what the characters don’t see.  Something about to harm a character – show it at the beginning of the scene; play the scene out, giving constant reminders to build tension.

13.  Once you have built the audience into gripping suspense, it must never end the expected way.

14.  Side effect of creating pure suspense.  Audience glued if you have done job correctly.  A macguffin is nothing…just a pivotal reason for suspense.