Suspense With a Camera

by Jeffrey Michael Bays

    3. Cycle of Proof & Debunking: More evidence unfolds lending credibility to the theory, but the skeptic always finds a way to explain it away. This repeats, each time making the protagonist more nervous.

  The audience watching this story is constantly manipulated between believing the story and disbelieving. This kind of suspense is highly reliant on objects that represent concrete evidence.

  For great examples of this watch Hitchcock’s TV episodes “The Case of Mr. Pelham” and “Mr. Blanchard’s Secret.” Both episodes feature a protagonist who suspects something nefarious going on. This suspense model also plays a big role in Hitchcock’s movie Rear Window (1954).

  In each of these examples, there is an opposing character that serves as a reality barometer for the audience (see chapter 13). This character helps the audience gauge whether things are real or imagined. The psychologist in “Pelham,” the husband in “Blanchard,” and Detective Doyle in Rear Window—they all serve as skeptics to briefly cause the audience to doubt the protagonist’s theory. Then, at an opportune time, Hitchcock reveals proof only to the audience that the conspiracy is true. This fools us into believing again.

  MULTIPLE LAYERS IN “PSYCHO”

  These suspense models can be combined and merged into more complicated layers. They can stretch across your entire film, or last only one scene. Let’s go into more detail by looking at an example from one of Hitchcock’s most famous films. Much has been written about Psycho (1960), although the focus tends to be on the first hour, up until the body of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is sunk into the swamp. Instead, let’s look at the latter half of the film, specifically the role of one scene—which I name for ease of description—the Telephone Booth Scene.

  This scene plants the seed for suspense for the rest of the film, and creates suspense with elements of the Paranoid Conspiracy Model, the Sam Suspense Model, the Invisible Victim Model, and the Invisible Danger Model.

  The Telephone Booth Scene is a simple one of construction, lasting less than two minutes of screen time, and comprising only two shots: establishing shot and master shot. The scene opens wide, establishing the gas station parking lot as Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) gets out of his car, shuts the door, and casually enters a phone booth. The booth is standing alone near some trees; a sign reading “Gasoline” is barely seen in the dark left portion of the frame. Dominating the frame is the lighted sign atop the booth which says, in large letters, “Telephone.” Arbogast closes the booth door, grabs a notebook from his pocket, and checks for a number.

  Hitchcock cuts to the master shot, medium-close onto the booth, as Arbogast puts a coin into the slot, dials the number, and places the receiver to his ear. He then begins his phone conversation with Marion’s sister Lila Crane (Vera Miles). Being encased in a glass phone booth, the scene metaphorically functions as a message in a bottle, as it is the last communication Arbogast has with the outside world before he is killed.

  The content of this message in a bottle is quite simple, yet precise. Arbogast first reveals that Marion did stay at the Bates Motel, in Cabin One. He then mentions a sick mother who may know more about the whereabouts of Marion. Next, he states his opinion that Sam, Marion’s boyfriend, was not involved in Marion’s disappearance. Arbogast ends the call by repeating a key point: “See you in about an hour, or less.”

  Hitchcock’s placement of this scene at this precise moment, and his rather objective treatment of the expositional information in the call, gives us insight into his suspense strategy. He chose not to draw attention to the scene, as the information relayed in the call is already known by the viewer. This vital information is meant solely for the knowledge of the other characters, Lila and Sam. Hitchcock then creates a great deal of suspense out of their reaction through the next half-hour, as they refer directly to the call nine times in conversation.

  First, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) follows the Sam Suspense Model. He’s involved in the cover-up of a secret, and faces close calls of this secret getting out.

    1. Withhold Info: The audience doesn’t suspect the murder is going to happen, but once it does it’s in our face.

    2. Hero Does Wrong: Norman discovers that his mother has killed Marion.

    3. Long Cover-Up: Norman does a detailed cleaning job and carries the body out to the car to be buried in a swamp.

    4. Almost Caught: He nearly gets caught multiple times.

  His first close call occurs when he’s covering up the crime scene and a car drives by. He freezes and drops the mop, expecting to get caught. The second close call is when the car is sinking into the swamp and stops before it goes under. Without the car going all the way under, he would get caught. The third close call is when Arbogast arrives to investigate. After leaving to make the phone call, Arbogast returns and gets killed by the mother. This compounds Norman’s secret so that when Lila and Sam show up to do their own investigation, the situation is heightened and the audience fully teased.

  But the main thrust of the second half of Psycho follows the Paranoid Conspiracy Model, as Lila’s concern surrounding Arbogast’s disappearance grows, yet she has trouble convincing the local sheriff.

    1. Conspiracy Launched: Sam and Lila think something has happened to Detective Arbogast.

    2. Skeptic Debunks: Sheriff isn’t concerned.

    3. Cycle of Proof & Debunking: They find new reasons to be worried, but the sheriff still doesn’t believe them.

  It creates an upswell of forward momentum for the viewer through frantic repetition and the sheriff’s aloof circular logic. Worry, wide-eyed speculation and frenzied frustration grow exponentially within Lila and Sam as Hitchcock winds up the tension tighter and tighter toward Psycho’s climax—all because of Arbogast’s phone call.

  The audience also follows the Invisible Victim Model as it relates to Arbogast and the call, since we know more than Lila does. We see Arbogast go back to the Bates house and get murdered, a fact that only we know about.

    1. Victim Needs Help: Arbogast is killed.

    2. Victim Becomes Invisible: Since he’s dead, he can’t call for help, except for that phone call he made before the murder.

    3. Incompetent Strangers: Sheriff is in a position to help, but just isn’t interested in looking into it.

  Naturally, Arbogast is unable to tell anyone of his murder, so the information in his phone call becomes the surrogate for suspense. The information in the phone call becomes the only hope for the secret to get out—so the authorities will come to the hotel, find the bodies, and arrest Bates and/or his mother. Since the audience is primed with this secret knowledge, it generates suspense as Lila gets closer to finding it.

  Hours pass without Arbogast’s return, prompting Sam and Lila to take action. As they arrive at the motel, things shift toward a fourth Invisible Danger Model. Both the protagonists and the audience know about the danger. We know the mother has killed, but we don’t know where she is. So as Lila enters the house, we are worried that the danger could strike at any moment.

    1. Hidden Danger: As Lila enters the house, we know she is likely to be killed, but we don’t know where.

    2. Delayed Help: Sam is arguing with Norman outside, trying to distract him so he doesn’t come in yet. Sheriff still isn’t coming.

    3. Delicate Procedure: Lila snoops around the house, seeing details of the mother’s presence. Each step could provoke the mother to jump out and kill.

    4. Twist or Reversal: Mother’s body is found in the basement. The danger returns in a twist (which I won’t reveal here).

  Each detail of Lila’s exploration of the house becomes suspenseful. As Sam and Norman approach the house, Lila hides in the basement where she confronts the hidden danger and surprise twist.

  None of this would have been possible without that simple phone call in the film. Lila wouldn’t know where to go, nor about the mother, nor whether to trust Sam. And without her and Sam rushing to t
he rescue of the missing detective, they would never discover the truth. Clearly, then, this phone call was narratively essential to put things in motion.

  Emotionally, the scene is about Arbogast being unsure of how to proceed, being lost, and hoping to “pick up the pieces.” It is in the midst of this phone call that he decides to return to the Bates Motel for further investigation. Perhaps in the process of verbalizing the findings to Lila, he begins to have a sense of guilt about not asking more questions of Bates. Of course, if he had stayed and tried to talk to the mother, Bates would not have been able to climb to the bedroom and transform himself into the mother, wielding a knife. The very fact that Arbogast leaves temporarily to make this call seals his own fate. The phone booth, with its wire-mesh window, becomes a metaphorical trap from which he cannot escape.

  WHAT’S NEXT?

  To sum it up: You’ve planted a secret within your story-world, and then built 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.

  Now that you’ve incorporated a suspense scenario into your script, you’ll need to figure out how to shoot it. In Part Two we’ll explore the visual language of putting suspense onto the screen with a camera.

  SUGGESTED VIEWING

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Back for Christmas,” Season 1, Episode 23 (1956)

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “One More Mile to Go,” Season 2, Episode 28 (1957)

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Poison,” Season 4, Episode 1 (1958)

    Suspicion, “Four O’Clock,” Season 1, Episode 1 (1957)

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Mr. Blanchard’s Secret,” Season 2, Episode 13 (1956)

    Psycho (1960)—last half.

  FURTHER READING

  Bays, Jeffrey 2004–14. Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, website, Borgus.com.

  Bays, Jeffrey 2013. How to Turn Your Boring Movie into a Hitchcock Thriller, Borgus Productions.

  Bays, Jeffrey 2014–17. Hitch20, web-series,YouTube.

       PART TWO

      LEARNING THE VISUAL LANGUAGE

       CHAPTER 4

      WRITING A VISUAL SENTENCE

  A WOMAN’S HAND is holding a metal key.

  Cut to: the woman’s worried face.

  With those two images we’ve already forged the beginnings of a cinematic story. A woman is thinking about this key and what she can do with it. Even without knowing the context of these shots, we can begin to piece together a certain logic and emotion from their juxtaposition.

  Once you have your suspense secret planted into your film, you’ve decided when to reveal that secret to the audience, and you’ve created close-call scenes to tease the audience with the prospect of that secret getting out, the next step is figuring out how to put all that in front of the camera. This will be the key in building empathy and luring the viewer into the secretive world of your characters. In order to do this you’ll have to learn how to write a visual sentence. The next three chapters will help you do just that.

  When you’re making a film, the least important aspect of your craft is what the characters actually say. The best way to get the audience lured into the secrets of the protagonist is to do so through visual means. Hitchcock said films should be photographs of people thinking, rather than talking (Wheldon). It is through the reaction shots of people listening and thinking that we pick up on the subtext—the real meat of what’s going on. Often the dialogue is a cover for whatever is being hidden.

  Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of the people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Truffaut)

  When crafting your dialogue, make sure it calls attention to a glance, a hesitation, or an embarrassment that draws the audience into a secret.

  Just like a kindergartner learns how to write their first sentences on a chalkboard, the filmmaker and screenwriter must learn the language of the camera. Every shot that you create with the camera is a word, and when the shots are put next to each other in sequence you have a sentence.

  Consider this setup: A man has killed his wife. He needs to figure out a way to hide the body. As the director/screenwriter, how do we show this man’s thought process?

  I think the temptation among a lot of us would be to objectively show his steps. We watch him put the body into the trunk of the car and then go bury it somewhere. By the process of watching him, we anticipate what he might do next. Throw in some complications to make it more tense, and, voilà!

  Audience yawns.

  Instead, to do it the Hitchcockian way, we have to find a way into his mind and show his decision-making process. As the audience we have to get intimately involved in his cover-up. We have to feel like we’ve helped him with it. This is what screenwriter William C. Martell calls the “skin jump.”

  That’s where the visual sentence comes into play. You’ve heard it’s important in film to “show not tell,” but what does that really mean? Hitchcock often said that cinema is a “universal language” because every culture of the world can understand it. He said that with any of his films you should be able to turn the sound off and still clearly make sense of the story. The viewer’s own native language is superseded by purely visual concepts expressed on the screen.

  By constructing sequences of shots that work together, you can spell out specific ideas. Just like words on a page combine to form sentences, you can put together camera shots that convey a logical narrative.

  THE BASIC SIMPLE SENTENCE

  Don’t overthink it.

  You have to learn to start thinking on a simple level. Being simplistic gives your film a level of stark clarity that unites all of your viewers. They start feeling the same, and before long (if they’re in a theater) the whole room is united with raw anticipation.

  Let’s start with a basic simple sentence.

  Here’s an example of a simple sentence from Hitchcock’s TV episode “One More Mile to Go” (1957).

  SHOT 1: A man looks at something off-screen left.

  SHOT 2: A burlap sack hangs on the wall.

  IMPLIED THOUGHT: “There’s a burlap sack.”

  These two shots are intercut to create the idea that the man sees a burlap sack (fig. 4.1). The man looks; he sees a burlap sack. Very simple. The audience easily follows along with the logic and it can now be expanded upon.

  Figure 4.1. Basic Simple Sentence – A simple thought is conveyed by editing two shots of a man looking at a burlap sack. “One More Mile to Go,” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, ©1957 NBCUniversal.

  THE BASIC COMPOUND SENTENCE

  Now let’s take the same shots from above and add a third shot, so the man alternates between two objects.

  SHOT 1: A burlap sack hangs on the wall.

  SHOT 2: A man alternates looking between the floor and the wall.

  SHOT 3: His wife’s body is laying on the floor.

  IMPLIED THOUGHT: “Maybe I can put my wife’s body into the burlap sack.”

  The man looks at the body on the floor, then he looks back at the burlap sack, then looks back at the body (fig. 4.2). We see him processing this logic in real time—that he might be able to fit the body into the sack. In my workshops this part is usually where I hear a soft and bewildered “wow!” from the crowd. Yes, it’s that simple. Think on a very simple level and build ideas on top of ideas like this throughout your sequence.

  Figure 4.2. Basic Compound Sentence – Adding a second idea to the visual sentence conveys added meaning. The man now has something he can do with the burlap sack. “One More Mile to Go,” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, ©1957 NBCUniversal.

  Next the man puts the body into the burlap sack, providing closure on the idea. He tries it out and it works. We feel a sense of sh
ared experience. We now have an internalized investment in the scene.

  Without speaking, you can show his mind at work, comparing things. There’s complete freedom. It’s limitless.—ALFRED HITCHCOCK (Bogdanovich)

  THE POV SENTENCE

  If you’re wondering what all of this has to do with suspense, it’s that the more closely the viewer can follow the character’s logic (plus the director’s logic) and the more present they feel in the moment, the more suspense they’ll feel as things progress. It allows the audience to connect with the character emotionally.

  The next level of visual sentence involves the actual point-of-view of the character. It follows this basic construction:

  SHOT 1: He looks.

  SHOT 2: He sees (POV shot).

  SHOT 3: He wonders.

  IMPLIED THOUGHT: (Whatever is in Shot 2.)

  With three shots put together sequentially, you convey the story that the character looks, he sees, and then he wonders. This is then repeated as the thought process advances. The first shot is generally a medium-close shot of a character noticing something off-screen. This provides the eye line to cut away to his point-of-view, showing exactly what he sees in the next shot. The third shot is either a return to the first medium-close shot or an even closer shot of his reaction to what he has just seen.

  Hitchcock called this “pure cinema.” Pure cinema is a focus on the subjective mindset of the character by way of reaction shot. What is he thinking? What is he worried about? Does he notice anything in the room, or something suspicious about the person he’s talking to? Reaction shots are a way to let the audience share an experience on screen with the character.

  Let’s use Rear Window (1954) as the classic example (fig. 4.3). He looks out the window. He sees a man digging in his garden. He wonders what the man is up to. Rear Window was constructed almost entirely like this. Because you’re following the eyes of one of the characters, it’s like being in the same room with them. Imagine you’re standing there talking to the Jeffries character and you notice he’s distracted by something off to the side. You would instinctively look, too. Then, you would look back at him to share the experience, to process together what has been seen. The only difference here is that Jeffries doesn’t look back at you. In that moment you feel you are Jeffries. You’ve stepped in for him.