Camera Work in Thrillers

The camera work within thrillers is very different to camera work in other film genres. Alfred Hitchcock was a famous British film director who specialized in psychological thrillers. I decided to research his techniques in his fiml techniques for when we film our thriller. This website was very helpful: http://borgus.com/hitch/hitch2011.htm


1.) Audience - Make sure everything you do is done for the audience and how it will affect them. It must be engaging and keep them interested. People go and see thrillers for fun, so as directors we could give them suspense to keep them enthralled.
2.) Emotion - Ensure that the camera is positioned in the right place at the right time to allow the audience to experience the emotion the actors and actresses are going through. Focus on the eyes of the actors as they show most emotion.
3.) Camera - The camera should take on human qualities and roam around playfully looking for something suspicious in a room.  This allows the audience to feel like they are involved in uncovering the story.
 This goes back to Hitchcock's beginnings in silent film.  Without sound, filmmakers had to create ways to tell the story visually in a succession of images and ideas.
4.) Point Of View Editing - Putting an idea into the mind of the character without explaining it in dialogue is done by using a point-of-view shot sequence. (Start with a close-up of the actor, cut to a shot of what they're seeing, cut back to the actor to see his reaction)
5.) Keep the Story Simple - If your story is confusing or requires a lot of memorization, you're never going to get suspense out of it. Remove all extraneous material and keep it crisp for a dramatic effect. Each scene should include only those essential ingredients that make things gripping for the audience.
6.) Characters must break cliche - Make all of your characters the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a movie. They should have unexpected personalities, making decisions on a whim rather than what previous buildup would suggest. These sort of ironic characters make them more realistic to the audience, and much more ripe for something to happen to them.
7.) Use Humour to Add Tension - Hitchcock used humour in his film to add tension. Pretend you are playing a practical joke on the main character of your movie.  Give him the most ironic situations to deal with. It's the unexpected gag, the coincidence, the worst possible thing that can go wrong - all can be used to build tension.
8.) Two Things Happening at Once - Build tension into a scene by using contrasting situations.  Use two unrelated things happening at once.  The audience should be focused on the momentum of one, and be interrupted by the other.  Usually the second item should be a humorous distraction that means nothing (this can often be dialogue.)  It was put there by you only to get in the way.
9.) Suspense is Information - "Information" is essential to Hitchcock suspense; showing the audience what the characters don’t see. If something is about to harm the characters, show it at beginning of the scene and let the scene play out as normal.  Constant reminders of this looming danger will build suspense.  But remember - the suspense is not in the mind of the character.  They must be completely unaware of it.
10.) Surprise and Twist - Once you've built your audience into gripping suspense it must never end the way they expect.  The bomb must never go off, lead them in one direction and then pull the rug out from under them in a surprise twist.


If we can try to encorprate at least some of these ideas then our film will be better, I must keep referring back to this when making our storyboard and when filming to keep in mind these factors.