Alfred Hitchcock techniques

In order to investigate how a perfect thriller film is created one man must be turned to for advice.

Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock is the ultimate director of thriller films he knows how to twist an audience and how to reach in to their hearts and get them racing. I looked into Articles dedicated to his work so that I can use some of the techniques that he used to create so much emotion in his films.

This article is entitled...

How to turn your boring movie into a Hitchcock thriller... 

Written by Jeffrey Michael Bays


The link to the article is: http://borgus.com/hitch/hitch2011.htm

Some of the main themes of the article I have found most useful I copied and pasted from the article to this blog.

"Change everything in your screenplay so that it is done for the audience.  Nothing is more important than how each scene is going to affect the viewer.  Make sure the content engages them and reels them in.  Use the characters to tease the viewer and pull them along desperately wanting more. 

Hitchcock knew why people are drawn to a darkened theater to absorb themselves for hours with images on a screen.  They do it to have fun. In the same way people go to a roller coaster to get thrown around at high speeds, theater audiences know they are safe.  As a film director you can throw things at them, hurl them off a cliff, or pull them into a dangerous love story, and they know that nothing will happen to them.  They're confident that they'll be able to walk out the exit when its done and resume their normal lives.  And, the more fun they have, the quicker they will come back begging for more."

"Emotion (in the form of fear, laughter, surprise, sadness, anger, boredom, etc.) is the ultimate goal of each scene.  The first consideration of where to place the camera should involve knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at that particular time.  Emotion comes directly from the actor's eyes.  You can control the intensity of that emotion by placing the camera close or far away from those eyes.  A close-up will fill the screen with emotion, and pulling away to a wide angle shot will dissipate that emotion.  A sudden cut from wide to close-up will give the audience a sudden surprise.  Sometimes a strange angle above an actor will heighten the dramatic meaning."

"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.  Scenes can often begin by panning a room showing close-ups of objects that explain plot elements."

"One of your characters must be pre-occupied with something during a dialogue scene.  Their eyes can then be distracted while the other person doesn't notice.  This is a good way to pull the audience into a character's secretive world. 

“People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another," said Hitchcock, "a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs.”  The focus of the scene should never be on what the characters are actually saying.  Have something else going on.  Resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. 

"In other words we don’t have pages to fill, or pages from a typewriter to fill, we have a rectangular screen in a movie house,” said Hitchcock."