Creating Effective Suspense

How to create suspense and make an effective opening sequence using Hithcock as an inspiration.

Written text is a prominent narrative device used to pull Hitchcock’s viewers into the story openings through captions on the screen, signs on buildings, and newspaper hea dlines.

Movement of the camera through geographic space is one way that Hitchcock signals to the viewer that a new story is being uncovered.

Probably the most obvious example of a bright opening is in Trouble With Harry (1955), showing beautiful autumn scenery of orange leaves, rolling Vermont hills, and a church. Then an innocent child skips along and stumbles onto a dead body lying on green grass.

a majority of his suspense films opened in the bright daylight accompanied by playful music.

In the early part of Hitchcock’s career he wrote about the need for shifts in tone throughout a film, and that a comic opening is essential to suspense.

If we decided to use the thriller genre, this information would be useful to refer to.