1. Audience-oriented
The film is made for the audience to see, and each scene must consider the audience's feelings and make sure that the content inside is attractive.
People go to the theater to have fun, just like a cloud night car, it is still very safe after the clouds and rain. The theater is a safe place, and Hitchcock knows this, so he will throw things at the audience, throw them off the cliff, take them to spy on dangerous romances, know that when they leave the theater, they will return to normal life, and the more interesting the movie, the more people will come back.
2. Compose with emotions
Creating emotions – like: fear, joy, surprise, sadness, anger – is the ultimate goal of every scene. To know where the camera is going, you have to know what kind of emotions the scene is going to create. Emotions come from the eyes of the characters, and the camera can control the strength and weakness of the emotions near and far. Close-ups will fill the screen with emotions, the camera will be pulled away, and the emotions will dissipate. A sudden jump from vista to close-up surprises the audience. Shooting from a strange angle on an actor's head may represent a special meaning.
Hitchcock used this principle to arrange each of his scenes, controlling when the audience should be emotionally excited and when they should relax. He likens this to composing, it's just that he's not playing an instrument, he's playing with the audience.
Hitchcock's Psychopath storyboard
3. Don't think of the camera as a camera
The camera can be a person, wandering around the room looking for suspicious objects. This will make the audience more engaged. Many movies begin with a camera wandering around, introducing shots of key objects from the film.
Hitchcock started out in silent films, had no sound, and had to tell stories with pictures. But in 1930, when the sound came, everything changed. Everything became dialogue-oriented, and the film began to rely on actor dialogue. He reminds us not to forget to tell stories with pictures, and not to just use the camera as a camera.
Family Conspiracy storyboard
4. Dialogue itself is meaningless
People talk and usually don't speak out the deepest thoughts of their hearts. A dialogue may be trivial, boring, and generic, but the eyes of the speaker will usually reveal what he really wants. The focus of a scene should never be on the words spoken by the characters, let them do other things at the same time, and shoot their inner thoughts with their hands and feet. Unless it's really necessary, tell a story in dialogue.
Therefore, what the filmmaker has to fill is not the dialogue page, but the frame of the movie picture.
The storyboard of Cape Catcher
5. Point of View Editing
James Stewart was looking at a trap on the ground and picking up a picture of him smiling.
James Stewart watching a woman undress and pick him up smiling.
Two identical smiles, but completely different meanings.
Without dialogue, implanting ideas into the audience's mind is point-of-view editing. This is subjective cinema. Take the protagonist's eyes, use the splicing, and give him something to see.
Start with a close-up of the actor
Cut to what he sees
Back to the actor's reaction after watching it
repeat
It is possible to interact with the protagonist and what he sees, increasing the dramatic tension. This is a very useful technique, sometimes more powerful than good acting. A way to take it to the next level is to get the protagonist to walk towards what he's being watched, and then switch perspectives with the film, so that the audience thinks the protagonist is sharing his personal secrets. This is what Hitchcock calls "pure cinema" (pure cinema).
Note: In perspective mode, if another person is looking at the protagonist, he has to look into the camera.
The storyboard of Birds
6. Montage gives you strength
A series of close-ups make up the narrative, which is basic montage. It's not like a narrative made up of a bunch of disparate shots. It's a designed story of a hand, a face, a gun, a back, stringed together, telling an event in such a way, showing only the part you want to show, which can induce the audience and fully grasp the rhythm.
Hitchcock said it was," "Bringing the horror of the picture to the audience." The famous shower scene in The Book of Horror, with a series of pictures, avoids the most violent places, you have not seen the knife poke into the heroine's body, but the most violent picture, occurs in the audience's mind.
Basic principle: Important things, shoot in close-ups, to determine what the audience has seen.
Stills from Psychopaths
7. Simple and easy to understand story
If your story is complicated or you have to go back in time to understand it, it's hard to create a sense of suspense. The sense of suspense in Hitchcock's films comes from - simple, straight-line, easy-to-understand stories. A streamlined script will produce the greatest tension. For the story to have tension, it is necessary to remove unnecessary things, leaving only elements that can grasp the audience. As Hitchcock said, "What is drama is to take away the boring parts of life..."
Too abstract a story to understand. That's why Hitchcock likes to use "crime stories" — where there are detectives, spies, assassins, and people who have escaped police pursuit. Such a plot is better to play with the audience's fears, of course, this is not absolute.
8. Break stereotypes
Make your character different from what everyone expects. Turn the blonde's silly buttons into smarter, give the Cuban big guy a French accent, and let those who commit rape go unpunished. Give the characters unguessable personalities and let them make some decisions that jump out of the previous laying out. These satirical characters are closer to life in the audience's mind, and they are more suitable for strange things to happen.
The criminals in Hitchcock's films are often high-society elements that you would never have imagined. The police and politicians are two hundred and five, the innocent are charged, and the bad guys will not be punished, because no one doubts them. In this way, the characters can constantly surprise the audience.
9. Increase tension with a sense of humor
In Hitchcock's story, "sense of humor" is an important element. You can use this to create tension by giving him the most ironic event, making the worst happen, as if he were playing a prank on the character.
In Marnie, the heroine Tippi Hedren is stealing money from an office safe. When she was about to leave, the cleaning aunt just happened to be cleaning next door, the aunt was out of condition, but the heroine must not be seen by her, and the audience must hope that the heroine can escape smoothly. Therefore, the closer Aunt Cleaning is to the heroine, the higher the tension.
Hitchcock likes to use funny old ladies to add a naïve sense of humor to his films. These old ladies are usually very assertive, long-tongued, and optimistic about crime. If someone is committing a crime, they will help if they don't know.
Storyboard of "Big Trick Game"
10. Two things happen at the same time
Allowing two unrelated things to happen at the same time, the viewer will focus on one event and will always be interrupted by another. Usually another event is just a funny and meaningless event that is used to get in the way.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much, a group of uninvited guests arrive in a hotel room, where the male and female protagonists are arguing on the phone, and the audience is nervous. At this time, the boring frolicking noise of the uninvited guest is in great contrast with the serious quarrel. Or, in Spellbound, the heroine Ingrid Bergman sees a note coming from a crack in the door, and she is about to bend down to get it when her colleague suddenly comes in and starts asking where the hero is, completely unaware that she stepped on the note from the hero. In this way of shooting, the audience will pay more attention to what is happening.
Hitchcock's Cape Catcher's guiding storyboard
11. The sense of suspense comes from the supply of information
The supply of information is very important in Hitchcock's films. Method: Show the audience what the characters don't see in the play. If there is something to hurt the character, show it to the audience as soon as it opens, and then let the scene go on normally. Reminding the audience from time to time that something is going to hurt the protagonist will heat up the tension. But remember, there is no sense of suspense in the characters' minds, they are out of context.
In Family Plot, Hitchcock shows the audience the image of the car leaking without the character's knowledge. In Psycho, the audience knows that mom is a badass earlier than officer Martin, so when officer Martin enters his mom's house, the tension comes, and this section becomes the most exciting part of Hitchcock's film history.
"Suspense comes from the supply of information" - Hitchcock
12. Big reversal, big surprise
When you capture the hearts of the audience, don't give them the ending they expect. There are bombs, don't explode first, the sound of east and west, take them in the other direction (misdirection is a very important technique for directors) When they are not paying attention, pull the carpet off, give them a big reversal, a big surprise.
In Marnie, there is a scene where the mother asks the heroine to get up, and the mother stands in the doorway, her whole body is shrouded in shadows, accompanied by horror music, like a big devil, but when she sees it at the end, she realizes that it is not so, but is misled by the director misdirection. In Saboteur, Norman Lloyd is forced to the top of Statue Of Liberty by Robert Cumming with a gun, feeling like the show is coming to an end. Suddenly Cummings started talking, and As soon as Lloyd was startled, he flipped over and fell down.
Poster of "The Thief"
13. Make good use of MacGuffin
What is MacGuffin? It is a tool for creating a sense of suspense. If a scene is simply to create a sense of suspense, it does not matter what its content is. When the audience's heart is hooked, it is hooked. This is MacGuffin.
MacGuffin can be vague, like the North by Northwest mentioned: so-and-so government secret agency. Or quite explicitly, like in 39 Steps : Mr. Memory's Military Program. Or unrelated: Like the dog in the stairwell in Strangers on a Train. No one cares about the dog, it's there to create tension. The dog can be anything: a person, an alarm clock, a parrot, or a MacGuffin.
North by Northwest, Defense Secrets, Train Freaks
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