Suspense.

It is state, a tone, and a genre in itself.

We are going to be making a short film in the genre of your choosing. In the process, we will learn about various aspects of pre-production such as screenwriting, storyboarding, art design, and production planning.

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

We are going to steal from some of the best. Today we will begin our focused studies by viewing and analyzing clips from a handful of great films from a variety of genres. We will be emulating and employing some of the techniques in our own projects to help build suspense.

We are going to play a game! Your challenge for the day is to come up with five pitches for potential thriller/suspense films and submit them here by the end of the day. Take a look at some from last years class. You aren’t committed to using any of these, it is just a technical exercise marked for completion. If you are struggling, you can look at this list of great thriller films on IMDB.

Bonus: article about Alfred Hitchcock and suspense.

Your homework for the week? Watch a “scary” movie! I have created a suggested viewing list here of great Thriller (suspense!) films, but you can choose any film you would like, as long as it contains some element of suspense. Try to pay special attention to the techniques that are used to build suspense. Please be prepared to potentially give a brief written or spoken statement to the class or within small groups about the successful techniques used on Monday.