JEFFREY MICHAEL BAYS is a writer, independent filmmaker, and Hitchcock Whisperer. He has been helping thousands of filmmakers worldwide for over a decade with his Hitchcock tutorials, books, and workshops. Along with a Master of Arts in Cinema from La Trobe University, his intuitive understanding of film craft has led to two how-to books, Between the Scenes and his brand new book, SUSPENSE WITH A CAMERA from Michael Wiese Productions. He has written numerous articles for MovieMaker Magazine, No Film School, and The Director’s Chair. Jeffrey was also writer and producer of the award-winning ‘Not From Space’ on XM Satellite Radio (2003). We spoke recently about "looking" at objects and limbs, actors' reactions, and how to add dialogue to maximize suspense.
Dave Watson: The title evokes that a filmmaker is able to create suspense principally with the camera. Do you find this to be true?
Jeffrey Michael Bays: Absolutely! Think of instances in normal life where cameras generate suspense. When a robot cam investigates a bomb threat, when submersible cameras explore the rooms of the sunken Titanic, and even when a space probe lands on a planet and we see the first images. In all of these instances, the camera is being used to explore an unknown or uncertain space. The camera stands in for us, peers into a space and enables us to experience it vicariously. We anticipate surprise at any moment.
When you put a camera into a movie scene, you are doing so first and foremost for audience immersion. You want the audience forget the camera and feel like they’re actually standing there in real time. You have to then treat the scene like you would if you were standing there, looking at various things. When you start using Over-the-Shoulder shots – that immediately bores the audience. It’s lazy. What do you want the audience to see in this moment? Point things out with the camera. In fact, Hitchcock proves that you can take an innocuous, scripted dialogue scene and turn it into suspense simply by way of camera placement and emphasis. He showed reactions, guilt, emotions, pre-occupation, hidden clues in the room – all with the camera.
DW: You start by discussing suspense, and in chapter two about secrets. How did this aspect of storytelling/filmmaking jump out at you?
JMB: My understanding of suspense has grown over the years, but it was when we started researching Hitchcock’s 20 TV episodes in our Hitch20 docu-series – that’s when the idea of “secrets” suddenly stood out. In Breakdown you have a man that’s paralyzed in a car accident and everyone thinks he’s dead. The man desperately wants to get their attention. That’s his secret he wants to get out. In Back for Christmas it’s the opposite: you have a man who plans to kill his wife and can’t let anyone find out. That’s his secret that he doesn’t want out.
So it really all comes down to that secret held by the protagonist. He either wants to hide it, or he wants it to get out. That secret can be anything – a pregnancy, an engagement, sneaking into an unauthorized place.
Studying those 20 TV episodes made it so much easier to figure out Hitchcock’s techniques. The episodes are simpler and shorter than his movies. Once you start going back to the movies and start looking for these secrets, it’s clear that this was his primary way of setting up scenarios of suspense. Bring the audience into a secret, and let them squirm about it getting out.
DW: You later discuss syntax of eyes, hands, and feet. Were you aware of this component early on in writing the book? Shots or closeups of limbs or small objects can be very effective in film. Thinking of Hitchcock again.
JMB: Sure, that’s basic filmmaking. While it’s common to use close-ups of hands today, either holding objects or demonstrating nervousness, the use of feet is less common. Hitchcock used feet all the time. Just look at the opening sequence of Strangers on a Train – it’s all feet until the two characters bump into each other on the train. One set of feet get out of a taxi and walk into the station, then another set of feet get out of another taxi. Each shows a different personality through choice of shoe and style of walking.
Feet can also be used to signify an important decision that will change the course of events, as well as the arrival of a significant character. It’s also an indicator of safety. If the character is standing firm on the ground, he’s safe. At the end of North By Northwest, Cary Grant is hanging from a cliff while a villain is standing on his fingers. Suddenly, the villain’s feet fall to the side, indicating that he’s been shot. He’s no longer safe. Harry in The Trouble With Harry is a dead guy, and Hitchcock emphasizes his feet sticking up into the air for comic effect. There’s so many possibilities. In Lifeboat Hitchcock even showed us a romantic couple lying together embracing via their feet!
DW: You also discuss editing, which seems crucial. What mainstream filmmaker uses cutting the most effectively with suspense?
JMB: Well I’m probably biased here because my interview with Saar Klein is in the book. His work editing The Bourne Identity is a treasure trove of study for an editor. Remarkably, that film was discovered in the editing room. Apparently the final cut is starkly different than the script, and they did a lot of reshoots. It’s very difficult to gauge tension in a script. Only after you see the edit on the screen can you fully judge the rhythms of tension and release, which Klein does beautifully in Bourne. I have it on good source that The Fugitive was the same way.
DW: You also talk about suspense myths, such as the words are most important. I agree, yet Hitchcock said the script was the most important thing for a film. Was he thinking visually the whole time?
JMB: My suspense “myths” are common misconceptions about suspense – things that you shouldn’t do to get suspense. The most common myth is that you must create a dark and foreboding setting in order to get suspense, and that’s just wrong. You can get suspense in the sunshine as well. Hitchcock proved that many times over. Remember the crop-duster scene in North by Northwest?
And yes, dialogue is another one. Many people skim through a script only reading the dialogue. A good script is going to have the most important elements in the action not the dialogue. Show it not tell it. When Hitchcock said the script is the most important thing he was likely talking about planning ahead. He wanted everything to be meticulously planned prior to shooting, so that time wouldn’t be wasted getting random “coverage” on the set. Many of his producers, especially Selznick, were annoyed by this strategy, because it meant they couldn’t impose their own changes in the final cut. There was only one way to cut it – no extra material to choose from!
When Hitchcock started out in the early days of film in the UK, they had two writers – one person wrote the action, and a second person wrote the dialogue. The dialogue was added last, as an afterthought. That’s because they were thinking purely in visuals.
DW: You also diagram suspense relative to space and objects. This appears to be the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, or the scales if you're learning an instrument? Do you agree?
JMB: Yes, and I compare this to computer games. There is a type of adventure game where your character is in a room and you have to click around looking for clues to get out. You can “look” at an object, “grab” an object and put it in your pocket, or “use” an object on something else. Sometimes you can even combine two objects into a new tool to help you escape. This type of interaction works great in those games because it allows the player to become part of the scene and use their thinking skills.
The same thing works in suspense. Focusing the camera on looking, grabbing, and using objects is a great way to bring the viewer into the scene. It allows the viewer to become involved in the secret world of the protagonist – the wine cellar key that Ingrid Bergman hides in the ballroom in Notorious. It gets our brains involved in tracking these objects throughout the movie and anticipating their impact if they are discovered.
DW: Can a filmmaker generate suspense with minimal materials and story elements?
JMB: Sure, all you need is some actors, a camera, and a few props. You can start improvising and building suspense from the props and the actors’ reactions. Maybe one of the actors hides a prop from another. There’s your suspense. Story can grow from that.
DW: What are some of the best suspense films or streaming series of recent years? Why?
JMB: Most recently, HBO’s Room 104 has some brilliant suspense episodes. In fact, this past week they had a story about a man with a hidden bomb (Episode 10: Red Tent). His plans get interrupted by an air conditioner repair man who is insistent on getting his job done, completely unaware of the bomb. It makes the whole episode a suspenseful dance as the repairman gets closer and closer to stumbling onto the secret.
Captain Phillips is excellent. The Bourne movies are very Hitchcock, in that they are cat and mouse chases through wide expanses of geography. Fincher is great with Gone Girl. Dan Trachtenberg may yet be a future Hitchcock – 10 Cloverfield Lane is superbly directed. He gets it right with his emphasis on humor. I’m still waiting to see more – hopefully my book will spark some new suspense films to be made!.
DW: What's next for you?
JMB: I'm always teaching suspense workshops and producing Hitchcock-related material on YouTube. Also there are two films in the works. Not From Space is a sci-fi comedy about a dysfunctional cable news channel on the day aliens arrive in orbit. It’s a mix of humor and high suspense, based on my radio play of the same name. The whole movie is a cable news broadcast and provokes us to question what we see as news. My other film is an untitled work about an aloof man who sits in waiting rooms all day. It’s essentially about taking action and not wasting time in life.
DW: Which is the subtext of many action films, I think. What is your favorite suspenseful cinematic moment with or because of the camera? Is there one where we are aware of it?
JMB: Anything directed by Hitchcock! Take your pick. There’s a really cool scene I like in his TV episode Back For Christmas where a man has buried his wife in the basement and then some friends stop by unexpectedly while he’s cleaning the crime scene. He’s still got dirt on his hands and hides behind the stairway while these people walk in looking for him. The whole scene is one long shot of tension, as the man hides and hopes not to be discovered. I love the fact that the camera does nothing and just lets the tension boil up out of the space of the shot. If Hitchcock had cut away to various shots and perspectives it would have lost all that tension. Sometimes smart camera work means doing nothing!
Clip: Hitch20
Dave Watson is a writer and educator. He lives in Madison, WI, and once lived near La Trobe University in his memoir, Walkabout Undone.
Dave Watson: The title evokes that a filmmaker is able to create suspense principally with the camera. Do you find this to be true?
Jeffrey Michael Bays: Absolutely! Think of instances in normal life where cameras generate suspense. When a robot cam investigates a bomb threat, when submersible cameras explore the rooms of the sunken Titanic, and even when a space probe lands on a planet and we see the first images. In all of these instances, the camera is being used to explore an unknown or uncertain space. The camera stands in for us, peers into a space and enables us to experience it vicariously. We anticipate surprise at any moment.
When you put a camera into a movie scene, you are doing so first and foremost for audience immersion. You want the audience forget the camera and feel like they’re actually standing there in real time. You have to then treat the scene like you would if you were standing there, looking at various things. When you start using Over-the-Shoulder shots – that immediately bores the audience. It’s lazy. What do you want the audience to see in this moment? Point things out with the camera. In fact, Hitchcock proves that you can take an innocuous, scripted dialogue scene and turn it into suspense simply by way of camera placement and emphasis. He showed reactions, guilt, emotions, pre-occupation, hidden clues in the room – all with the camera.
DW: You start by discussing suspense, and in chapter two about secrets. How did this aspect of storytelling/filmmaking jump out at you?
JMB: My understanding of suspense has grown over the years, but it was when we started researching Hitchcock’s 20 TV episodes in our Hitch20 docu-series – that’s when the idea of “secrets” suddenly stood out. In Breakdown you have a man that’s paralyzed in a car accident and everyone thinks he’s dead. The man desperately wants to get their attention. That’s his secret he wants to get out. In Back for Christmas it’s the opposite: you have a man who plans to kill his wife and can’t let anyone find out. That’s his secret that he doesn’t want out.
So it really all comes down to that secret held by the protagonist. He either wants to hide it, or he wants it to get out. That secret can be anything – a pregnancy, an engagement, sneaking into an unauthorized place.
Studying those 20 TV episodes made it so much easier to figure out Hitchcock’s techniques. The episodes are simpler and shorter than his movies. Once you start going back to the movies and start looking for these secrets, it’s clear that this was his primary way of setting up scenarios of suspense. Bring the audience into a secret, and let them squirm about it getting out.
DW: You later discuss syntax of eyes, hands, and feet. Were you aware of this component early on in writing the book? Shots or closeups of limbs or small objects can be very effective in film. Thinking of Hitchcock again.
JMB: Sure, that’s basic filmmaking. While it’s common to use close-ups of hands today, either holding objects or demonstrating nervousness, the use of feet is less common. Hitchcock used feet all the time. Just look at the opening sequence of Strangers on a Train – it’s all feet until the two characters bump into each other on the train. One set of feet get out of a taxi and walk into the station, then another set of feet get out of another taxi. Each shows a different personality through choice of shoe and style of walking.
Feet can also be used to signify an important decision that will change the course of events, as well as the arrival of a significant character. It’s also an indicator of safety. If the character is standing firm on the ground, he’s safe. At the end of North By Northwest, Cary Grant is hanging from a cliff while a villain is standing on his fingers. Suddenly, the villain’s feet fall to the side, indicating that he’s been shot. He’s no longer safe. Harry in The Trouble With Harry is a dead guy, and Hitchcock emphasizes his feet sticking up into the air for comic effect. There’s so many possibilities. In Lifeboat Hitchcock even showed us a romantic couple lying together embracing via their feet!
DW: You also discuss editing, which seems crucial. What mainstream filmmaker uses cutting the most effectively with suspense?
JMB: Well I’m probably biased here because my interview with Saar Klein is in the book. His work editing The Bourne Identity is a treasure trove of study for an editor. Remarkably, that film was discovered in the editing room. Apparently the final cut is starkly different than the script, and they did a lot of reshoots. It’s very difficult to gauge tension in a script. Only after you see the edit on the screen can you fully judge the rhythms of tension and release, which Klein does beautifully in Bourne. I have it on good source that The Fugitive was the same way.
DW: You also talk about suspense myths, such as the words are most important. I agree, yet Hitchcock said the script was the most important thing for a film. Was he thinking visually the whole time?
JMB: My suspense “myths” are common misconceptions about suspense – things that you shouldn’t do to get suspense. The most common myth is that you must create a dark and foreboding setting in order to get suspense, and that’s just wrong. You can get suspense in the sunshine as well. Hitchcock proved that many times over. Remember the crop-duster scene in North by Northwest?
And yes, dialogue is another one. Many people skim through a script only reading the dialogue. A good script is going to have the most important elements in the action not the dialogue. Show it not tell it. When Hitchcock said the script is the most important thing he was likely talking about planning ahead. He wanted everything to be meticulously planned prior to shooting, so that time wouldn’t be wasted getting random “coverage” on the set. Many of his producers, especially Selznick, were annoyed by this strategy, because it meant they couldn’t impose their own changes in the final cut. There was only one way to cut it – no extra material to choose from!
When Hitchcock started out in the early days of film in the UK, they had two writers – one person wrote the action, and a second person wrote the dialogue. The dialogue was added last, as an afterthought. That’s because they were thinking purely in visuals.
DW: You also diagram suspense relative to space and objects. This appears to be the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, or the scales if you're learning an instrument? Do you agree?
JMB: Yes, and I compare this to computer games. There is a type of adventure game where your character is in a room and you have to click around looking for clues to get out. You can “look” at an object, “grab” an object and put it in your pocket, or “use” an object on something else. Sometimes you can even combine two objects into a new tool to help you escape. This type of interaction works great in those games because it allows the player to become part of the scene and use their thinking skills.
The same thing works in suspense. Focusing the camera on looking, grabbing, and using objects is a great way to bring the viewer into the scene. It allows the viewer to become involved in the secret world of the protagonist – the wine cellar key that Ingrid Bergman hides in the ballroom in Notorious. It gets our brains involved in tracking these objects throughout the movie and anticipating their impact if they are discovered.
DW: Can a filmmaker generate suspense with minimal materials and story elements?
JMB: Sure, all you need is some actors, a camera, and a few props. You can start improvising and building suspense from the props and the actors’ reactions. Maybe one of the actors hides a prop from another. There’s your suspense. Story can grow from that.
DW: What are some of the best suspense films or streaming series of recent years? Why?
JMB: Most recently, HBO’s Room 104 has some brilliant suspense episodes. In fact, this past week they had a story about a man with a hidden bomb (Episode 10: Red Tent). His plans get interrupted by an air conditioner repair man who is insistent on getting his job done, completely unaware of the bomb. It makes the whole episode a suspenseful dance as the repairman gets closer and closer to stumbling onto the secret.
Captain Phillips is excellent. The Bourne movies are very Hitchcock, in that they are cat and mouse chases through wide expanses of geography. Fincher is great with Gone Girl. Dan Trachtenberg may yet be a future Hitchcock – 10 Cloverfield Lane is superbly directed. He gets it right with his emphasis on humor. I’m still waiting to see more – hopefully my book will spark some new suspense films to be made!.
DW: What's next for you?
JMB: I'm always teaching suspense workshops and producing Hitchcock-related material on YouTube. Also there are two films in the works. Not From Space is a sci-fi comedy about a dysfunctional cable news channel on the day aliens arrive in orbit. It’s a mix of humor and high suspense, based on my radio play of the same name. The whole movie is a cable news broadcast and provokes us to question what we see as news. My other film is an untitled work about an aloof man who sits in waiting rooms all day. It’s essentially about taking action and not wasting time in life.
DW: Which is the subtext of many action films, I think. What is your favorite suspenseful cinematic moment with or because of the camera? Is there one where we are aware of it?
JMB: Anything directed by Hitchcock! Take your pick. There’s a really cool scene I like in his TV episode Back For Christmas where a man has buried his wife in the basement and then some friends stop by unexpectedly while he’s cleaning the crime scene. He’s still got dirt on his hands and hides behind the stairway while these people walk in looking for him. The whole scene is one long shot of tension, as the man hides and hopes not to be discovered. I love the fact that the camera does nothing and just lets the tension boil up out of the space of the shot. If Hitchcock had cut away to various shots and perspectives it would have lost all that tension. Sometimes smart camera work means doing nothing!
Clip: Hitch20
Dave Watson is a writer and educator. He lives in Madison, WI, and once lived near La Trobe University in his memoir, Walkabout Undone.
