How tension is created in Immersed.
The intro to a thriller which I was given to watch was Immersed.the following is my explanation as to how tension was created in Immersed.
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| Immersed: 1:25 |
Tension only works if the director gives something for the audience to care about. If the audience doesn't like or care about what is happening, or the character, they will get bored, not pay attention and probably not enjoy your movie; So right off the bat the people who made this intro have given the audience a character to care about, it appears to be a young female character who is swimming, this character doesn't necessarily seem weak but the stereotype around most female characters is that they are weak and vulnerable and susceptible to being harmed. The intro started in a dark way and the music is intense so the audience think there is a possibility that something bad could happen and already in the first 10 seconds the audience has a character to care about if something does happen, and this immediately catches the viewers attention and makes them want to see what happens next, this is done only in the first few seconds.
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| Immersed: 0:08 |
When working to try and make tension, escalation is key, it is like the first day of school after summer vacation, at the beginning of the summer everything is slow and you have a lot of time until the start of school but as you start getting closer to the first day of school everything has a faster pace and then before you know it, you have 3 days left, two days left, one day left, then bang its the first day of school. It should be the same in your thriller, it starts off slow and as you reach closer and closer to the highest point of intensity, you start making more and more short and fast cuts, you also increase the intensity, speed and volume of the music to add to the effect. This thriller does this very well, in the beginning it starts with slow, dark music, not very fast, there shots are long and still.
From 0:25 too 0:28 and at 0:43 there are shots of a stop watch next to the pool, this also helps speed the pass of the movie up because now we know that the girl is swimming as fast as she can to try and do as well as she can against the time on the stopwatch. The stopwatch also shows us that this swimmer is very serious about swimming, her swim hat and swim suit also show us this, instead of a bikini she is wearing a one piece skin tight swimming suit and her hat is on so that she aero dynamic. what all of this show us is that she is very serious about swimming which means that she is very concentrated as she swims, this tells the audience that she doesn't know or care about what is happening around her since she is so concentrated on swimming and doing well against the stopwatch.
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| Immersed: 0:28 |
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| Immersed: 0:43 |
At 0:35 we are shown a shot under water, this shot shows us what the girl can see under water, it is not a P.O.V shot but gives us an idea of what it looks like under water, one thing the viewer notices is that you cannot see anything outside of the water, all the girl see’s is int the water. The fact that she cannot see outside of the water shows the audience that if anything were too be happening outside of the water the girl would not see it, especially because of how concentrated she is; This makes the audience start to get more and more nervous because the music is getting louder and there is a sense that something might happen soon, the tension is rising.
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| Immersed: 0:37 |
At 0:51 all of sudden there is a slow motion shot, the pace of the film is slowed down and you see water flowing slowly, this made me think of the saying the “calm before the storm”. So this might be the moment where something big happens, so during this slow motion shot everybody sort of holds their breath in anticipation of what might happen next.
As expected something does happen in the shot after the slow-motion shot, we see a large figure walk up to the door of the swimming pool room, he opens the door and it is a large man, the shot shows us the man from his shoulders too his waist, we do not see the persons face or the persons hands. So we do not know what this person looks like, which gives a sense of anonymity, an audience likes to be able to see someones face so they can determine by looking at their facial expressions what the persons intensions might be, either good or bad. We do not see the characters hands either, so once again the audience is left not knowing, for all the viewers know the man could be holding a big kitchen knife or a big axe to kill the girl with. All this worries the audience, we don't know what the man looks like or what he could be holding, but the audience does know that this is a man through his clothing and body type, this man also looks big and strong so even if the man is not holding a knife just through sheer power this man could easily overpower this young girl which is vulnerable and unexacting. This creates a lot of tension because the audience already has a bad feeling and then walks in this big powerful man and the girl probably has no idea that he is there because she is so focused on her swimming.
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| Immersed: 0:53 |
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| Immersed: 1:02 |
From 1:14 until 1:21 the shot is of this man walking beside the pool next to the girl swimming, he did not announce him self when he entered nor made him self noticed, he seems to not be making a lot of noise, the audience now thinks that this man is sneaking up on this girl; Meanwhile the girl is still swimming in the pool and she has not noticed the man because she has not stopped swimming and her swimming has simply just not changed at all. So through this shot tension is built because on one side we have a big strong man who seems to be sneaking into the swimming pool room, not letting the girl know he is there and so he is creeping up on her, on the other side we have this girl who is stereotypically seen as weak because of her gender, she also seems to not be aware that the man is there. The music now seems to be at its loudest, so the audience can feel that something is about to happen and are now in anticipation and are worried for the girl. Tension is now at its highest.
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| Immersed: 1:13 |
At 1:22 we do not see the man anymore and the girls head is coming out of the water and at 1:23 we see the mans foot in front of the girl so he is standing in front of her, the shot is a high angle shot, the shot is looking down on the girl which gives the effect that the man is looking downwards at the girl and the girl is looking up at the man, this gives the effect that the man is big and powerful and that the girl is small and vulnerable.
The music suddenly cuts as we see the girls expression, she is looking up at the man, she is gasping with her mouth wide open in fear. The music suddenly stopping and the girls mouth being wide open gives the feeling that her breath was taken because of fear; When the music cuts it is the point where all the tension had built up to a max and suddenly reaches its peak and the main character and the audience as well are left with their breath taken. The shot of the girls face is also slowed down so that the viewer can see perfectly see the expression and not accidentally mistaken it it for another emotion, the creators have made it impossible for the viewers to not see that the expression on the girls face is fear.
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| Immersed: 1:23 |
This intro is very well done to show as an example of tension in a movie, it starts off slow and through out the scene the music slowly gets louder, the clips become shorter and the cuts are faster, this slowly keeps speeding up which makes the audience slowly start getting more and more worried and nervous, until the point of climax of the tension build up, where the audience is left stunned.
If you would like to watch the intro to a thriller named Immersed witch I wrote about in this blog post, you can watch it on the Hurtwood House Media channel on youtube, or you could just click on the link supplied bellow:
