Suspense and the 'Bomb Theory'

Suspense is used reguarly and is evident in almost every horror and thriller film produced. Suspense is when the main attention of viewers is distracted and taken away from the main story line creating curiosity.. This is most effectivley done with the close use of sound allowing a director to match music to the characters mood within a scene or how they want to make the viewer feel.

When producing my thriller teaser trailer I am going to focus on using effective sound which relates to the placement and characters within a scene. Sound that I will use and incorporate into my teaser trailer will be slow with a downbeat tempo, creating an eery yet scary mood.

Suspense can be broken down into 5 smaller components which together excites and thrills the audience. The main aim of suspense, specifically the 'bomb theory' is to ensure that what the viewer thinks is going to happen, never does. The bomb theory was created by Alfred Hitchcock and he stated that suspense has key ingredients which need to be adapted and used within a film in order to keep the audience sitting in fear, waiting for something to happen.

The 5 components of the bomb theory are:

• Empathy with characters
• Knowing more than the characters
• False plateau (leading audicence in the wrong way)
• Placing ideas in mind
• Sound

These 5 components are used within conjunction of one another in order to make the audience scared, wanting to see what happens next. The main aim of the 'bomb theory' is to keep the audience on a tight string, using false plateau to place different ideas in the mind of viewers leading them of the beaten track and confusing them.