Filmmaking Techniques That Make Tense Scenes All the More Intense
Great writing and convincing acting are the core factors that relay a great scene. However, from time to time, the creative choices made by the filmmakers manage to transform a great scene into a legendary one. The process of making film has many considerations regardless of what you’re shooting, from lighting to lens type to camera angles. While these scenes are tense enough on paper, it’s all down to the choices of the filmmakers that have elevated them to a new tier, making them particularly intense for viewers.
Warning! There will be spoilers for some superb films ahead!
A Matter of Life and Death
In cinema, characters get killed off all of the time. The build up to these characters, the audience’s familiarity with them, the situation in which they’re in peril, and the importance of them to the other characters all need to be emphasised before the death to create a potent death scene. The Deer Hunter (1978), featuring Robert De Niro – who you might not have known was once the famed creature of 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – and Christopher Walken offers a prime example of a tense scene where life and death will be decided.
Under the waning watch of their captors, boyhood friends De Niro and Walken are forced to play Russian Roulette. The scene is shot within a shack, with small horizontal beams of light coming in, highlighting the eyes and chins of the three leads of the scene. Initially, the camera’s happy to sit back to view the whole table sitting, but as more bullets go in, they fixate on the trembling hands picking up the gun and the hesitant faces holding the gun. The gloomy atmosphere and lighting make it all the more intense. Apparently, De Niro even upped the ante by asking for live rounds to be used.
Of course, the stakes don’t necessarily need to be for those who’re the focus of the scene. People hiding away, needing to be silent and just hoping that they’re not caught at a dead end also creates a lot of tension. You’ll often see this in horror films, but one of this angle’s finest deployments was at the start of Inglorious Basterds. In the only scene Christoph Waltz could rehearse with his co-stars, his targets are hiding under the floorboards terrified of what’s to come. So, they allow just about every sound in the all-dialogue scene be elevated, from wooden creaks to jacket ruffles to help immerse you in the same tension as everyone else, bar Waltz, in the scene.
Emphasizing the Steely Focus
If there’s one somewhat common trope that films like to play into, it’s playing at a casino. Why people play and their aims when they play make for an easy translation of the stakes and even some character traits. Often, the game will be one of cards. Blackjack is a popular choice because of the way it’s played. Even when you play blackjack online, the goal is to beat the dealer. People use basic strategy and memorize the chart to try to make the best calls with each hand in games of Classic Blackjack Multi-Hand, Live Lightning Blackjack, and Vegas Single Deck Blackjack.
It’s a game that’s long been seen as one where the player can beat the dealer, even though there is still a large element of luck involved. In Rain Man, the realization of Dustin Hoffman’s prowess is followed by a high-stakes trip to the casino, in which, the table is given an almost angelic fluorescent light. Hoffman and Tom Cruise have a lot on the line, but luckily go on a hot streak. Hotel management doesn’t enjoy their success so much and begin to suss them from the shadows. Throughout, oblivious to it all, Hoffman is fixated on the cards coming out, until the ticker of the wheel spin comes to distract him and the music fades. Blackjack’s regularly drawn on, but so, too, is poker.
The goal is the same, but in poker, the challenge is posed by the other players rather than the dealer. For many, it makes scenes all the more tense because you can’t know what anyone else has. Owning a strong poker face is helpful, but those who do away with that can also get one up. In Casino Royale, James Bond was there to play some high-stakes poker against Le Chiffre, but it was about much more than that. Really, the poker didn’t matter, and to emphasize this, the camera continuously skipped back to other players focussing on the table and their chips, while Bond and Chiffre were always flicking to each other.
With the right techniques, cuts, lighting, and use of sound, a tense situation can swiftly be made intense and all the better for it.
