I was lucky enough to catch the thriller movie Collateral which had many good examples of suspense. I made notes on some of the things i noticed..
So the setting: The cab driver is waiting patiently in his car having just been asked to help a young man make some visitations around town. In this scene the cabby and the viewer are still naive as to the smartly dressed assasins intentions but suspicions start to rise with the films first clear build up of suspense. The cab driver is bathed in artificial street light but it has a warm orange glow and a non-diegetic songs begin to play. The music is a little wistfull, perhaps reflecting the drivers own lifestyle. but none the less a delicate and relaxed piano piece. But the film is edited so that this footage is cut up by clips of the assasin on his way to murder someone. As the shot changes the music is cut and all the watcher can hear is the sharp crunch of Tom Cruise's feet as he marches along to his victim. The light is still artificial but it's a colder harsher blue that emphasises the assasins stony dangerous face and contrats with the gentile cab drivers as the shots cut back and forth. This all leaves the viewer with an eerrie feeling that something more sinister is about to happen that will change everything.
[Above, the piano music that plays during the cab driver - Nothing will show if accessing via a connection that blocks flash eg. the college internet, sorry can't be helped!]
Music and lighting are two thing most often use to create suspense in collateral, take the scene towards the end with the steady drum beat and frigtening guitar riffs helping to create the scary atmosphere in the dark room, where the figure of the assasin is silloheted against the city night, a monster in the darkness. But mise-en-scen and camera shots obviously play an import part to. Another part of the film where the user felt nervous and anxious for a character in the film was when one of the vitims answered a call from one of his people saying he had a visitor. Diegetic sounds, strings getting louder, a close-up on the business mans sweating brow. And as he decends down the stairs to meet his murderous visiter the camera lingers on the top of the staircase, the viewer is given the impression that the man will never be able to come back up those stairs of his again.
