Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JAMES CAMERON: When we buy a movie ticket,

we're putting our-- we're creating

a little bit of a social contract

with a bunch of people we never met to go into a dark room

and experience something and be quiet and be passive and be

submissive and not stop, not stop the experience.

The experience is in a dominant position

relative to our consciousness.

And we do it willingly because it's

one of the few times in our lives where we do that,

and where we stop our phone from ringing,

and we give ourselves that respite,

and we give ourselves a moment, might be a two-hour moment,

might be a three-hour moment, to experience something

uninterrupted and unbroken.

And if we have to get up and go to the bathroom,

you run because you don't want to miss something.

And that's a unique experience.

I think as a filmmaker, you know that you

have a dominant or authoritative position

relative to the audience's consciousness.

And you have to honor them, which

is, I'm not going to do something

that-- that's so obvious you can figure it out exactly.

And you get to the end.

And it's been predictable.

But I also don't want to do something that's intentionally

obscure to where I'm just sort of pirouetting how smart I am

and all the big words I can use, and you're lost.

And we've all seen the ones that strike that perfect balance

where you're rewarded for having paid attention

and picking up the clues.

And you go, aha.

And I think there's one thing that a lot of filmmakers

take a while to figure out, which

is it's okay for the audience to be ahead of you.

It's okay because the tension that

goes before a reveal or a cathartic moment

is so much more delicious when it's actually paid off in a way

that you hope for than some utter surprise that's

not satisfying at all.

Sometimes, filmmakers create too much importance

around the idea of surprise versus paying off

in a satisfying, satisfying way.

It's all about this contract.

It's about this dance with the audience

and honoring them and encouraging them to participate

and pay attention.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Well, I can drive that loader.

I have a class 2 rating.

Be my guest.

[LOADER WHIRRING]

JAMES CAMERON: And part of the way you

do that is you plant something, and then you pay it off.

And you say, see how it works?

I want to put something here.

And you're going to think about it,

and then-- and then it's going to be satisfying here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SCREAMING]

Get away from her, you bitch.

[END PLAYBACK]

JAMES CAMERON: So that creates a bit of a promise

that we're going to continue to do that.

We're going to do that right through to the end of the film.

The plant might be something that only the audience knows,

that that character needs and wants and can't express.

And you feel that I wish I could just walk into the screen

and shake that other person and say, look at what

this character's going through.

You know, you want to create that tension.

You want to create that-- that sense of wanting to be involved

and playing and participating.

It's participatory.

People say that that film is not interactive,

that only games are--

are an interactive medium.

I don't think that's true at all.

I think films are highly interactive.

You can't change the outcome, but you

can imagine various outcomes in real time as you're going on.

You're playing out those possibilities.

It could go this way.

It could go that way.

It could be this, could be that.

And if you play against the audience's expectation

in a satisfying way, that's good.

Keeps them playing the game.

If you play to the audience's expectation

in a satisfying way, something that they want to see

happen, and then it happens--

maybe it doesn't happen the way they

thought it was going to happen.

Maybe it has to be earned in a difficult way that's

hard for the characters, or maybe the character

has to make the sacrifice that you

didn't see coming to get that result that you wanted,

you know.

But this is all part of the dance.

They know all the gags.

So the question is, how do you play against it slightly?

Or how do you use a little bit of sleight of hand

to disguise what you're doing?

Or how do you lead them on thinking

that it's going to be one thing and then switch track

into something else?

You know, you're doing it at the writing stage.

You should be going through the script and saying, you know,

what--

what am I giving the audience here?

What expectation does that create?

How am I paying that off?

Or how am I working against that expectation later?

It's very important for filmmakers

to ask themselves these questions.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, I think one of the first principles of building tension

is you have to care about the character.

And you have to understand the jeopardy

or at least that there is jeopardy for that character.

That might be anything from a free-floating anxiety

that something is going to happen.

And you don't know what it is.

Because you've just walked into an alien spacecraft.

Or you just walked into a haunted house.

Or there's some kind of really bad, negative outcome

that's tied to a ticking clock.

You know, the classic example is the bomb under the table.

Because I think time is a factor on building tension.

You have to believe that it's not

going to happen in two weeks or in an hour.

It's going to happen in the next few seconds or maybe

the next minute.

So you have to be invested in the outcome.

You have to care about the character.

You have to be brought in subjectively enough

into the moment that you're moving through the--

the world, the space, the journey with that character.

And you have to have enough outside information

to know that that character is going into increasing jeopardy.

So crosscutting is a good way to do that--

cutting away to the adversary or the train

coming or whatever, whatever the thing is that escalates,

creating a constant sense of escalation,

creating a sense of frustration.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Don't make me bust you up, man.

[GROANING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[GLASS BREAKING]

[GROANING]

JAMES CAMERON: You're cutting to a very mundane scene.

But in the context of it being a attention crosscutting

scenario, it's a solution that might happen but isn't

gonna happen.

And they could have been saved but

for had they just answered the phone,

or something has happened.

The ringer got turned off.

And you've established that.

You're building tension in all these ways.

You have to be led to believe as the audience

that something is going to happen soon,

and then you prolong it.

You don't just make it happen.

You prolong it.

So you've informed the audience in some way stylistically

that something bad is going to happen, or something very bad

could happen to your character, and then you prolong.

So you've told them to be in that state,

and then you suspend that state and then hold them

in that state.

So they don't feel like it's getting just snatched away

from them before they've had a chance to experience and feel

it.

Now, that might be a happy-- a state of happiness,

might be a state of wonder.

You don't want to give them a little taste of wonder

and then take it away.

You want to stay in it.

So tension is the same thing.

So there's a prolongation of tension,

and that's usually done with crosscutting two narratives

that you feel are converging to each other.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are entire films that build tension

across the arc of the film, or there

are films that build tension across an entire act

of the film, let's say.

So "Titanic" would be an example where tension slowly

builds over time.

Here's a clue.

They got the iceberg warning.

Captain puts it in his pocket, doesn't do anything,

tells them to speed up.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Oh, not to worry.

Quite normal for this time of year.

In fact, we're speeding up.

I've just ordered the last boilers lit.

[END PLAYBACK]

JAMES CAMERON: It's like, well, wait a minute.

There's an iceberg ahead.

So you're building tension at a relatively mild level.

Once they hit the iceberg, now you're

building tension for your main characters.

Who's going to get off?

How are they going to be saved?

What are the obstacles that are going to be in their path?

Bad stuff is coming, and we move relentlessly toward that.

And we even, you know, release the tension for a while.

You know, Rose gets in the lifeboat, and it's very sad.

But you know at least she's going to get away.

Then she jumps back on the ship.

Now you've just ratcheted it up again.

It's important to understand the sort of the meta tension

that can rise across an entire section of a movie

until it has some kind of cathartic or pivotal ending.

In that case, the ship plunges, the scene on the raft.

And Jack dies, and then you get into the kind

of series of codas that kind of resolve

the film emotionally and thematically.

But-- and the tension is released at that point.

And a great example, recent example, is "Dunkirk."

That's two hours-plus of just rising tension.

And it's very skillfully done.

And the score is a major component of that.

It just builds and builds and builds.

And there's just this feeling of dread and anxiety

that builds across that entire film

until those characters finally get pulled off

that beach at the end.

And they're on those boats going home.

And you feel like you've won.

You've earned this feeling of-- of delivery, of transport.

And so, you know, that's a case where it just

was unrelenting across the entire movie on a-- on a rising

curve.

And that's an incredible thing to be

able to modulate that-- that way.

So tension is an art, and it's a discipline.

And it can come in small amounts.

It can come in longer sections.

And it come-- and it can come across an entire--

entire story arc.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[CHEERING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]