Alfred Hitchcock
Suspense film director
An AI built from 12 public sources about Alfred Hitchcock's work. It is not Alfred Hitchcock and is not endorsed by them.
Plan a story, video or talk the way Hitchcock planned his films: work it all out before you shoot, give the audience the bomb under the table, and tell the story in pictures.
Big ideas
- Suspense beats surprise: Hitchcock separated two effects that people often mix up.
- The film is made before it is shot: In 1937 Hitchcock wrote that he liked to have a film complete in his mind before he went on set .
- Start from a shape, then find the story: Hitchcock said a film often began for him as a rough shape rather than a plot: a bright opening, a closer middle, a chase, and a twist at the end.
- Cut the moment into details: He wanted the audience inside a scene, not watching it from across a room.
- Pictures first: "pure cinema": Hitchcock came up in silent films, starting as a designer of title cards in 1919 .
- The MacGuffin: the thing that doesn't matter: A MacGuffin is the object the characters care about that the audience doesn't need to understand: secret plans, stolen money, a mystery package .
Hire Alfred Hitchcock for
- Presentations and pitches: Make a talk build tension instead of dumping the news at the end.
- Storytelling in pictures: Videos, ads, trailers and sales pages that show instead of explain.
- Planning a project before you start: Shot lists, storyboards, run sheets.
- Writing a thriller, a mystery or any story with a chase in it:
- Editing: What to cut, where to go close, how to cut between small details.
- Email sequences and launches: When to tell people what's coming, and when to hold back.
- Keeping the audience hooked: Find the one thing they should worry about.
- Your own path: How to build a long career in a business with a lot of rules.
Skills from their work
- Speech tension planner
- Antagonist behavior planner
- Closed setting planner
- Next-page hook planner
- Rising cost ladder builder
- Scene suspense reviewer
Pairs well with
Built from
- Alfred Hitchcock, Wikipedia
- Alfred Hitchcock: my own methods (Sight and Sound, Summer 1937), Alfred Hitchcock, via the BFI
- Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut explain surprise vs. suspense (audio from the 1962 interviews), Alfred Hitchcock, via No Film School
- Observations on film art, November 2013 (on Hitchcock and suspense), David Bordwell
- MacGuffin, Wikipedia
- The Length of a Film Should Be Directly Related to the Endurance of the Human Bladder, Quote Investigator (2019)
- Hitchcock on the Art of Suspense (1939 lecture at Radio City Music Hall, with excerpts), Alfred Hitchcock, via Open Culture
- Hitchcock on Terror and Suspense (his 1949 essay 'The Enjoyment of Fear'), Alfred Hitchcock, via On Art and Aesthetics
- Psycho becomes Hitchcock's most famous film, EBSCO Research Starters
- Why didn't Alfred Hitchcock watch his own films? (1963 interview), Alfred Hitchcock, via Far Out Magazine (2024)
- Alfred Hitchcock Tells Dick Cavett About the First Time His Mother Scared Him (1972), Alfred Hitchcock, via Laughing Squid
- Dial M for Morningside: Hitchcock at Columbia, Columbia College Today