Suspense methods in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

If you're afraid of spiders, then you probably should not watch The Lord Of The Rings, directed by Peter Jackson. In the final installment of the trilogy, a giant spider is the thing in the way of our main character, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins. Arachnophobia may be enough to terrify some people, but Peter Jackson made sure everyone watching would be on the edge of their seat. He did this using suspense building techniques known and used by all great filmmakers. 

Please watch until 1:10 into this video.

This scene in particular utilizes common suspense building techniques. The first to highlight is Dramatic Irony. You will notice that the one human-looking character on screen, Frodo Baggins, never sees the dangerous and terrifying giant spider. When an audience knows something a character does not, this is called Dramatic Irony, and it builds suspense. It builds suspense by letting us know a character is in danger, but by making sure the on-screen character does not know of it, it nearly ensures the danger will strike- unless it decides not to. In this situation, it does. Some camera shots help this method work. The first begins at 0:23, and places the camera very low. The camera is directly under our protagonist, and the enemy is directly on top of him. This shot gives the illusion that the enemy is looming over the protagonist. In this case, the spider is doing this literally, but the low angle shot can be used to create this effect in many situations, even when the antagonist is shorter than the protagonist. The shot three shots later is also important in making this effect work. It is a Point of View shot, showing us the world through the eyes of Frodo Baggins as he looks from side to side trying to pinpoint the noise he heard. The fact that the spider does not show up in this shot lets us know that Frodo cannot see the spider that we know is directly above him. And thus, dramatic irony is created and suspense is built.

The second method to highlight is the Deliberate Approach. The Deliberate Approach is meant to slowly increase suspense throughout its use, by using very few quick, short, camera shots. The use of long shots allows the audience to think and process everything that is happening on screen. In this scene, it works because the spider is slowly approaching Frodo. It waits for the exact right time to strike, and we are kept waiting as long as Frodo is. Dramatic Irony ties in with this, because we know of the danger that could strike an unknowing individual at any time. The audience prepares for the attack, the jumpscare that they know is coming, by building tension within themselves- perhaps so they don't jump as high when the scare comes. The longer an audience prepares, the tenser they get. If the deliberate approach is used correctly, an audience will give up on a scare happening and relax just before a scare happens. 

A deliberate approach works when there are few long shots used in the scene. You may feel the effects of quick shots at 0:46, but there are in fact no shots shorter than 2 seconds in this scene. The shot at 0:46 is a POV shot, that moves quickly and simulates three small shots, but it is all a full 3 second shot.

To make The Lord of the Rings into a good film series, Peter Jackson would need to use suspense techniques in order to make the picture more interesting, or else he would have made a 12 hour long boring-fest. He used them everywhere, and they are very apparent in the scene with the giant spider and Frodo Baggins. Dramatic irony and the deliberate approach are two great ways to make a scene suspenseful.Peter Jackson knows how to use them.