Thriller Research and Pre-Production

 How does the opening sequence build tension? (submerged)

                    Submerged ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmvzxandcJo ), a short 2:06 minutes thriller clip created by Hurtwood House media has used many different techniques that helped it build tension. These techniques include the audio, the camera angles, the dialog, and the lighting.

                    Right at the start (0:08) the viewer sees two bright blue lights underwater, it has a very muffled audio going along with it,  which already starts building up some tension. The viewer thinks to himself, what is going on? A few seconds later (0:20) we discover that those lights belong to a submerged submarine. At 0:28 the setting changes to inside the submarine, where we can see two men working on something yet to be discovered. The oscilating music keeps a very serious and tense mood throughout the clip. At 0:59 we see what's happening on one of the cameras from the submarine, and this actually builds up the tension because it's very hard to tell what's going on. At 1:26 the two men spot something mysterious on camera three, amd they investigate it and find out it looks like a ship. This leaves the audience thinking "why is there a ship there?"and of course, creataing tension and making people curious about what is going on with that ship. It appears that at 1:42 the ship hits the submarine and the two men start hesitating to discover what that was. Next, at 1:47 we discover that the electronic system is down, so they may be in deep trouble. Last but not least, roughly at about 2:00 the screen turns black and we hear shipwreck noises, and suddenly the clip ends making the viewer curious about what would happen next.
                    In my opinion this is a very effective introduction to a thriller, the suspance makes the audience very curious to what is going to happen next due to the dark, muffled, oscilating soundtrack, the dialog between the two characters, and the small use of lighting that creates even more tension due to the lack of visibility in the clip. Tension is built up all throughout the thriller clip with absolutely no moments of relaxation.