Appeal in the "Tension of Anticipation"

This feeling of anticipation coming from something which is fast advancing towards a certain goal of action always ignites a certain amount of tension. For example if a window is shutting down due to the wind, and we are at a distance watching it get closer and closer towards getting shut, at a good speed, it will give us a chill, a tension, because there is an anticipation towards the whole action which can be determined by the flow of the events. If the window closes with a strong shut without our attention, we will probably look at the window once and carry on, but if we keep looking at it advance closer and closer, we get a mild tension. It is in fact the predictability that gives the whole chill.

Alfred Hitchcock

Another example, when a couple is having sex and the male partner slowly advances his hands touching her stomach towards her vagina, it will give her a stream of electric shocks even before a few inches of getting there making her take a deep sigh. The anticipation increases the whole sexual tension by a good percentage making the whole act feel sexier and intense. If the male partner directly places his hands over her vagina, it will of course give her the natural biological arousal of being touched on that part, but a spoonful of anticipation will take it to a whole different level. Another example along the same lines would be, a twenty something boy having a crush on his married neighbor. When the neighbor knows it and doesn’t mind having some fun with deep secret stares and long talks, the boy starts fantasizing. So one fine day, he comes back from college a little earlier than usual, and he finds her door open, he opens the door a slightly more and finds her cooking, alone. They exchange the hellos, but the guy doesn’t move from there. Now the neighbor woman is cooking but half her head is on the part, strongly running her predictions through the list of possibilities that the boy can come up with. "Is he going to come and touch me? Is he going to directly kiss me?" And the guy wants to take a step further but he’s terribly scared whether she’ll deny him and drown him in shame. He has a terrible erection, she starts sweating more. Both are strongly anticipating, and during this period even if the young boy touches her softly on her shoulders she will take a deep breath. Her hubby could be touching her on places like shoulders every day and she may not feel a thing, but if something has a lot of tension involved it makes the whole act sexier. 

A lot of horror filmmakers use this tactic. Like in "The Conjuring 2", the toy-truck comes out of a dark play tent on its own with the blinking lights on. Now we don’t know what is in there. So the camera starts zooming in, we keep wondering, what it is going to be. This anticipation driven by the camera taking us close to the tent is in itself a tension we are attracted towards and at the same time thrilled to be in. Half of the times these zooming in effect turns out to be nothing, like in "The Conjuring 2", he turn on the lights and there is no one,  but if the director has given us the tension of anticipation, his job is done. The tension of anticipation heightens the overall mood of the atmosphere, adding tension to anything, increases the thrills of doing the same action. Another common use of anticipated tension is the camera zooming into a doll, we know the doll is possessed, so we are waiting for it do something that will prove that she is evil. The camera zooms in and in, when it reaches dead-end close; all it will do is just blink. That whole period we will be holding our breath and anticipating. Whether the doll does anything or not is not important, the tension generated with the help of the anticipation does the job that the director was hoping to achieve.

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