Alfred Hitchcock Presents

An audience attending a Hitchcock film is required to do much more than eat popcorn and drink soda! A Hitchcock film immerses the audience within the action of the film using stylistic and cinematic elements, such as: camera placement, editing, point of view, subjectivity and objectivity, all working together in ways that help to evoke certain emotions, while also provoking certain questions, making you wonder just what in the world Hitchcock is going to do next? In 39 Steps, one can see the…

In the first scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, it could be taken as a flirtatious-romance film; however in the opening title sequence of the film, an ominous tone is set—a more accurate portrayal of the film. The first shot after the opening sequence shows the main protagonist, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), at a street corner with the frame of the camera shooting the busy street scene and the skies above. While the sky is clear, it is only after when Melanie crosses the street that birds…

The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing: A Discussion The most relatable person in The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing would have to be Steven Spielberg, while discussing the challenges of choosing how to edit a scene with so many options with many different outcomes. This describes one of the biggest challenges one might face while editing film. His passion for what he does shines through as well. The documentary teaches a few things about visual storytelling. While talking about…

classic among the entire horror movie genre with many memorable iconic scenes by the only Alfred Hitchcock in the history of Cinema. Tense, horrific and a superb lesson in filmmaking, it offers complex characters and revealing dialogue with a huge regard for details. Psycho also features glorious use of mise-en-scene, a fancy French term for all of the visual elements in the frame used to infer meaning. Hitchcock famously uses this concept in the parlor scene, where Marion and Norman talk over…

Ames Room What is an Ames room? An Ames Room is a room that is used to create a visual illusion due to its slanted figure. While the room gives an appearance of a square-shaped from the viewers’ observation, it actually has a trapezoid shape. This effect works by developing a distorted room to create the illusion of a intense modification in its size. The illusion that is projected leads the observer to believe that the two objects that are in the same depth of area, when in reality the subject…

About twenty-seven years ago, Johnny Depp played the main role in one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the 20th century. Edward Scissorhands is a film directed by Tim Burton. It is a story about an artificial man named Edward-an unfinished creation who has scissors for hands. The main themes behind the film deal with self-discovery and isolation. Tim Burton uses a point-of-view shot which pans from the grandmother’s house and sweeps over the cookie cutter suburbs, ending with a new…

Sound is an integral element in a film that is overlooked in its importance. The way the director manipulates sounds allows the film's tone to play with how the audience feels and in film such as Babel[Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006], Noise [Matthew Saville, 2007],Two Hands, Jaws [Steven Spielberg, 1975] and many other … films it is done so effectively. The use of sound conveys emotion, the story and how the filmmaker is interpreted throughout the film. These films rely on sound to…

The classic thriller, suspense film Rear Window directed by Alfred Hitchcock is one of his greatest masterpieces. In a small Greenwich Village apartment, a newspaper photographer with a casted leg takes frequent views of the surrounding Lower East Side apartment buildings, lower courtyard and garden. With a suspicion about one of his neighbors, Jeff believes that one neighbor inparticular is a murder, then decides to solve the mystery himself. With a combination of thriller, action and mystery,…

The film "Chinatown" presents Los Angeles’s crisis of stifling drought, despite the presence of the river, but the lack of dams and poor drainage tampering in the city. In the film we sink into the thirties of Los Angeles glooms as if we are at that moment. So the director was able to take us to see that moment through (atmospheres, decor, clothes, make-up and even music) in order to make us live this melancholy atmosphere of crime. The film story begins after a visit from a lady for the office…

character. A goal oriented character is a character focused on reaching an achievement. Goal oriented characters can include the antagonist, protagonist or unimportant second character. An example of a goal oriented character is Alicia in Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946). Alicia is played by Ingrid Bergman and her goal is to gather intel on a group of Nazis,…