Directing+Techniques+of+ALfred+Hitchcock

= Directing = Alfred Hitchcock, one of the most well-respected directors, innovated the motions of the camera for film today. Camera angles, shots, motions, and special effects all made Hitchcock’s directing unique and memorable.

One of the falling scenes using unique camera shots. alfred-hitchcock-films.net
 * //Saboteur// was a film made in 1942, starring Robert Cummings. In this film, the scenes involved a “cross country chase” (Eng) to find out who the true saboteur was of the exploding aircraft plants. He used telephoto lenses, sets built, and shot in various cities in the United States to get the “feeling of America’s vast land.” Many of the scenes had various gun fights, which Hitchcock would use screen mirrors. A technique where the optical illusion of the mirrors causes the viewer to think the man was shot. The film itself had “more than 1,000 and 4,500 camera set ups.”




 * //Vertigo//, made in 1958 and starring James Stewart, was a film about a retired cop named Scottie (James Stewart), a man terrified of heights, who was hired to follow a friend’s suicidal mistress around named Madeline, played by Kim Novak. The film had many scenes based on heights, the most common being the stairs and a tower Madeline attempts to “fall” from. Hitchcock made a miniature set of the tower and used his camera to zoom in and out to give the audience the same experience and “feeling of Vertigo [as] Scottie.”




 * //Psycho//, starring Marion Crane and made in 1960, is best known for the memorable stabbing scene in the shower. Hitchcock had to make the decision of making it a black and white film because he felt that the audience was not ready for a movie this graphic. The stabbing itself was made to look realistic by Hitchcock’s use of quick scene shots. Although it took “seventy camera shots” and a lot of “chocolate syrup for blood” to film the scene, the scene made the movie his “most famous film.”



The famous "scream of terror" from //Psycho.//



 "The Stab" from the movie. In this picture, we can see the ominous figure lurking in the background.


 * // The Birds //, a film starring Tippi Hedren and came out in 1963, is a film about birds attacking man-kind. The movie itself took three years to make because of all the special effects needed to make the birds attacking look realistic, which took about 370 trick shots. The most famous scene in the movie where Hedren gets attacked by a swarm of birds, Hitchcock attached “long, nylon threads to fake birds and Hedren’s clothes,” to make the birds look tangible.




 * // Tom Curtain //, a film made in 1966, starred Paul Newman as a professor along with his wife played by Julie Andrews as his assistant. The couple work on a military defense against the Communists. Later in the film, a Russian soldier finds their plans and attempts to stop them by alerting his unit. To stop him the couple tries to stop him by first stabbing him, then strangling him, next hitting him with a shovel, and they finally kill him by sticking his head in a gas oven. These scene did not take a lot of work with the camera or special effects, but the overall goal was to show the audience how “hard it can be to kill a person.”






 * // Frenzy //, made in 1972, tells the story of a British rapist (Jon Finch) who “kills his victims by strangling them with a tie.” The use of screen mirrors and extreme close-ups on the victims made it the first Hitchcock film to be R rated.



Each of Hitchcock’s films gave directors new techniques today. His use of optical illusions and camera shots in the films gave suspense and horror directors today a distinct base to create new ideas.

Sources:
Harris, Robert A. and Lasky, Michael S. //The Films of Alfred Hitchcock.// New Jersey. Citadel Press, 1976. Print. Auiler, Dan. //Hitchcock’s Notebooks.// New York. Avon Books Inc., 1999. Print.