The Birds- Mr Williamson

'The Birds' is a 119 minute film that was released in 1963; a  suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was based around the ideas of a 1952 story written by Daphne Du Maurier where birds of all breeds and nature come together, and violently attack society, the film is set over a course of a few days.

Trailer

The trailer offers aspects of a 'typical thriller' the main re-occurring themes present are suspense, tension and mystery. The trailer hints at what is to come in the film by subtly using the three themes to draw the audience in, this can be seen when the mystery behind the birds attacking is pinpointed on Tippi Hedren the main protagonist plays Melanie Daniels in The Birds, she is blamed for the birds attacking society, which makes the viewer think 'What has she done? Is she really to blame?', the viewer wants to learn more; suspense and tension are used throughout the film and especially noted in the trailer where Rod Taylor plays Mitch Brenner the second main character is trying to barricade and force the birds out from his home, in a 'life or death situation' it adds suspense and tension for the audience as they are always thinking that any moment now the deaths of the characters outnumbered and killed by birds could occur. 

The initial start of the film deriving to pre-mid of the film gets the audience believing that the film is of a romantic category, where a wealthy San Francisco socialite is over-all trying to pursue a relationship with a man she had met in a bird shop where the man (Taylor) pretends to mistake the young socialite (Hedren) for a shop assistant while trying to find love birds to purchase for his younger sister's birthday, realising and annoyed that the man is playing her along, Hedren manages to track down Hedren's address and drives to his small North California town to deliver love birds to him as a prank her-self.

In what ways is The Birds an archetypal thriller?

The Birds is classed as an 'original' thriller as it holds a very naturalistic story line, it's consisting of themes and ideas of probable cause, it signifies that something like this probably might not happen but it could; it gets the viewer to question their views and opinions, here it is how people should respect birds, how they should be more aware, aware of their surroundings and of nature and that is how it is original. 

Fast-paced frequent action

Examples of the above are shown when:  The 'Eyes pecked out' scene, its fast paced as the camera shots are quick, they go from the woman's first initial expression, to the image of the dead body, quickly back to the woman to show her reaction to what she has witnessed, its fast and lasts about 6 seconds, it makes the scene feel more intense as to how quickly it happens it makes it feel that the threat is alive.

Another key scene is the Gas Station attack, a man is knocked backwards to his death by one of the birds, and the leaking petrol leaks slowly but it adds suspense to the action that is yet to come, when the car is exhausted in fumes and fire there is a wall of fire created in the town, birds start to cackle and start to attack the citizens, at a fast paced attack, i,e how quickly the fire brigade come and how the horse and cart and man in the car are at chaos trying to escape the birds.

Devices

The ultimate device used in this film is the cliffhanger, the film is ambiguous, the ending; we as an audience have to come up with our own conclusion as to what is to come of the family driving away from the house as the surrounding birds stare and squawk after them.

A faint red herring is used when Mitch and Melanie are in the cafe and people gather to talk about the strange phenomenon going around the town, it leads the audience to conclude that the people hoarded subtly together in the cafe may come up with a plan (hence there being among them a bird expert) to 'stop' the 'bird crisis'.
The MacGuffin was used when Melanie tries to pursue Mitch with driving all the way to Mitch's mother's house where Mitch is staying to deliver the lovebirds for Mitch's younger sister's birthday. However, the MacGuffin does prove of some importance to the story as it delivers us to the location of the setting of the later story-line. 

" A thriller is a villain-driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must over-come"

Regarding the above quotation, the film relates to the quote at an extent, it is true because the 'hero' either Mitch or Melanie (both) are able to run away and protect themselves from the birds, they are able to overcome throughout the film the birds and keeping themselves alive unlike some characters i.e the neighbor who had his eyes plucked out and later on Mitch's ex-lover teacher. A Macguffin is present in the film as the goal is subte to escape, which we as an audience feel is the Macguffin also, it is what perhaps at the end of the film the characters indeed do, but who's to say.

I believe at the time of the film and when it was realised I believe it would of been a very shocking and perhaps disturbing film, it was new and Hitchcock allowed the audience to 'dip their toe in cold water of fear to see what its like' I believe he has achieved this by portraying firstly how men roughly and regard birds for, in his interview he carefully notes this in an early pre-historic painting of man where a bird is shot dead by an arrow. The film and Hitchcock really gets you thinking about how you perceive the world, especially us, as a civilisation, regard birds, so yes I do believe that Hitchcock really perceived that by reflecting on our view and treatment of birds in general, so over-looked, that by looking at the negative effects it could potentially have on us, we really are dipping our toe in the water.

Analysis Of First Attempt Media Filming- Cinematography Evaluation

In Media Studies we have all produced a short video using the media studies video camera given to make sure we could process and familiarise our self with the workings of the camera, the different and varied camera angles, and our terrible acting skills.

The story that my group (Georgia, me-Ruby, Andrew and Sophie) had decided to capture was a story called ‘Andrew Fails’; the main character (Andrew) was a dedicated dancer, who thought him-self great and successful at his chosen pursuit; where his naivety and arrogance is the cause of his ‘downfall’; this can be seen in the way he presents him-self as he walks at the beginning. Andrew presents him-self to the head judge (Ruby) who leads Andrew to the dance hall for him to present his dancing to judge Ruby and also Georgia, to try and pursue a place in the Royal Dance Academy.  However, Andrew’s dancing is ‘shocking’ to the judges, who think that the performance was ‘not good enough’ and he has to go away and re-think his performance before trying to peruse his dancing again; the story finishes on a tilt with cuing music to end the scene.

The listed shot types and camera movements that were included were: Close-up, Tilt, Long Shot, Tracking Shot, Middle Shot, and Vertical Pan. The shots that we did not include were: Crane, Extreme Close-up, Low Angle, High Angle, Panoramic Shot, Extreme Long Shot, Point Of View, and Over The Shoulder. We did not include all of the camera shots, however we were limited to time, on the time allocated for filming people were not in, and the availability of where we could and was filming was very limited, hence the background noise in the actual film.

The ‘thinking’ behind each shot. The shots that we used all have a reason for as to why they were used. Close-up was a shot to focus on Andrew’s face as he was told his news that his dancing was not good enough, Tilt was used to focus and capture Andrew’s initial emotions as to just hearing how bad his dancing is for the judges (and still is). Long Shot is used to capture Andrew’s dancing in which he performs it in a large space, Tracking shot is used to capture the angle at what Andrew is walking at and focus on how his walking inhibits his arrogance. Middle Shot is used to focus on the person, which was where Ruby was giving Andrew his news which makes the audience focus on what is being said and not what else is going on in the background, and Vertical Pan was used to show Andrew isn’t aware of the dancing rules of no footwear at the academy, showing his arrogance at dancing and how bad he is at it in general. I believe that all of our actions were successful in inhibiting the movements that we were trying to capture, however, I do wish if possible that we could of used more shots.

However, I believe for beginners who had just used the camera for the first time, I believe that we did quite well in the elements of being able to get the shots together, knowing which shot was which, and the framing and editing of the shots and the initial editing was what I believe was quite successful; however I do believe that the actual live filming and the steadiness of the shots need to be improved on, Sophie did do most of the filming but there were some points were other characters got the chance to do some filming i.e. when the camera is focus on Andrew’s dancing.

I believe that the most positive aspects of our over-all filming was that we all worked together to create our film, all ideas were put through and that we were efficient at all making sure we had a equal part to play. As-well as team work concerns I believe that the acting was of an okay standard, and especially concerning the over-all editing, we all made sure we understood how the editing process and application worked and that I also believe that in terms of adding audio, it suited the video appropriately, and not being out of sync. Improvements are obviously needed such as getting into an acting role and perhaps not having to improvise all the scenes in the future, as well as the steadiness of the camera, and especially including more shots, maintaining a whole scene of filming and perhaps being more efficient in where about we are filming.

Andrew Fails! Video- Cinematogrpahy Video