Alfred Hitchcock

I will be giving you a short background information about Alfred Hitchcock, which iRecieved from the internet, on wikipedia.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) He was a British filmmaker and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while retaining his British citizenship.
Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. He remains one of the best-known and most popular filmmakers of all time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock


We analysed the opening sequence of the film 'Shadow of a doubt'
The music is from the opera 'Merry Widow'

These are the notes that i took whilst watching the opening sequence:
-Film start of as cheerful, dissolves to industrial scene.
-Long shot down the street in a poor neighbourhood
-Introduced to main character without any form of speech.
-Shows a shot of a house
-See a charcter laying on the bed, the music dies down
-See a cigar, shows that he has power, has money, he is immacuatly dressed with a smart suit
-Low key lighting, with a light coming throught the window.
-The character has money laying around, even on the floor of this room he is in. This shows he does not care about the money.
-Land lady comes in speaking to him, he continues to lay there calm, seeming unitresting in what she has to say.
-His responses to her are calm.
-He comes alive in he dark, audience may question his character, the music is sinester.
-He drinks a drink and smashes the glass, he shows the anger inside of him, an shows he is violent.
-As he leaves the house the music gets louder and upbeat.
-As he walks across the street he looks very focused, music of a piaono starts to play, creating tension
-The chase in on to find him, music is upbeat
-High angled shot of the two guys showing they are not powerfl
-See a silhouette of him, representing mystery showing that he is powerful and these other two guys cannot harm him (Mian character is called Uncle Charlie)
-See a shot of the town, the music is now cheerful and peaceful. This place is called Santa Ross, its like a perfect subbuben lifestyle, completly opposite to the town we saw beforee.
-See an image of Charlie laying in the bed as the same way Uncle charlie was. Its a mirror image.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhrV2NIlrC4
[Link is to-Opening sequence of 'Shadow of a doubt']

We then analysed another Hitchcock film 'Vertigo' (made in 1956)
-Begins with seeing a lady' lips in black & white, then you see her eyes then the colour changes to red, connation of the colour red is danger, love, happiness, anger but by the sound of the music we interpret it to b danger or anger.
-Two police men cahsing after a villan.
-See a hand first then see villan climbing up then the camera back tracks as we see the two police men following him, the music is very tense and very dramatic.
-When one of the police men drops of and hangs off a building he shows a reverse zoom of his point of view, looking down. Music played is harps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkHn8PNGYaA
[Link is to-Opening sequence of 'Vertigo']