Alfred Hitchcock

With his full name, Sir Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 in London, England. He was both film director and producer, mostly known for making 'Notorious' (1946), 'Rear Window' (1954) 'Psycho'(1960) or 'The Birds' (1963).

His directing and editing style is really tense, dark but also humorous which creates his own ''Hitchcock'' style. His technique became so famous and known that when somebody mentions ''Hitchcock'' style of directing everyone knows what style it is. Alfred Hitchcock knew people watched his films to get the thrill feeling, and he created the scary images very effectively and also with combining of sound(sound effects,music), which was always being complimented by the audience and creators of films. He always made sure each emotion was captured on camera, which helped to get the real feeling for the audience and helped in overall creation of scary or emotional scene. Also one of famous Hitchcock's film technique is the camera movement- the camera follows the same direction as from the actors view which helps to get the audience into the real feeling of what is happening in the movie.

The importance in the technique Alfred Hitchcock created is that it changed and altogether alternated all movies since other film-makers got inspired by his successful style of creating and editing films. With his really morbid scary and dark style but also really humorous he really changed movie industry by breaking the ''law'' of only one genre of movie by combining thriller with a bit of comedy and by adding amazing soundtracks he really created masterpiece.

One of the key films was 'The Birds'(1963). The editing in this movie was quite extraordinary for the early age of film making.  Alfred Hitchcock’s films often use editing to make the audience feel what the character feels in certain moments. In this scene from “The Birds,” a man is found dead in his house with his eyes plucked out. Without the editing, the suspense, initial shock, and thoughts following this scene would not be the same. The audience is shown each new “discovery” in the house just as the woman (Ms. Brenner) sees them. Then once the man is finally completely revealed the camera cuts to zoom in closer to his face three times to emphasize that his eyes are gone. This is most likely the image that one would remember after finding someone in that state. Just as we discussed in class, traumatic occurrencs leave us with vivid horrible images rather than a distinct account of what we saw. This is accomplished with the editing techniques used in this scene. The camera cuts to reveal the images to the audience at the same time they are revealed to the character.

As mentioned above, Alfred Hitchcock influenced even today's film making industry.  There is a number of directors and editors of the most famous recent movies that watched Hitchcock' s work from the beginning and got influenced. For example Martin Scorsese(Goodfellas), Mark Goldblatt(The Terminator) or Eli Roth (The Hostel).