Psycho - Hitchcock

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Alfred Hitchcock is considered by many the suspense master.
Although you may disagree and just start naming "much better" titles of your personal choice, I invite you to think about the history of the moving pictures.

He directed, and produced some of his films.  Not an easy accomplishment, even nowadays.

How do you think the first few suspense and mystery movies were like?
Why is Hitchcock considered the suspense master?
Psycho is one of his classic movies. What techniques have you noticed that can be used as a model to create your own suspense/mystery movie?

Check this video. Hitchcock introduces you Psycho in a very suspenseful way.





10 comments:

  1. I think that the first few suspense movies were bad. They probably did not have many good scenes. The were probably exciting back then but some parts are boring now. Hitchcocks movies were different. He was considered the suspense master because he used new techniques that no one had ever used. He was one of the first to ever master these skills which are still used today. I have learned a few techniques to use in our movies. One of them is let the audience know something is wrong with the music and small clues. Then you show the character about to do something that you know is wrong but the character doesn't. These are some ways and the ways to create our suspense/mystery movie

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  2. In my opinion, I feel that the first few suspense and mystery movies might have been much more obvious then we think; they might all have the same conclusions and the same type of story: a person get killed and with some evidence, criminal gets caught. However, that being said, as seen in the movie Psycho, Hitchcock's movies have a great plot twist. The whole time we suspect that it's the hidden and mysterious person, but ends up being the one who had been with the protagonist the whole time! Furthermore, he had used a different technique in his movie by having the protagonist dead around the beginning of the movie, instead of keeping her alive until the end. With that in mind, I think that these reasons are why Hitchcock is considered the suspense master. Connecting this to my project, I remember when there was a scene when Marion first enters the motel, into the lobby where it was full of stuffed birds. It showed different angles and shots of her face and some close-ups on the birds, demonstrating Marion staring at the birds. I feel that not only this technique, but also many others would be very useful to put into my movie too. All in all, it was such an amazing yet astonishing movie!

    -Jenny

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  3. I think that the first suspense and mystery movies were really boring compared to today's mystery and suspense moveis. Along with that I think that the first suspense and mystery movies were limited because at that time there weren't as many resources and technology as today to edit the movies.
    In my opinion Hitchcock is considered the master of suspense because the films he created and the ideas he had were unexpected at his time. Another reason why is because there are not too many directors that kill their main actor in the first 30 minutes of the film without ruining the rest of the film.
    Now that I have seen Psycho, I have seen some techniques that I can use to create my mystery/suspense movie. One of them is music to really capture the attention of the audience, remembering to use different musics in different situations or repeating music when the same thing will happen but with a different person. Another technique that I noticed was that throughout the film small clues need to be given to the audience, not only to indicate who is the killer or bad guy, but to keep the audience involved and interested in the story.

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  4. I think that the few suspense and mystery movies were very obvious, and they were also were very traditional in the concept of always doing as the last person did. Everyone would never try something different, but Hitchcock broke all the guideline, and composed inspected attributes to his film. He killed the main character since the start, and made an unpredictable ending. The master of suspense, Hitchcock, also made a character with different personalities that you were able to form an unique character that no one would suspect. Finally, he was the one that start to make some famous aspects of the movie to turn into a suspense like the time, character making dumb decision, and the music during the film.

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  5. I think the first suspense movies were over dramatic at trying to scare the audience. I think this because at that time people had a different taste in horror, mystery, and suspense. Although i think some scenes might of been overly dramatic, i still think it might of scared the audience. On my opinion, Hitchcock was considered the suspense master because he had his own unique was of hooking the audience to the movie, and how he made his movies. For example, Psycho. The famous shower scene was not only famous because of how it was plotted and the violence, but the music. Usually movies would have high music in the horror scenes; Hitchcock did the same thing, but he used this in a different method. His climax music would constantly repeat giving the audience more "taste" of whats going one. Also how he made his movies. Some of the would die, or others would survive. In Psycho, the main character dies, and through out the movie more characters get added into the main problem. Some movie making technics that Hitchcock used was music, acting, transitions, lighting, filming distance and angles, setting and when something happens. All of these ways are ways to make a powerful and good way to create a suspense/mystery movie.

    -Anika

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  6. Psycho was a very entertaining movie to see because we learned how it looked like the first suspense movie in movie history. People these days say that Alfred Hitchcock was the father of suspenseful movies because first he created the first one, and second he inspired other directors to do even better. For being a 1960 movie Psycho was very well done and very entertaining. One technique that I thought that was brilliant in the movie was the music. Not just all the music, the music played on the scenes of the murders. I belive the music was very well done made because it made everyone scared in the old days and it still does. So that is one technique that I will use for my short film. Another technique that he used that was good was that he gave the feeling to the audience to try to stop the character from going inside, they would say " don't go in their. So that would be another technique I would use for my film. Overall Psycho was very entertaining and mysterious, I would want to see all his movies after I saw this one. Even thought it was a very old movie I think this movie did much better than other movies made today.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Andrew, just to clarify: Hitchcock did influence other directors, and actually shaped what we understand by modern suspense. Although we must mention him when we talk about the first few suspense movies ever made, he did not create the very first one. The genre suspense is ofter associated with others, like horror or thriller. Hitchcock's movies are more like thrillers, and on that line, one of the movies considered the first one is "Safety Last" from 1923.

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  7. Hi Ms. Kagohara.
    I really don't like suspense and horror films because it is scaring and creepy and I gives me "nightmares." Even though I dislike suspense films, this one, The Psycho, was pretty okay. I thought the first suspense/movies films were not that intense as it is intense now. The reason I think that is not intense because this films doesn't show blood and really crazy things. Today's movies the "killings" are so much greater and it has a bunch of visual effects, that this movie doesn't have. I bet you that the first suspense movies is not even scary compared to today's movies.
    I think that Hitchcock is considered the suspense master because his movies were very extreme compared to other movies during that time. Another reason I think that Hitchcock is considered to be the suspense master is because his plots is much more different then other movies. To be simple, his plots create more of a suspense, and what is going to happen next without the main character feeling. That is what happened to me, because sometimes in suspense movies I can tell if the main character is going to die, but the scene when the main character dies was so sudden. (I didn't even realize it)
    Some effects that Hitchcock uses when creating his movies is the sound, which is the best effect that I think he has. Another effect that Hitchcock uses is the lightening because he makes the scene more darker to create much more of a scary feeling that something bad is going to happen. Also an effect that I thought is cool is the angle of the camera because the shots are really close sometimes and other times it is far away so you can see where they are and stuff. Like for an example, the last scene when the guy is talking to himself, the screen shot has him in the middle and the background is white; so it is kind of a scary/ you know what is happening scene.
    -Alice

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  8. I think the first suspense movies of that time surely were less dramatic, easier to solve and had less strong scenes. I think Hitchcock is considered the suspense master because his scenes are really well elaborated, his soundtrack impacts greatly on how much scared the viewers would get during the movie and because his stories were not something totally fake which included monsters and demons , he used real life situations which could've really happened . As said before I think the greatest effect of showing mystery and suspense was his soundtracks .

    Gabriel S

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  9. This movie Psycho starts when the girl steals 40,000 USD and leaves the hotel to meet her boyfriend at another state. Since they were both poor, they didn’t have enough money to marry and buy a house, but this was their chance. While she was traveling, it started to rain, causing to block her view while she was driving. So she decided to stay at the motel called Bate’s Motel. The owner of this motel is a serial killer and has a problem in his mind. Later in the movie, he kills the girl and the investigator that tried to find out what happened to the girl. In this movie. In this movie, I like the music/ effects because they made it more dramatic and scary, but I did not like the ending. The way how they ended was not the best way to end. I learned that music makes things more dramatic. I am thinking about making a suspense movie about a plane crash, and there are 7 survivors, and every day, people starts to disappear.

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