Rebecca Arnold: Senior Portfolio: Rebecca Arnold, Artist Blog: Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock started out his career in film in 1920, when he worked as a movie title designer for 2 years at a studio in London. When the director of the film Always Tell Your Wife fell ill, Hitchcock completed the movie. After working his way up, his career as a director finally began, and he has become the most widely known and influential director in the history of world cinema with a significant body of work produced over 50 years.

I'll start out by saying all the Hitchcock movies I have seen: Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, To Catch a Thief, and The Birds. This man created 52 available films, so I have a ways to go.

I figured I'd write this blog about him, since I'll be taking some stills from Dial M for Murder. Here's some interesting information.

While known for his quick cameos in his films, Hitchcock often used theme of "wrong man" or mistaken, lost or assumed identity. This includes his films Vertigo, North by Northwest, Pyscho, among others. This is really intelligent and interesting. It makes a good story, obviously. I'll have to take this under consideration. As Hitchcock says, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." How true is that to how I feel.

Something I'll also be taking from Hitchcock is the way he creates suspense in his films. He was known to alternate between different shots to extend cinematic time. I obviously can't do that with a still camera, but I can take from his ideas to keep the viewer in the place of the character with shots between a character's point of view and shots of what's coming. He admitted that this makes any danger encountered more richly felt. He also uses a lot of film-noir-like lighting in his earlier films. He creates shadows on walls for more tension and suspense, like in Suspicion and Saboteur.

Hitchcock also liked to have full control of lighting and other factors of the set, preferring to shoot at the studio. I will consider this too. Even if I do shoot on location, I will be sure to have a few lights in order to contain my environment.

Here are a few stills I picked out: