Hitchcock’s Film School

The Techniques of the Master of SuspenseAlfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock“The Man”

• 1899-1980

•Born in London and emigrated to the U.S. in 1939

•Got his start in photography, moved to title-card designer, then (five years later) to a film director

•Started out making silent films

•Made over 50 films; Six Oscar nominations; Never Won

Famous Hitchcock Film Techniques

Montage

Point-of-View Editing

Dialogue versus Visual Storytelling

The Bomb Theory

The MacGuffin

Montage•Montage - a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information

•Divide action into a series of close-ups and tie them all together to tell a story

•Anytime something important happens, show it in close-up

•Psycho shower scene

Point-of-View Editing

•Subjective Cinema through a POV shot

•Shows what the character is looking at

•Editing back and forth between a subject and a character as many times = builds tension

Dialogue vs. Visual

Storytelling•“People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another. A conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs.”- Hitchcock (subjective cinema)

•Camera should take on human qualities (the viewer’s eye)

•Resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise

The Bomb TheoryDistinction between surprise and suspense

Four men are sitting at a table playing poker. The scene is rather boring. Suddenly, after 15 minutes, we hear a big bang - it turns out there was a bomb under the table. This is called surprise as it isn't what we expected would happen.

If we watch the same scene again with the important difference that we have seen the bomb being placed under the table and the timer set to 11 AM, and we can see a watch in the background, the same scene becomes very intense and almost unbearable. This is called suspense.

SUSPENSE IS INFORMATION

The MacGuffin•MacGuffin - something that seems to have great significance to the people involved but has absolutely no significance at all.

•It exists only to initiate a conversation or movie plot.

•Examples

•Maltese Falcon – The Maltese Falcon

•The Arc of the Covenant – Raiders of the Lost Arc

•AllSpark – Transformers

•Glowing Briefcase – Pulp Fiction