Psycho

The plot of Psycho is about  a Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

 In “Psycho” the audience initially think the film is about $40,000 and the murder becomes a shock. This shock makes the audience nervous for the rest of the film anything could happen and or anyone could be killed. The audience know there is a murderer in the house. They don’t know when s/he will strike again but to be suspenseful they must know it could happen any minute. Hitchcock stressed that as the apprehension increases there is less and less violence on screen. 

This film uses alot of tension in it this is because of the music that is used in this film whenever there is a murder or a key scene this music is played, it is a very iconic piece of music done by Bernard Herrmann.

“A thriller is a villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome.”

This is not the case in Psycho as early in the movie the hero gets murdered to prove that all heroes have their flaws.

Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience, "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like” Hitchcock has definitely succeeded in this film as he showed us that in this movie anyone can be killed and for all you know there could be a madman out there even though he looks and sounds normal. 

North By North West

North By North West

         For research into the thriller genre I watched the film North by North West. This film is about a New York advertising executive who is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive. This film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ernest Lehman. The stars of this film were Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

         

         The first thing that I done about this film was that I decided to watch and analyse the trailer. I decided that the trailer works well as it excites the audience who would want to go up and see this film. For example it does this by showing some of the parts of the movie which would keep the audience on the edge of their seat, for example the clip of when that Cary Grant is attempting to save Eva Marie Saint from falling to her death off the top of mount Rushmore. Another example of why that this trailer is effective is because it tells the audience that "It is a deadly game of tag... and Cary Grant is it" which sort of tells the audience what the story is about and because of the fact that the narrator tells a part of the story would want to make the audience want to go and see the film. Moreover another reason that why the trailer is effective is because that it tells the audience "Every staggering sight and sound is real" which would want to make the audience to go and see the film because of these sights and sounds.

                                     

                                                   North by North West trailer:

             

         

         It is said that "Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing frequent action". This film is a perfect example of this as it constantly keeps the audience on the edge of their seat, and also for its time this film is a perfect example of a Thriller. 

         This can be seen many times through this film for example the scene where Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) has been sent to meet up with the alleged Mr George Kaplan as it first of all starts off with Cary Grant travelling to a bus stop alone. First of all the suspense is built up by Hitchcock as he makes two cars drive past Cary Grant making the audience think that Kaplan is in one of them. Then a third car turns up delivering a man, who Cary Grant walks to and ask the man a few questions, and then the man reveals that he is just waiting for the bus and leaves.

                                     sidewalk scene north by northwest:

        

         Straight after this scene there is one of the most iconic scenes in filming history, the crop duster scene where Cary Grant is attacked by a crop duster with guns on it, this is a good example of  this film being a thriller as this is a scene that constantly keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. This is used as the plane keeps swooping down attempting to shoot him and then eventually the plane crashes into a petrol tank and explodes. In this scene Hitchcock believed the stress on the visual makes cinema accessible in different languages meaning that no matter who you are or where you are from you would be able to understand what is happening with this movie at this point in time.

                                               Crop dusting scene:

                                 

         “resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains.” this is true as the baddie played as James Mason tends to be better equipped with weapons and people such as his bodyguards.

              

         This film uses all different devices such as suspense, cliff hangers (quite literally in this film) and red herrings. Suspense is used in this film as half the time you do not know what is going to happen next for example in the film there are scenes such as the auction scene where you do not know what is going to happen to Cary Grant, are the bad guys going to take him and kill him or are the police going to save him? A Cliff hanger is used at the end of this film where Cary \grant saves Eva Marie Saint from falling down mount Rushmore. The Red Herring of the film is Eva Marie Saint who you don't expect to be a good person at the end as it seems she is working for the villain of this movie (James Mason).

          “A thriller is a villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome.” This is true as in this film the villain and his henchmen are always trying to get to Cary Grant and always try to kill him, the villains always get chances to kill him but however they never prevail and the protagonist survives throughout the whole film.

         The MacGuffin  is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". Or in simpler terms something that some people in the movie (in this case the spies) care about but the audience does not. The MacGuffin is something that tends to be something important to the movie but the audience do not care, they tend to be something that you do not even notice in this movie until the end when you find out what they actually are.  Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but, as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "the audience don't care".

       

         Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience, "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like” Hitchcock succeeded in doing this in this movie as throughout the whole film there are moments of what it would be like if that thing happened to you but as the audience know that it is not real then they would enjoy this movie as they wouldn't actually have to put their life on the line like the people of this movie.

Hitchcock discusses North By Northwest.

           

North by Northwest Movie Poster

         

Thriller Recipes and Conventions

Thriller is a very broad genre, yet with thrillers there are certain things that makes a thriller a thriller and not some other genre. For example thrillers tend to have a certain amount of action then has a small break and then goes back to the action to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.

Thrillers also tend to contain a certain type of tense music whenever something important happens or the lead up to a main scene.

Thrillers also contain things called mac guffins in which the story of the thriller is around, it can be pretty much anything in the film. Its something that the characters of the film care about where as the audience don't care about it, they care much more the characters of the film and what is going to happen to them.

According to the director Alfred Hitchcock thrillers allow the audience "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like" which most thrillers do as nobody would like to have a life like that of a thriller film so thrillers do indeed let us see what it would actually be like without us being harmed.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was a British film director, who specialised in making thriller films. He made some well known thriller films for example, he made films such as the original Psycho.

Throughout his filming career he had his own filming style he would never look into the camera, so as if it is through a person's gaze instead of a camera's view. He used this style as he was the one who created it, the idea of someone filming a movie but with through the view of the audience instead of a camera.

Hitchcock's main genre was thriller, (hence how he got the nickname 'The master of suspense'). In his films he used the macguffin quite alot in his thrillers and also the idea of how he used really tense, and suspense music in all of his films and his work of how he used lighting in his film aswell.

Alfred Hitchcock.

Narrative

Narrative

Every film has a story to it, these are a sequence of events that happen in a film, the story can also be known as the plot of the story. However we can go deeper into the idea of the story or plot, and this is the Narrative of a film, this refers to the way that the events of a film are revealed to the audience.

Narrative can be split up into two different parts, Linear narrative and Non-linear Narrative.

Linear narrative is when the sequence of events in the film are shown in the order that they took place, the beginning, middle and the end are all in order. This is the most popular form of narrative structure.

Non-linear is the sequence of events are revealed out of the expected order. For example the film can start at the end and then go into a flashback to show what is going to happen leading up to that point, for example the film 'Fight Club' Directed by Curtis Hanson (1999) starts off in this way with the ending at the beginning and then flashes back into the story.

Genre

All films have a certain category that the film falls into all of these different categories are called Genre. The most basic Genres that most people talk about are categories like Action, Horror, Comedy etc. All of these Genres have certain characteristics about them, for example a Horror movie would tend to have characteristics such as: it is set in a dark place, there tends to be loud music or noises that make the audience jump and also tends to contain really tense music that would make the audience feel anxious and nervous to find out what happens next. All films have macro elements to them, macros are the larger parts to the film for example they are parts like Genres and the Narrative parts of the film.

For example some Genres and their Characteristics are:



Horror: Full of suspense, loud noises/music, sometimes a killer, tends to be based in dark places e.g. mostly at night and or in an abandoned place.

Action: There is always something going on to keep the audience on the edge of their seat e.g things such as explosions, fight scenes, guns/weapons, A threat of some sort to the main protagonist of the story.

Welcome!

My name is Joe Howlett and this will be my blog for my media course.

I will be putting all of my work on here, both my analysis of films and the films that I help to make,

I hope your time reading my work and seeing my movies will be fun for you.