Birds

The opening scene of the film birds, just had a load of birds flying

around, and no music just the sound of screeching birds. The transition to change the text on screen looked like birds where pecking at it and then the words were changing.

There is a link to other Alfred Hitchcock films right from the beginning where the woman is suspicious and could be a psychologically disturbed character because she is trying to find this man to give him two birds, but she had only just met the man in a bird shop. There is a lot of interesting links between all of the Hitchcock films. During this film birds there is not as many cuts as what we have seen in past films by Hitchcock. We have seen mostly shot reverse shot and eye-line matches to see when things may start getting strange.

Hitchcocks use of the setting wilderness, he uses the fear in the film to decide on the setting. From Psycho he sets the man in a scary house on the hill, and in vertigo he sets the fear of heights in a city with tall buildings.

Unlike the other films during birds Hitchcock used no music during the film and the effects only come from the birds and the only other sound is the talking, but during the film vertigo and psycho there was music constantly throughout the film, Hitchcock probably did this on purpose because the sound of no music lets the audience properly concentrate on what’s happening in the shot.

Hitchcock uses the same type of shots during the attack on the woman at the end of birds. This was the same as the film psycho. The shots were very fast, the edits were quick and the sound was of the birds flapping their wings.

The car point of view shot is used again at the end like in all the other Hitchcock films we have watched.

Editing

Fast paced edit when the bird swoops down and hits her in the face. So far during the film the edits have been all very slow really, nothing interesting has happened it seems like a really long love film, but you can tell something is going to happen because of the chickens not eating and the birds on the power lines. The first time that fast cuts had been used was when the first attack of the birds happened. They cuts got faster and faster when the attack started to happen. The second attack features another lot of fast cuts and the sound that gets too loud. There is cuts when miss Daniels is sitting on the bench and it keeps cutting to the playground and the birds are coming and starting to get more and more. This is parallel editing. When the man gets blown up, the editing gets very fast paced, there is people rushing around there is everyone trying to put out the fires and there is a lot of eye-line matching. There was fast paced editing when the birds attacked again towards the end of the film. They started to block up the rooms and windows and they tried to escape from the birds. The family were all in panic and the cuts go fast. Fast cuts again during the scene of the final attack on the woman.

Shot types

Shot reverse shot when he is helping her put antiseptic on her head, and then there is a shot reverse shot between two people and miss Daniels. Eye line match with the two women looking up in the sky at the birds. Extremely long shot with no cuts in, when the old lady is on the phone with no cuts. There is another use of shot reverse shot duing the time that they are on the hill. There is very fast shots during the attacks, and there is close ups and there is extremely fast edits. There is lots of eye-line matches when she is looking through the room and again there was no non-diegetic sound, and Hitchcock wanted this to seem more natural. Tracking shot to see the two people out the door, as they get closer. There was point of view shots used when the birds were trying to attack the children. Tracking shot used to get closer to the womans face so you could see her facial expression. There was a match on action shot when she decided to open the door. The camera tracks back as the woman opens her eyes, she then reaches out into the camera and starts flapping her arms as if the birds are still there around her.

Mise en scene

The blood on her face sets the scene and it gives effect on the swooping down of the bird. The two people the mother and miss Daniels look so a like. The dead bird on the door step gives an effect that is some what strange. It makes the two characters look at each other in the eye. The way Hitchcock uses the setting of each place, the setting during birds is in a wilderness and the fear in this film is the birds, and the setting is a wilderness. The setting of the attacks have always been when the families are enjoying themselves. For example sitting down of an evening and the party. The effects of the dead body with the eye having been pecked out the effect of this on the audience is to make them scared of what is happening. There s very graphic scenes when there is a fire, and there is people dying and there is people being blown up and there is people worried and scared and running around this gives a panic effect on the audience. When the bird flies into the window it makes the audience jump. The bird goes to bite the mans hand when he is outside, it is really dark giving the effect of a gloomy end or something frightening is going to happen.

Music

So far there has been no music during the film, there has only been sound effects like the birds. These give the effect of
Towards the end of the dinner when miss Daniels has gone to the house, she is playing the piano. This is the first bit of music and it is calm and not very loud and only the piano is involved. The sound was just diegetic sound, no non-diegetic sound. This shows that Hitchcock just wanted to focus on what was happened and the sound of the birds, there was no string instruments like during the other films like in psycho with the really high-pitched instruments. Again minutes after the first attack there is another attack, during this there is a diegetic sound, and the sound of the birds just gets high pitched and makes the audience say this is too loud and too much. There still has been no music throughout the film and the only sound is birds. The final attack was no music again and only the high pitched scream of the birds making the audience wanting it to stop. The sound was slightly different during the final attack it was mainly the sound of the birds wings flapping instead of the loud pitched screeching like they do. The sound of all the birds goes immediately when the man closes the door.