Psycho



Psycho is an American suspense/horror that was made in the 1960's. It starred actors such as Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, John Gavin,Vera Miles and Martin Balsam. This film is very loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murders and the grave robber Ed Gein.

The storyline is about Marion Crane (Leigh) that runs away with $40,000 that was meant to be banked to try and run away with Sam (Gavin), though her plans get stopped while staying at the Bates Motel. Days later, a private investigator called Arbogast (Balsam) tries to figure out the missing case of where Marion has disappeared until he disappears as well at the Bates Motel. So that leaves Marion's sister, Lila Loomis and Sam to find out what happened to Marion. What is going on at the Bates Motel?

Psycho is said to be one of the best films of all time and to be honest i agree. The plot is excellent, the MacGuffin is used especially well and it keeps the audience in suspense throughout the film because they are unsure about what will happen next. (SPOILER ALERT!! DON'T READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO)One thing that i especially noticed about the film was that whenever something bad is going to happen, you can always hear dramatic music. i noticed this when Marion was killed, you could definitely see it coming. Also it could be classed as a horror but to be honest with you, there isn't really any killing because you don't actually see the weapon go into the victim as you normally see in modern films today but it leaves it to your imagination to what the injuries and wounds look like which is ingeniously used in the film. There is a very planned and admittedly, very well planned part at the end of the movie that happens very quickly and you need quick eyes to see it. Finally, Alfred Hitchcock made this film in black and white strangely even though colour films had been out for years, he decided to think outside the box. This kind of adds to the effect of the film, especially with the killing and the blood because it doesn't turn out red, just dark grey.

But altogether, this movie is a must see. Even though it was in black and white (which we definitely take for granted now) i really did enjoy the film and would say if you haven't seen it already, i would really recommend it. Out of 10? It would have to be way over 10.

Recipe For A Thriller

Recipe For A Thriller

There are many things that can describe a thriller. Fast car action? The cute blonde in the back? It all depends on what we think makes a successful thriller. One good example is Albert Hitchcock's North By Northwest. It has excellent plot and storyline which is constantly making the audience wonder 'what's gonna happen next?'. One element of the film that Albert Hitchcock himself made was a MacGuffin (Explanation is in my North By Northwest post). 

There are two things that are especially used in a typical thriller and these are:

-A villain driven plot, whereby the villain gives the hero obstacles they must overcome

-Resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains

In all fairness for thriller movies, they wouldn't be anything without the villains very evil driven tasks. But at the end of the movie, do we really think about the heroes getting the MacGuffin or saving the world. Not really. All we care about is "Will they survive?", "Are they gonna get out of this mess?". This adds to the thriller movie because most of the audience never really care about the storyline as much as how the hero/es will get through the challenges that have been put in front of them.

There are many examples of thriller movies:

-Bourne Legacy

-The Avengers Assemble

-Twilight

-The Hunger Games

There are so many examples that it will be so hard to count all of them. But for the bare basics of a thriller, theres the plot, general action or a fight scene and normally some sort of love scene.

Aaron and Connor's amazing video

http://youtu.be/o1CS6Q4XbRI

This is a video that me and my media partner Connor have made with loads of different angles. We were asked to film a short sequence and experiment using different angles. Afterwards we edited all of the footage to make up the video that you can see above. To make sure that the video had the images and sound that we needed, we had to edit the footage with FinalCut.

North By Northwest

North By Northwest is a typical American thriller made in 1959 which has been directed by the brilliant mind of Albert Hitchcock, written by Ernest Lehman and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

The story is of an 'innocent' New York executive who is mistaken for a government agent called George Kaplan. This works out very badly for Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) who then becomes kidnapped by Philip Vandamm's (James Mason) henchman and brought back to his house for questioning. Roger then escapes, drunk in a car, goes to the police and tries to pursue this 'George Kaplan' which then ends up with him being chased by foreign spies, fleeing for his life.
After fleeing for days, he stows away on a train to find this 'George Kaplan' and runs into the beautiful Eva Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) which then makes them emotionally connect and maybe fall in love...
The plot inevitably continues and unravels the secret that Eva Kendall has been hiding all of this time. Using his cunning wit and intelligence he is able to recover the object that the villains want and foils the plans of Philip Vandamm. And as far as we know, the movie ends with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint travel back together on the train.

Albert Hitchcock used many very successful techniques while he was making this film, it is a magnificent plot and storyline with an 'almost' cliffhanger ending. One of the techniques that Albert Hitchcock used in the film is Red Herring. This is a very superb technique which deliberately fools the audience to think a certain way about a particular character. An example of this is Eva Kendall. Our initial thought of her is that she is evil because she works with Philip Vandamm, but we find out she is an agent which changes our opinion about her and justifies it. One thing that Albert Hitchcock has created himself is the MacGuffin. He explains a MacGuffin as "a plot element that catches the viewers attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".