Thriller Directors

To learn more about the Thriller genre and to inspire my own work, I have done some research on Thriller Directors.


ALFRED HITCHCOCK
I am not a huge fan of Thriller films but I had heard of Hitchcock, probably because he is one of the most influencial British film directors of all time- due to the fact he embraced new technologies and changed the world of cinema with both the new found "talkies" and with his unique directing style.

He grew up with very strict parents (which is reflected in some of his films). He studied engineering and worked for a while as an advertising designer for a cable company but he soon became interested in the technology of photography. This intrigue led him to go for a job at what was to become Paramount Pictures in London. He started off designing titles for silent movies and, within five years of his career at Paramount, he made his way into directing.

To begin with, his films were under-financed and flopped but eventually he made his break. After several UK successes, Alfred Hitchcock moved to America under a new contract and began directing there. His films (he made in his lifetime) were nominated for several awards, although he never won the academy award for Best Director.



*Key points of Hitchcock's work*

-His 10th film 'Blackmail' (1929) was one of the first films made with sound in the UK

-One of the first directors in America to film on location, as opposed to in studios

-Developed a technique of using famous landmarks as the location for suspence sequences

-Hitchcock's films 'often placed an innocent victim (an average, responsible person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation' [http://www.filmsite.org/thrillerfilms.html]

-He used a technique whereby he placed a lightbulb inside a glass of milk, to give it a glowing, supernatural quality. This created a greater contrast between the colours in the scene and manipulated the audience into looking at certain parts of the screen.

-Sometimes he used heightened music, suchas in 'Psycho' where he included a screechy violin

-He created great suspense and anticipation in films like 'Frenzy' by using long camera movements, taking the action from inside a building to outside and to the other side of the street, slowly revealing the whole picture

-Hitchcock was a fan of withholding information from the audience to build tension, sometimes by hiding the identity of characters or making them seem dangerous/vulnerable (depending on the situation). He did this through the use of filming characters in profile or in partial shadow

-'Strangers on a train' included a sequence where you see the murderer in the reflection of the victim's glasses

-He often filmed sequences in confined spaces to build the suspense and heighten the emotion of the scene

-In some of his films, Hitchcock was more experimental, exploring his interest in Expressionism. An example of this is the surrealistic dream sequence in 'Spellbound', in which he used many of the above techniques. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxlbgPkxHE


I think that there are several elements of Hitchcock's style that I would like to involve in my own work, such as the use of shadows, confined spaces, loud music and revealing things slowly to increase anticipation.