Alfred Hitchcock Editing

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Alfred Hitchcock is considered on the of the greatest film makers of all time. This is was mainly because of his style and techniques that he employed in his films. Often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense" he pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. A good example where this is exemplified is in the 1960 hit film Psycho. What I found interesting about the scene is that is a shower scene but no ‘indecent’ pictures are shown, it’s about a homicide by stabbing but one never gets to see the knife penetrating the body. Each shot lasts for no longer than three seconds coupled with the mixed fast cuts and the screeching music the director was able to create the ultimate illusion of violence and nudity but maintain the decency of not showing any inappropriate images. The set up for the scene was rigorous and according to http://phobias.about.com/od/introductiontophobias/a/psychofilm.htm the scene took seven days and more than 78 separate camera angles, this goes to show the amount…show more content…
Deliberate Style of editing was used as hand held shots, jump cuts and fast paced were employed to help show the intensity of the scene. One of the greatest advantages of the style of editing used was to not to allow the audience to see that there was a stand in actress in the same scene. Jump cuts were used and these created confusion to the viewer, motivated cuts were mainly used to mask the identity of the killer and the cutting rate increases with the eerie sound motif to disorient the audience and create tension. The face and upper body the audience sees are those of the main actress but the mid body where the stabbing happens are for the stand in actress. When the woman is struggling, there’s a lot of fast pace editing as the women tries to fight off her killer at the same time and at the same time none of her stab wounds are

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