COP 2 - Cites and Film notes continued

Depicting this theme with in film, I believe that the most well known examples would be Alfred Hitchcock's work, such as 'Psycho' and 'Vertigo.

- In the film 'Psycho' the house is purposely situated in its location to emit the atmosphere of abandonment, desolate, daunting and foreboding, knowing something is lurking in the house. The Gothic architecture of the exterior of the house helps to make it seem aged with a sinister appeal, through imagining what could be looking back at you though the windows, the wind making the whole house shriek with a high pitch as the wood creaks. This appeal to the architecture makes the audience feel a sense of fright without the need for a description or dialogue to know that their is something or some form of 'evil' emitting from the house,

- In the film 'Vertigo' the buildings are filmed from a low angle as to make the height more daunting to the viewer, the mist/clouds hiding the top of the building to make it seem higher than it is. The scene at the bridge, makes the whole city seem unreachable, the bridge being the only connection to the city. The scene where the main protagonist, John Ferguson, runs up the stairs to save Judy Bartons life, the camera captures the stairs from a high angle, so the viewer is able to see the distance from the top of the stairs to the very bottom. This creates an atmosphere of anxiety, a lurch in your stomach as you see the ground. I believe that the use of the black and white footage, even though this was due to the state of technology at the time, helps to saturate the scene with these emotions through the use of the solid black shadows and tonal shading.

Vertigo

Psycho

Metropolis is a Japanese animated feature that entails a world filled with advancement in technology through the inclusion of robots and the creation of a robot that can think and have thoughts of its own, one of a kind. The use of the city with in this film is caught between the surface in which the rich live and the beneath which is where the poorer classes live, using scrap metal to create their homes. This side of the city shows the heart of the city as it is portrayed warmly with saturated colour schemes whereas the surface is portrayed as a cold and dismal place with the dark side of the city lurking with in the huge corporate identities of the city.

Metropolis