How Hitchcock achieves fear/ audience being scared
Although it was difficult to watch the murder scenes and actually analyze them sanely without letting emotions play in, after watching them a second time I realized that Hitchcock uses a few purposeful techniques in each of the scary scenes to achieve fear and horror.
The first technique was the lighting. In many of the scenes, we see that the actors are never in stark light, nor are they ever in full dark light. Instead, they are usually half lit and half dark, which forms a scary effect just like it's kind of scary to see a person with a flashlight under their face. This lighting illuminates only some features and leaves others in the dark, which makes a person's features scary. This is especially noticeable in Norman Bates' face when he (or his alter ego "mother") were about to do something bad (like murder people.
I think Hitchcock could've made it to where you don't see Norma (mother) coming from the corner of the screen or slightly opening the door to Arbogast. If he would've had him jump out without any warning right when the music hit that high note things would be scarier and it would make you jump from your seats even more.
ReplyDeleteSomething else Hitchcock added during Marion's murder scene was the initial lack of music. There was something incredibly suspenseful about having the only the sound of the running water or the crinkling paper of the soap, only to then have the music enter at its climax. In Arbogast's murder, Hitchcock used the opposite approach to the same effect; he had the entire scene scored because even though you know something will happen as soon as the door begins to creep open, the music creates as much suspense at it's lack of does.
ReplyDelete